Cuts Kill Housing Plan for Working Mothers

The plan was to build 20 single-family homes, priced to move and marketed for sale to low-income, working mothers.

But the project, which was jointly planned by the city Housing Authority and a nonprofit Latina group in Lake View Terrace, has been scrapped and the land put up for sale, city officials said this week.

The development--the first of its kind planned in the San Fernando Valley--would have cost about $4.3 million, but federal budget cutbacks prevented the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from providing critical financing, said Bea Stotzer, founder of New Economics for Women, the Los Angeles-based Latina group involved in the project.

The project was slated for a 1 1/2-acre parcel at the corner of Pierce Street and Foothill Boulevard purchased by the Housing Authority in 1991 for about $750,000. NEW explored the possibility of purchasing an adjacent parcel of approximately the same size, but federal budget problems did in the plans.

“At this point in time, that land is up for sale,” said Charles Cofield, development director for the Housing Authority.

“Last year, about $624 million in federal public housing funding was taken out of the budget,” Cofield said. “It left us with an inability to proceed on some projects.

The homes would have been sold for $50,000 to $90,000 to families living in subsidized housing. Down payments would have been small.

“We invested a lot of time and money in design, site engineering and acquisition,” Cofield said, “but the national debt was a bigger problem.”

Stotzer said NEW is considering developing affordable housing projects at several other Valley sites.