Central Los Angeles : Model House Aimed at Inner City Buyers

On land that once housed a drug lab, a private real estate developer has erected a modular home, a factory-made 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house.

The home, on 81st Street and Vermont Avenue, is a model of the type of house that the developer, Housing Alternatives, wants to place on abandoned lots for lower-than-market prices, offering residents of South-Central Los Angeles a chance at home ownership.

To encourage South-Central residents to buy one of the homes, federal and Los Angeles city housing agencies are offering special incentives for first-time buyers, such as extended mortgage payments and government subsidies.

“It offers a sense of hope and inspiration when people can own a new, top-quality home,” said former Mayor Tom Bradley as he toured the house Wednesday at an opening reception.

The 40-foot-wide lot upon which the model was built once housed a PCP lab that was confiscated by the federal government in 1988 and handed over to the city in 1993.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who helped engineer the acquisition of the property and the construction of the model home, said he hopes that not only will the project provide affordable houses but also coax Housing Alternatives into building the factories in South-Central where the homes would be made.

“I like it,” said Roberta Rockett, a single mother and renter who lives a few blocks from the model home and had watched it being constructed. “This is the only new house in the neighborhood. . . . I’m ready. Where do I sign up?”