Pico-Aliso Housing Renewal

* Re “Urban Renewal Is Minority Renewal,” Commentary, Oct. 11:

Jacqueline Leavitt complains that in its effort at urban renewal, the housing authority will build 156 fewer units after the Pico-Aliso projects in Boyle Heights are razed. She neglects to mention the reason for this discrepancy. The 401 units that will be built will be larger, three- and four-bedroom units that will have two bathrooms and an amenity they currently lack--a shower. One hundred of these new units will be built to specifically meet the needs of senior citizens. Sixty townhomes will be built for homeownership. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, 200 families will be given Section 8 housing vouchers so that they may move out of the area and rent in private-sector-owned housing.

Activists on behalf of the poor often forget that poor people have the capacity to make decisions. Deciding what to do in the Pico-Aliso reconstruction process is an individual family choice. What is best for one family may not be for another. Poor people, like everyone else, need choices, so that they can pick what is best for them, not more efforts at social engineering by the government and their experts who know best.

When my family and I were forced by hard times to live in these very same projects, we needed one thing at the time more than anything: affordable housing. That the government will provide such housing for the poor with even greater choices for the residents is not oppression, it’s progress.

YOLANDA CHAVEZ

Los Angeles