Turnaround at Site of Tragedy Offers Hope

In a remarkable coda to one of the most heartbreaking crimes in recent memory in Los Angeles, a single mother was handed the keys Thursday to the first home she has ever owned--a new three-bedroom cottage, erected with city backing on the spot where, last year, a Watts grandmother was killed and a young girl was gang raped.

Pamela Anthony, an office assistant with the Los Angeles Unified School District, beamed as she and her children were presented with the little silver ring holding the keys to her new home. Had it not been for a new city program designed to aid low- and moderate-income home buyers, she said, she would never have been able to purchase the $130,000 house on the 1300 block of 111th Street.

Her move was also gratifying for city officials, for whom the once-wretched property had equal significance. On Aug. 12, 1996, it was the scene of the violent gang rape of a 13-year-old girl by a pack of other teenagers and children, one of whom got into a gun battle that claimed the life of 82-year-old Viola McClain.

The crime, in the shadow of the Nickerson Gardens housing project, seemed to underscore the seemingly irreversible desolation of the neighborhood. The young girl had been raped in a filthy, abandoned duplex--one of thousands of derelict buildings that blight the city--that residents had complained about for months.

McClain’s house had been next-door to the duplex, which neighbors said had been abandoned by its owner after a drug raid the year before. Trash littered the property. On hot days, it buzzed with flies. At night, transients parked their shopping carts outside on the weed-strewn yard and crawled through broken windows into fetid rooms.

McClain’s grown grandson had watched in anger that day as young boys crawled in and out. Finally, when they dragged a stained mattress out into the yard and tried to set it on fire, the grandson confronted them. One boy pulled a gun and opened fire, missing the grandson and shooting the grandmother as she stood on her porch.

The tragedy galvanized scores of inner-city residents, who demanded that something be done about the duplex and other so-called nuisance properties. One city estimate, done in the immediate aftermath of McClain’s death, put the number of vacant, run-down properties at 2,000 citywide.

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At the offices of City Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., whose district includes Watts, constituents picketed and demanded relief. McClain’s neighbors said they had written to the city numerous times but had gotten little response.

Svorinich, who is chairman of the council’s Housing and Community Development Committee, did get the message, however, and in the aftermath of the incident, wheels began to turn at City Hall. According to Matt Callahan, director of housing operations for the Los Angeles Housing Department, soon after the McClain incident, Svorinich began asking about the possibility of addressing two pressing issues at once: affordable housing and blight.

Callahan said the city had initiated a jobs program after the 1992 riots that had been used mainly to employ inner-city workers on low-income housing construction jobs. The program had created some jobs, but had yielded only about 45 houses, he said, and city officials wondered if that program might be changed to increase the volume of new houses and to clean up the neglected properties.

Svorinich said he had viewed the new approach as “a win-win for the city.”

“Not only could we reclaim distressed properties and improve the safety of our neighborhoods,” he said, “but we could provide attractive and affordable home ownership opportunities for low- and moderate-income families.”

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Within a few months, Callahan said, the program’s guidelines were rewritten, and the jobs portion of the program was scrapped in favor of a contract with a private company that specializes in building pre-fab houses in inner-city neighborhoods. The company, called Housing Alternatives, has offices throughout Southern California, and is building new houses throughout the city, including Anthony’s.

Callahan said the city then set its sights on acquiring the abandoned duplex, which by this time was in foreclosure and owned by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. It took two months, he said, for staffers to untangle the deed, but the city eventually purchased the property and promptly tore the duplex down.

In its place, Housing Alternatives erected the new single-story house, complete with wall-to-wall carpeting and new appliances. Meanwhile, the city began taking applications from potential buyers, finally getting Anthony’s name from the waiting list at Habitat for Humanity, another organization that builds homes to sell to low-income people.

With the help of Glendale Federal Bank’s community lending program and an interest-free “gap loan” from the city, Anthony was able to qualify for a loan with 6 1/4% interest, Callahan said. He said the program is structured so that repayment of the city-backed second mortgage--which can go up to $60,000, depending on the borrower--is deferred until the house is resold.

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Callahan said the program “is an example of something we hope to replicate all over the city,” adding that more than 120 similar properties are now in the pipeline for eventual improvement and sale to first-time buyers.

“Our goal is to do 300 units a year,” Callahan said. Two more home buyers in East Los Angeles expect to close escrow sometime next month, he said.

Among the properties the city hopes to include, he added, is the house next door to Anthony’s--the one that belonged for so many years to McClain.

“The house is for sale,” Callahan said, “and I’ve asked the staff to see if we could maybe acquire and rehab it, and get a new family in there.”