A Ray of Hope for Housing

Here, along the streets of Boyle Heights, are buildings emptied by the subway that may never arrive.

A large gray Craftsman-style house sits boarded up in Mariachi Plaza. Vacant apartment buildings and a travel agency on Soto Street are shuttered with plywood. And on Fickett Street, weeds sprout in front of a rambling white house with wide red steps and a yellow rosebush in the frontyard.

Those properties, along with about 20 others, were purchased by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to make room for the Red Line subway extension that is now mired in financial difficulties and indefinitely on hold.

About 100 families and 19 businesses were relocated months ago to prepare for subway station construction. Ten properties have been demolished and soon the rest will be razed, their sites ringed with chain-link fences and left to wait for construction to begin again.

Now some Boyle Heights residents say they want the chance to make the most of the empty buildings.

Faced with a dearth of affordable housing in this congested neighborhood, a coalition of nine community groups is asking the MTA to put the brakes on demolition and allow them to rehabilitate the vacant buildings to use as temporary housing.

“It seems for all intents and purposes the Eastside [subway] extension is dead in the water,” said Linda Kite, environmental justice coordinator for Union y Fuerza de la Comunidad, a community group. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. So why do we have to take down this housing to build subway stations, when it’s probably not going to happen?”

MTA officials have agreed to meet with members of the coalition today to discuss their proposal.

“It sounds like something that could be workable, but there are so many variables,” said Velma Marshall, MTA director of real estate. “The question is, how long would they have access to the buildings?”

The agency considered rehabilitating some of the structures during the construction delay, but the MTA’s staff concluded that the project would be too costly and time-consuming. Making the vacant buildings livable would cost about $2 million, according to an MTA assessment of the remaining properties done last month.

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre and Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, two MTA board members who represent Eastside constituencies, oppose restoring the buildings while the subway is in limbo.

“It’s a good idea, but it’s really premature,” said Paul Hernandez, a field deputy for Molina. “Unless we really know how long we really have before construction, who knows how long people would be allowed to live there? And at this point, would we be investing money in housing stock we may demolish in the long run?”

At the heart of the debate is the question of the Red Line’s future.

The financially strapped agency has put new rail construction on hold for at least six months. And this week, MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky created a furor when he proposed a ballot measure that would end sales tax funding of Eastside and Mid-City subway construction.

Even though it is unclear whether further subway extensions ever will be built, MTA officials said they have moved forward with the demolition to avoid spending money on the upkeep of vacant buildings.

“We think it’s more efficient to demolish them and clear the site,” Marshall said. “You have boarded-up buildings out there that are in never-never land. They’ve already been gutted out and blighted by graffiti. It’s going to be an impossible task to constantly go out and maintain them.”

Officials said the vacant lots will not be neglected, and they are considering ways to use the space for gardens, business parking and other community uses.

“Having a bunch of vacant properties in that community is an intolerable situation,” said Miguel Santana, Molina’s assistant chief deputy. “The MTA needs to develop a plan so that properties are well kept up and they’re still an attractive part of the community, even during this limbo state.”

But community members said they need to preserve the remaining 94 units of housing in an area that is one of the city’s most densely populated.

“There’s been this huge loss in the community, and Boyle Heights has no subway to show for it,” said Greg Spiegal, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation working with the coalition. “Why go ahead and demolish, when they can do something for the community?”

According to the 1990 census, more than half of the units in Boyle Heights are overcrowded, an increase of 44% over the past decade.

Between the loss of the homes vacated for the Red Line, the renovation of the Pico-Aliso public housing projects, the recent County-USC hospital expansion and the demolition expected from a city redevelopment project, Boyle Heights is losing about 10% of its housing stock, community organizers said.

“People from the community should be given the opportunity in some form to bring these properties back some life,” said Manuel Bernal, executive director of the East L.A. Community Corp., a nonprofit housing developer. “We don’t oppose the Red Line, but until the Red Line happens, it’s not right for these properties to sit there with nothing.”

Bernal said his corporation could rehabilitate the buildings and rent them as temporary housing below market rents until the Red Line starts up again--if it ever does.

Coalition members, who toured some of the properties this week with a contractor, said making the buildings rentable could be done for about $500,000, a quarter of the MTA’s estimate.

Supporters acknowledge that it could be difficult to get funding for a project that may eventually be torn down. And if the Red Line is built, tenants would have to be relocated again. Coalition members said prospective residents would have to sign a lease that clearly stated that the housing would be temporary.

But ultimately, dealing with these challenges would be worth the efforts of the residents and the agency, they said.

“By working together as a team over the course of the delay of the Red Line, the MTA can build a lot of support at the community level,” Bernal said. “And that’s something they haven’t had.”