Building a Future : ‘Habitat’ Reinvents a Neighborhood

Cassandra and Orlando Warren were renters in Hollywood when they decided that the first house of their dreams would be a $150,000 two-story stucco in a new development in Watts.

She is an administrative secretary, he is a sometime computer installer. Between them, they barely make $35,000 a year. To get the down payment, they worked overtime and extra time, and when they came up short, Cassandra pawned her diamond-studded wedding band.

Donna Broadnax was raising her family in the Imperial Gardens housing project in Watts when she heard that Habitat for Humanity, the nationally praised organization that builds low-cost houses for the poor through “sweat equity,” was building modest bungalow homes nearby.

On a salary of $1,300 a month, she could only dream of her own home. Nevertheless she applied and she waited and she prayed. She even fasted. Out of some 1,000 applications, she and her two children were the first family selected to move into one of the new Habitat homes.

By the end of this month, the Warrens and the Broadnaxes will become neighbors--the Warrens on the western edge of Santa Ana Boulevard in the Santa Ana Pines development, where they have lived for three years; the Broadnaxes half a mile away on the eastern edge of the same street in a home they are about to help build themselves.

Now this tiny pocket of Watts is on the verge of reinvention by two very different kinds of first-time homeowners.

It will only take a week to build 21 of the 32 homes that Habitat for Humanity plans to raise, the biggest development it has ever constructed in Los Angeles. Habitat, which calls itself a nonprofit “Christian housing ministry,” is famous for its annual “blitz build,” which requires an army of volunteers and always includes its most famous ones: former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn. Habitat’s urban equivalent of a barn-raising is so synonymous with Carter that it’s called the Jimmy Carter Work Project, held in a different city each year.

But it will take longer than a week for a new community to evolve on Santa Ana from its many different residents: longtime homeowners inured to the precariousness of Watts; modest-income homeowners who struggled to buy their houses and look with trepidation at any new housing experiment such as Habitat for Humanity, and the handful of poor renters who can’t believe they are fortunate enough to be the beneficiaries of that experiment.

“I won’t have to chain my car up at night!” exclaimed Broadnax, a 29-year-old single mother who appeared at the Habitat groundbreaking in April with her two children, all of them as crisply dressed as the officials who orchestrated it.

The groundbreaking ceremonies took on the air of a festive pep rally as community activists, Habitat officials, County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Jimmy Carter gathered to jab golden-colored shovels into the ground.

“Why don’t we give a special warm Watts-Willowbrook welcome to President and Mrs. Carter!” Steve Blinn, Habitat official and advertising executive, exhorted the crowd.

Yet there was a time barely six months ago when Blinn and the other Habitat officials who spearheaded this ambitious development were about the least welcome people here.

A former railroad right of way, this mile-long tract looks like a little island, bounded by Wilmington Avenue on the west and Alameda Street on the east, and sandwiched between two Santa Ana boulevards, north and south.

Originally, this island of land was part of the Santa Ana Pines development--the place where Cassandra and Orlando Warren bought. Upon completion, it would be a sprawl of 114 sun-colored stucco townhomes designed to infuse a decaying neighborhood with middle-income spirit, values, and tax base.

“New Homes for the New Watts,” the advertisement for the development exulted. There would be none of the graffiti-scarred walls or front-yard clotheslines that mark the most unkempt of the bungalows on the other sides of Santa Ana Boulevard.

So far, 26 houses have been built and sold. Like the Warrens, the other homeowners worked hard for their houses, some becoming first-time home buyers in their 50s.

“We bought into a promise,” Cassandra Warren said. But the new Watts has been slow to materialize as Warren and her neighbors still grapple with the problems of living amid the urban landscape. No amount of tending their new lawns staves off the sound of not-distant-enough gunfire. A few residents have bullet holes in their new walls.

So when the developers of Santa Ana Pines, chafing under their financial obligations, sold off 31 lots to Habitat, some Santa Ana Pines residents felt the promise of a new Watts would only be further delayed by the influx of very poor people such as the Broadnaxes. (The 32nd lot, on the opposite side of the southern Santa Ana Boulevard, was never part of Santa Ana Pines.) They also felt betrayed by the developers and resentful of Habitat’s nonchalant entrance into the neighborhood on such a large scale. Not only that, the Habitat for Humanity homes were far more modest than their own two-story residences. They worried their property values would go down.

Opponents of Habitat insist they are not reluctant because the new residents are low-income, but because Habitat’s arrangement leaves homeowners less financially invested in their homes than more traditional homeowners such as those in Santa Ana Pines.

“We want other poor people like us in here,” Cassandra Warren said.

Actually, Habitat homeowners are poorer than Santa Ana Pines residents. Habitat maintains an income guideline for its participants. A family of four, for example, qualifies only if it makes $16,000 to $24,000 a year.

Habitat homeowners get 20-year, interest-free mortgages on their homes, which range in price from $65,000 to $75,000, a price that is low because Habitat gets so much donated materials, services and land. Mortgages are paid back to Habitat, not a bank.

The homes also come with 20 years of restrictions: During the first two decades, Habitat has the first right of refusal should the owner decide to sell. The idea is to make sure that the houses stay in the hands of low-income owners, and don’t end up in the hands of speculators. And there’s the famous “sweat equity”: homeowners and their families generally spend 500 hours helping build their homes or others’ homes.

Habitat officials say their homeowners are as responsible as any others, if not more so. Every family selected goes through at least one preliminary visit from a member of Habitat’s family selection committee and gets grilled on their goals and aspirations, as if they’re applying for college.

“Rosalynn and I have made a point of going back to houses we’ve worked on in the last 12 years,” former President Carter told a breakfast audience of Los Angeles business people the morning of the groundbreaking. “We’ve never found a broken window, we’ve never found a mark of graffiti.”

And many Santa Ana Pines residents are also willing to reserve judgment.

“We had a chance,” said Santa Ana Pines homeowner Shandra Lee, 30, who watched her own mother buy a home years ago when she was receiving public assistance. “You have people living here 40 years who haven’t had an opportunity to buy a home. Why not give them something they can afford and something they can appreciate?”

If anything, said Santa Ana Pines developer Marvin Greer--part of the development company that provoked the anger of Santa Ana Pines residents by selling off some of the lots to Habitat for Humanity--the Habitat homes will increase the values of nearby Santa Ana Pines.

The Habitat project “doesn’t bring down their values,” said Greer, whose company has been hired by Habitat as the general contractor. From his trailer on the site, he pointed out the window to one of the graffiti-blackened bungalows that dot the old Santa Ana Boulevard. “That house brings down the values,” he said.

Habitat homeowners-to-be don’t want to be judged by their neighbors yet.

“They don’t know me or where we came from,” said Toni Miller, a law office file clerk and mother of three who will be leaving behind a series of tiny apartments for a Habitat home. “I took really good care of my landlord’s property because I had to live there,” Miller said. “I have been taking care of other people’s property for a long time. It’s time for me to take care of my own.”