Building Confidence in a New Project

Here in Boyle Heights, in the largest grouping of public housing west of the Mississippi, a sort of schoolyard brawl has emerged over the seemingly bright opportunity to get out of a crime-ridden neighborhood at government expense.

Buoyed by a multimillion-dollar federal grant, the Los Angeles Housing Authority plans to demolish over a two-year period 685 low-income Aliso Village housing units holding more than 2,500 residents.

Out of this rubble city officials hope will sprout a community of townhouses and condominiums for mixed-income residents. And with the help of the private sector, they hope to add job training, educational services, supermarkets and restaurants--all of which are virtually nonexistent in the area. Residents, who would be relocated with government assistance, would have first crack to come back, say housing officials.

“We’re not just trying to rebuild,” said Xavier Mendoza, the Housing Authority director of urban revitalization. “We’re trying to help people get up the economic ladder.”

But even a $83-million plan hasn’t pleased everyone.

Community meetings have been halted because, as the safety director for the Housing Authority said, they got “too confrontational.”

Some longtime residents have reacted to the city’s raze-and-rebuild plan like Atlantans to Gen. William Sherman’s burning of their city.

Residents such as Julia Toledo, 56, and the Union de Vecinos Pico-Aliso group want the Housing Authority to improve the existing housing units, not tear them down.

“They are promising the poor people the moon and the stars when they won’t even fix a sink,” said Toledo, as her 6-year-old grandson played in her two-story apartment. “Here, I know my neighbors and we take care of each other. We have helped police clean up this place of crime, and now they want to just throw it away.”

But Dina Gonzalez, a 28-year Aliso Village resident, says those who worry about leaving want to be coddled by the government.

“I appreciate what this country has given me,” said Gonzalez, a mother of five from El Salvador and former member of a housing commission appointed by Mayor Richard Riordan. “It’s egotistical to think of only oneself. We have to think about what’s best for everyone. These people have no ambition. They want the government to give them guarantees [to be able to come back to the new development], but what guarantees will they give that they’ll try to better themselves?”

The dispute began when a routine inspection last June led Housing Authority officials to declare the World War II-era buildings in Aliso Village too unsafe to be left standing. So the agency declared an emergency.

The Pico Gardens and Aliso Extension (Pico-Aliso) projects just across from Aliso Village are already being demolished and will be rebuilt.

To the casual observer, the spartan housing units just east of the Los Angeles River and north and south of 1st Street can give the impression that people sometimes don’t so much live as hunker down. The danger is greatest at night, police say, because of drug dealers and gang members. Most violent crime here has roots in the drug trade, said Paul “P.D.” Pine, a housing officer.

The Housing Authority’s plans call for a variety of housing options to attract a variety of incomes.

Of the 469 units the city plans to rebuild, 269 will be for public housing, where the average monthly rent will be $190, said Mendoza.

One hundred and thirty-four units would have rents comparable to similar units in the metropolitan area--about $800 a month. But Aliso Village residents who decide to return can in effect pay a rent that’s close to low-income public housing levels.

Sixty-six units would be put up for sale, at a cost of between $120,000 to $135,000, said Mendoza. Proponents of a mixed-income community say it allows poor people to share the same environment and some of the positive experiences of people of greater means.

The Housing Authority still has to raise $48 million in private financing and from other public sources before it can build beyond the 269 low-income public housing units.

Many residents have a long and complex relationship with a neighborhood that is sometimes fraught with the threat of sudden violence, but can still glow with a sense of community that defies the constraints of poverty.

Jeffrey Morales, 20, would like to get out of the projects one day, but the demolition brings him no joy.

“I never thought of it as temporary housing,” said Morales, a sophomore studying criminal justice at Cal State L.A. and a third-generation resident of the projects.

His mother, Emily Castillo, has lived here for 38 years. Her mother started the generational chain before that.

“It always seemed like a permanent home to me, the place I grew up in, the place my kids could grow up in,” said Morales in the office of Father Gregory Boyle’s Jobs for Future program.

Castillo works with Boyle, who unlike her has high hopes for the city’s plan. She lives in one of the 200 units in Pico-Aliso the city will allow to stand for now.

“I haven’t had a bad experience here,” said Castillo. “I raised my son here, and now he’s going to Cal State L.A. My mother lives here, and she doesn’t want to leave.”

Safety First

An urban planner who works extensively with the city said the love-hate relationship some residents have with the projects was evident two years ago during a meeting to discuss plans for the new Pico-Aliso.

Some residents asked if the planned condos and townhouses would be bulletproof. “They wanted to stay, but they wanted to be bulletproofed,” said Frank Villalobos of Barrio Planners.

Mendoza said residents who have been relocated because of demolition usually stayed on the Eastside. Pico-Aliso residents have moved into public housing as far east as Riverside, but many stayed in Boyle Heights, while one relocated to Beverly Hills. All relocation costs are covered.

“They have choices most people don’t get,” he said.

Despite its rough-and-tumble reputation, Aliso Village is still a place where one can see children playing baseball in a concrete courtyard. People tend their flower gardens.

“There’s a palpable sense of community in the projects. You can feel it, see it, touch it, taste it,” said Boyle. “You see it when people move out and they say, ‘God, I miss the projects. I don’t know my neighbors and no one visits me.’ ”

But for others, crime is reason enough to live elsewhere.

Will “Big Al” Martin, 30, is one of those who says they would like the chance to move out of Aliso Village to another neighborhood. It’s dangerous, he said, and he and his girlfriend, Carol Lutton, 18, have an infant son to think about.

“There’s killers over here. I don’t mess around. You got to mind your own business,” said Martin as he cradled 4-month-old “Little Al.”

“If they [pay for the move]--yeah, that’ll work, ‘cause this ain’t it here. It’s no place to raise kids,” he said.

Rosa Mejia says she doesn’t understand why some residents want to stay in units they can never own in a dangerous neighborhood for children. If the government pays for the move, she will gladly relocate.

Some residents, said Mendoza, don’t want to leave because the rents are so low. In fact, residents who have attained middle-income status have stayed in the projects, paying monthly rents no higher than about $400, he said. “We have been permissive in the past,” said Mendoza.

For some, the lure of low rents outweighs the danger, housing officials say. Most gang members in the area don’t live in the projects, say Los Angeles Police Department and housing officers, but the gang presence is hard to miss in a neighborhood that half a dozen gangs claim as turf.

“It’s hard for kids to tread the dangerous waters of adolescence here,” said Boyle.

Evicting Gang Presence

An anti-gang campaign that has seen successes elsewhere, coupled with barring residents who commit serious crimes from coming back to the planned development, should make the new neighborhood safer, say housing officials.

An LAPD detective said gangs feel too at home in the projects right now. This makes residents reluctant to report violent crimes.

“The way to survive is to mind your own business,” said Det. Marcos Saenz of the Hollenbeck Division. “You can’t blame the residents.”

Sharon Monzon said her 84-year-old mother doesn’t want to move from the neighborhood she has lived in for 30 years. “Here, the neighbors protect her. In another place, people won’t even know she exists,” she said.

For Dina Gonzalez, the change ahead for residents in Aliso Village may be scary, but it is needed.

“Many of us were immigrants. We left our friends, our loved ones, our land to come here,” said Gonzalez. “Why should it be so difficult to leave the projects?”

Jeffrey Morales, who opposes the city’s plan, says one thing’s for sure: With the end of Aliso Village, an urban myth evaporates.

“They always said around here that the projects are forever. That they’ll never come down,” Morales said. “But never say never. People are trying to do something about it, but it’s too late.”