Residents Protest Lack of Repairs at City Housing Project

Linda Clemons points to the windows in her apartment in the Pueblo del Rio housing project in Vernon and shakes her head. The windows only open at a 45-degree angle, and she knows this is a safety hazard.

“If the house catches fire and you can’t get out the front door, or you can’t get through the side door, [you will be trapped],” she said, “I can’t fit through these windows.”

Clemons has lived in this apartment for eight years and in Pueblo del Rio for 16. The paint is peeling off the wall in her four-bedroom dwelling, which does not have a shower, has outdated plumbing and is in desperate need of other repairs.

City housing officials concede that the dwellings need repairs but contend that cuts in federal housing funds have forced them to delay efforts to refurbish the units.

“We pay our rent, we try to keep it clean, we’re not getting anything,” Clemons said.

She joined a demonstration of about two dozen residents of the Pueblo del Rio housing project Wednesday in front of the Los Angeles Housing Authority’s downtown headquarters to demand that the agency modernize the apartments, most of which are more than 50 years old.

“We’re tired of not getting nothing,” said Stacy Tovin, 33, who has lived in Pueblo del Rio since 1970.

The demonstrators brought signs and chanted, “We’re tired of the roaches, we’re tired of the rats. We’re tired of the cuts, we’re tired of the lies. We want our modernization in ’96.”

Congress cut Los Angeles’ housing appropriation 32% this year, from $35 million to $23 million, said Don Smith, executive director of the Los Angeles Housing Authority. This caused the agency to scale back its modernization efforts and to assign repair priority to the oldest of the city’s 21 housing projects, Aliso Village and Jordan Downs.

But Smith said the city expects to start a small but gradual effort to fix Pueblo del Rio in the coming year. About five years ago, the city installed new kitchens in 250 apartments at Pueblo del Rio, but all the units still have old pipes and lack shower heads.

“[The apartments] are in need of rehabilitation,” Smith said. “As soon as we come up with the money we will do it.”

He admitted that 200 dwellings in the 450-unit complex have never received comprehensive repairs, but said all of the apartments are up to city code. About 2,100 people live in Pueblo del Rio, which opened in 1942.

Matthew Brown, president of the Pueblo del Rio Residents Assn., said the city has promised for 17 years to upgrade the complex and that other housing projects were repaired long ago. He urged the city to stop ignoring Pueblo del Rio before the dwellings become uninhabitable and the city is compelled to tear down the development.

“They don’t want to do nothing for the projects,” said Verla English, 76, who has lived in Pueblo del Rio for 26 years and has trouble getting in and out of the bathtub. Her apartment got a new kitchen but still does not have a shower.

Clemons said investigators have found high lead levels in her water, and she worries that her children, ages 6 and 16, will get sick.

Residents have taken the initiative to clean the grounds, rake the yards and clean the gutters to prevent flooding and to keep rats from surfacing on the grounds, Clemons said. Others have started gardens and fumigated their apartments at their own expense.

“We live here,” said Barbara Gooden, 55, a resident since 1981. “We have to fight for our community.”