Former House of Horrors Fulfills Dream

In a remarkable coda to one of the most heartbreaking crimes in recent memory in Los Angeles, a single mother was handed the keys to a sparkling new three-bedroom home, built with city backing on the spot where, last year, a Watts grandmother was fatally shoot and a teenage girl was gang-raped.

Pamela Anthony, an office assistant with the Los Angeles Unified School District, a mother of two who has rented in Watts for most of her life, beamed joyfully as she was presented with the little silver key ring that offered her admission to the first home she has owned.

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 in the 1300 block of 111th Street.

Her move, however, was doubly satisfactory to city officials, for whom the once-wretched property had even more significance. On Aug. 12, 1996, it had been the scene of the gang rape of a 13-year-old girl by a pack of other teenagers and children, who then 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 apparently irreversible desolation of the neighborhood. The 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 was next to the duplex, which neighbors said had been abandoned by its owner after a drug raid the year before. McClain’s grown grandson had watched in anger that day as 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 pulled a gun and opened fire, missing the grandson and striking his 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.

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 also 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, Svorinich began asking soon after the McClain incident about the possibility of addressing two issues at once: affordable housing and blight.

Callahan said the city then adjusted an existing housing program so that it could start acquiring blighted property and improving it for low-income, first-time home buyers. Anthony was the first person to take advantage of the program, and he said about 120 other properties are in the pipeline.