REGION : Cisneros Pledges Aid for Southeast Cities

U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry G. Cisneros promised to be “all ears” last week as he learned more about the needs of the Southeast region, an area that is often overlooked by Washington because of its proximity to Los Angeles.

He got an earful. And then gave a mouthful.

While praising housing developments and other community projects built in part with HUD money, Cisneros also delivered the news that such funding for small cities may be in jeopardy as Republicans in Congress--and President Clinton--look to shave and reorganize federal spending.

“I can’t imagine anywhere in the U.S. that is more ripe in moving people into the middle class than here,” he said to a group of city officials from Bell, Bell Gardens, Cudahy, Huntington Park and Vernon.

His comments came after a tour of the cities arranged by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) to show him how the municipalities work together, and individually, in spending federal money.

Yet the former mayor of San Antonio also delivered a sobering message: Republicans in Congress are seeking to cut at least $7 billion from HUD’s current $30-billion annual budget.

HUD money that is funneled into Community Development Block Grant funds are in danger, Cisneros said, and small communities are most apt to lose from the decrease in funds.

For instance, Huntington Park, which is a direct recipient of HUD money and does not have to go through county administrators like the rest of the cities to receive its federal funds, received $2.3 million in block grant funds this year. If Congress approves the current cuts, Huntington Park stands to lose $150,000 in approved money that the city may have already allocated.

“It will be disastrous if we take a cut,” Cisneros said to a room full of mayors, council members, city managers and administrators and various other city officials at the Vernon Chamber of Commerce.

To counter GOP plans, Cisneros and President Clinton had proposed reorganizing HUD to consolidate many programs and save $13 billion over five years. On Monday, he vowed that the restructuring would help cities like the ones in the Southeast area.

Despite hearing what may have seemed like bad news, it was a good day for area representatives who got acquainted with Cisneros.

Sitting on the first seat of a chartered bus next to Roybal-Allard, Cisneros listened to city representatives, who cited statistics and pointed out finished and unfinished development projects that used federal grant money.

The bus stopped at the site of Maywood’s future multipurpose community center. It rolled past a vacant lot on Florence Avenue in Bell where the city plans to build a senior citizens’ housing project. In Bell Gardens, the newly opened Nehemiah low-income housing project was shown.

There was also the East Los Angeles College Southeast Learning Center in Huntington Park, a testimony to the cities’ ability to work together. A cooperative effort among seven Southeast cities began funding the satellite campus nearly two years ago with block grant money.

Cisneros heard about the recent change in demographics of the area, how white flight in the 1980s, coupled with an influx of Latino immigrants helped reshape the face of area city councils in the 1990s as Latinos gained seats. He was told of efforts to meet educational needs in a region where the median age is 23 in a population of about 200,000.

When it was the HUD chief’s turn to talk, he pledged to help the area. With a portable tape recorder, Roybal-Allard captured every promise.

“When you talk to federal agencies, they always say they already gave to Los Angeles,” the congresswoman said after the tour. “We are always in its shadow. Washington has an East Coast mentality and it tends to ignore the vastness of Los Angeles and how each city is very different from each area. We hope to change that.”