Surplus Navy Land Sparks Fierce Battle Over Reuse

Two Los Angeles housing tracts declared surplus military property in 1997 have touched off a fierce debate over their future, pitting neighbor against neighbor in a battle over competing public policy goals.

The Navy families who lived in these Harbor City and San Pedro neighborhoods moved out nearly two years ago, after the closing of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. They left behind 545 middle-class homes, sitting on wide, curving streets near Los Angeles Harbor.

The San Pedro Enterprise Community, an organization of religious congregations and local social service groups, wants at least 150 of the residences used to help local homeless families get back on their feet.

But the San Pedro Area Reuse Committee, formed to advise the Navy and city officials on the future of the land, has recommended that only 56 of the units be set aside for homeless families, with the remaining property designated for educational institutions.

The committee said its recommendations, coming after months of study and public hearings, balance the needs of the homeless and local residents. Committee members said their plan also recognizes the need for economic development in the area, which has been hard hit by recession, military cutbacks and the shutdown of canneries, a major shipyard and other maritime industry operations.

Los Angeles City Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., who represents the area, supports the committee’s recommendations.

John Copper, president of the Enterprise Community, said 56 homes are not enough to meet the demands of the poor. “We need homes for at least 150 families to do the kind of programs we plan,” he said.

Under his group’s program, homeless families would be assisted with job training, child care, tutoring, money management education and other services aimed at helping them become self-sufficient. They would be given homes for two to five years and aided by Volunteers of America, an organization experienced in running programs for the disadvantaged.

Homeowner Groups Opposed

Copper’s group is fighting for a bigger share of the houses by lobbying the City Council. The group also plans to take its case to the federal government, which will make the final decision.

Two City Council panels are considering the reuse committee’s recommendations and will meet again in early January. At an initial meeting earlier this month, the comments of council members suggested that the homeless, indeed, may get a greater share of housing.

Local homeowner and business associations, however, in a replay of other fights that have sprung up over the use of surplus military property in the last decade, are staunchly opposed to more programs for the homeless.

“We would prefer none of the units go to the homeless. We already have too many homeless in San Pedro,” said Andrew Mardesich, president of the San Pedro and Peninsula Homeowners Coalition, which represents 11 residents associations.

The debate over the disposal of surplus military lands is particularly sharp in San Pedro, where a community group has formed to battle what it sees as an overconcentration of facilities and services for the homeless, the mentally ill and recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.

“I can’t fault people for being concerned,” Copper said, “But there is a lot of misinformation out there. We’re talking about families who are learning to become self-sufficient.”

As graduates of one of the community’s three homeless shelter programs, the prospective tenants already have cleared the first hurdle in their quest for a fresh start, Copper said.

The surplus homes are clustered in two areas at the edges of a vast underground fuel depot, which the Navy intends to keep.

One is a 59-acre tract along Palos Verdes Drive North, at the edge of Harbor City. It holds 300 two-bedroom townhouses built in 1988. Interspersed among the pastel stucco homes are basketball and tennis courts, picnic and play areas, some still with the slides and swing sets left behind by Navy families.

Some of these homes already are being used by students at Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes. The two-year private school is scheduled to receive 86 houses for student housing under the reuse committee’s recommendations. Because the federal government considers use by a school a public benefit, Marymount will not have to pay for the property, but, like other private recipients, will be required to give as much as $500,000 in aid to the homeless as part of the deal.

The reuse committee had recommended that 23 acres of the site, including 138 homes, be given to the Southern California Institute of Architecture, along with 33 homes and some open space in a second tract, for a new campus and student and staff housing. But the institute recently withdrew its request, saying it needed more land and would look elsewhere--a decision that fanned the hopes of San Pedro Enterprise Community leaders.

Another chunk, 18 acres with 44 homes, would be awarded to the private, kindergarten-through-12th-grade Rolling Hills Preparatory School for a new campus it would build.

The Enterprise Community would get 32 of the tract’s 300 homes, as well as 24 homes on the second surplus site.

‘Wonderful Family Homes’

That site, 62 acres along Western Avenue in San Pedro, holds 245 one-story homes. Built in the 1960s, the residences have fenced backyards and three or four bedrooms. The tract also includes an outdoor basketball court, a 2,161-square-foot community/youth center and a 3,454-square-foot building that had been used as a store.

“These are all wonderful family homes, practically in move-in condition, in a city that has one of the worst affordable-housing shortages in the country,” said James E. Hansen, another leader of the Enterprise Community.

“It would be a terrible waste to tear them down,” added Hansen, an emeritus professor of medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He is was one of the founders of the Enterprise Community, created when the Navy first announced that it would dispose of the properties.

Others recommended to get portions of the Western Avenue tract include the Kenny Nickelson Memorial Foundation for Homeless Veterans, which would use the community center and the store for collecting and storing food and other items for the homeless.

An additional 45 acres, containing 188 houses, would go to the Harbor-UCLA Research and Education Institute, which would demolish some of the homes to build a research center and rent others to its staff and students.

Federal law requires that the needs of the homeless be considered, along with other public benefits and community economic development priorities, when local governments help decide what to do with surplus military lands.