Neighborhood Offers Mixed Welcome to Habitat for Humanity

It seems that just about everyone in Wilmington has an opinion about the future of a barely two-acre patch of dusty, weed-strewn land littered with garbage.

Maria de la Luz Mosqueda stands inside her cramped two-bedroom apartment, gazes across the street and sees the nearly unimaginable--a new house for her family of six children, ages 11 months to 23 years. She and her husband, after renting the same tiny apartment for seven years, are hoping to be among the lucky individuals able to purchase, for $75,000, one of the 26 residences Habitat for Humanity wants to build on the 1.8-acre wedge of land.

“We’ll see if we get one,” she said with a shy smile, cocking her head toward the vacant lot.

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But next door, Rosalva Rodriguez is adamantly opposed to seeing 13 two-story duplexes built in the neighborhood of modest stucco houses and apartments. She and her husband and two children have been renting their apartment for eight years. They want the land developed into a park, as originally envisioned, and tacked on to an adjacent four-acre strip known as the East Wilmington Greenbelt.

“There would be more problems with more people,” she said, standing by a well-tended garden of flowers. She fears that adding more residents to this densely populated corner of East Wilmington would fuel crime and a festering gang problem.

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For the last two years, a debate has swirled around this undeveloped parcel between Denni and Opp streets in the community that was absorbed by Los Angeles in 1909. The patch is part of an eight-acre strip that Southern Pacific railroad offered to donate in 1976 to Los Angeles for a park or open space.

Half the strip was turned into a greenbelt even before the city formally took possession of the northern four acres in 1983. The southern half remained an eyesore, with many believing it would eventually become an extension of the greenbelt. The city informally accepted it for non-recreational and park purposes, with its future to be decided at a later date.

In 1992, Habitat officials saw the vacant space and thought it would be the ideal spot for 26 residential units for low-income families. The nonprofit group approached the city, and a deal was struck.

Through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the city obtained a $910,000 loan for Habitat, which uses volunteer labor to build affordable homes. Habitat does not have to pay back the loan if the homes remain in the hands of low-income families.

Out of that money, the city agreed to pay Southern Pacific $300,000 to remove the stipulation that the donated land be used as a recreational area--in effect, buying the donated land. And with that, a battle began.

The payment angered many Wilmington residents who for years had been hearing that the city didn’t have the $240,000 necessary to extend the greenbelt.

One of the most angry was Skip Baldwin, a founding member of the Wilmington Citizens Committee, a small group of residents who gather weekly to clean up gang graffiti and trash in an effort to improve the area of 60,000 residents.

“The city says, ‘We don’t have any money for a park,’ which is standard down here for Wilmington,” said Baldwin, noting that the community has only two major parks--Banning Park and the Wilmington Recreation Center.

In an attempt to stop the housing project, Baldwin called Frank O’Brien, a San Pedro resident who is a longtime defender of parks and open space and who sits on the advisory board of the Ken Mallory Harbor Regional Park just west of Wilmington.

Together, O’Brien and members of the citizens committee mapped out a strategy. They sued Los Angeles, maintaining that the housing project needed an environmental impact report to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.

With little funds to work with, O’Brien, 39, who is not a lawyer but a businessman, filed the legal papers and argued the case in court. In June, a Superior Court judge ruled that the project did not need an environmental report. The citizens committee is appealing.

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Even though they call it “philanthropic colonization,” O’Brien and his supporters don’t oppose a Habitat project in Wilmington. They just believe it should be located in another part of the community. “There are eminently more suitable sites in Wilmington, and we have supplied Habitat with a list of them,” O’Brien said.

But Habitat thought this was the ideal location for its first housing project in Wilmington, basically because the land is cheap.

The project has the blessing of Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., whose district encompasses Wilmington. He has steadfastly backed the plan through its ups and downs and lobbied fellow City Council members to approve the HUD loan to Habitat.

“By developing the project, you give people an opportunity for home ownership in an an area where people wouldn’t normally have such an opportunity. And they can enjoy the [greenbelt] park next door at the same time,” said Barry Glickman, a spokesman for Svorinich, who is on vacation.

But that theory does not sit well with many residents in Wilmington--a working-class community surrounded by grimy oil refineries, dingy junkyards, smelly sulfur piles and the Port of Los Angeles.

“Someone must have a screw loose,” said Gertrude Schwab, president of Wilmington North Neighborhood Assn. “Our population is just too dense in Wilmington to accommodate 26 additional units.”

“Why can’t they pick another property? Why do they have to pick our greenbelt park?” asked Lucy Mejia, a member of the citizens committee who grew up near the disputed greenbelt area and recalls the sounds of trains traveling down the track.

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But Dave Neary, 35, president of the board for the Harbor Area/Long Beach affiliate of Habitat, said the group wouldn’t be able to build homes cheaply if it couldn’t purchase land at bargain-basement prices for its mission.

“We are not about building homes. We are about providing a sense of hope to people who think they are stuck in a rut, that they have to rent a shabby house or live in conditions they don’t think is the best for them,” he said.

No one disputes the fact that affordable homes is a noble notion. But many Wilmington leaders say that parks are also a key ingredient to quality life.

Carlos Villalobos, 72, who nearly 30 years ago banded together with local residents and business people to shape the railroad right of way into a greenbelt with donations and volunteer labor, says the residents are being cheated.

“Down here with the city it is always, ‘Lack of money. Lack of money,’ ” he said. “We feel like we’re Los Angeles’ stepchild.”