Units Enlarged to House L.A. Area’s Big Families

The four-story brick building at the corner of Hollywood’s Yucca Street and Wilcox Avenue had a big problem even before it degenerated into a druggy squat where a homeless youth was murdered in 1994.

The problem was a clash between demography and architecture.

The 73-year-old building’s layout of studio and one-bedroom apartments did not match the neighborhood’s--and the Los Angeles region’s--increasing population of large, mainly immigrant, families.

Now, however, demography has won. A $3-million overhaul literally knocked down walls built according to the old floor plan of 40 apartments. As a result, the freshly scrubbed building reopened last month with 23 more-spacious units, including eight apartments with three or four bedrooms and two bathrooms.

The project is part of a regional effort to reconfigure aging rental housing for large families, particularly low-income households that can’t afford the rare three-bedroom apartments in newer buildings, let alone buy houses in the current overheated real estate market. Such reconfigurations are becoming more common, with projects planned or recently completed in South-Central, Wilmington, Reseda, Van Nuys and the Wilshire district.

“Many of the older buildings in the city have small units, and in many places the real need is for buildings that will accommodate three- or four-bedroom units,” said former Los Angeles Councilman Michael Woo. He is Los Angeles director of the Local Initiatives Support Corp., an agency that arranges financing for such projects, often involving nonprofit developers who rely on tax credits and government loans and grants.

Skeptics question the high cost of creating bigger apartments in old buildings, suggesting that it might be cheaper and wiser to build new structures. And some housing advocates worry that reducing the overall number of units might worsen the housing situation.

Proponents concede that redesigning the insides of dilapidated or quake-damaged structures cannot by itself end the region’s terrible overcrowding. Many new apartments are needed too. Yet they stress that the changed layouts can save neighborhoods while providing better shelter for big families.

“This is a good solution, but it is not the full solution,” said Sister Diane Donoghue, executive director of the Esperanza Community Housing Corp. Her nonprofit group is planning a make-over of four half-vacant slum buildings on Estrella Avenue in South-Central that will produce large units and add social services to a troubled block.

Three Generations in Families

The average number of people in Los Angeles County households has risen from 2.686 in 1980 to 3.067 in 1997, according to the state Department of Finance. That growth has been fueled by families with more children, by more three-generation households under one roof and by more sharing of space with other relatives and friends to save money, analysts say.

Only 8.6% of all rental apartments or houses in the city of Los Angeles had at least three bedrooms, according to a 1994 study. That report noted that 17% of all renting households had five or more people.

For example, the Martin family--a husband who works as a hotel clerk and a wife who is at home with three young children--had squeezed for years into a studio apartment. The beds were practically wall to wall. In contrast, their new sunny apartment in the Yucca building has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Now their furniture looks sparse.

The two boys and a girl, ages 4 to 8, are delighted by the amount of space, said their mother, Sylvia Martin. “At the old apartment, they couldn’t play, couldn’t run. They were always bumping into things,” she said as she showed the boys’ room, furnished with bunk beds covered by purple Batman quilts. “Here, they are very happy, very excited.”

The icing on the cake is the $400 monthly rent, the same as at the studio unit. The Martins’ income qualified them for a deep subsidy under the complex financing plan stitched together by the Hollywood Community Housing Corp., the nonprofit group that purchased and renovated the abandoned building and has developed new housing in the area. The Yucca project involved the sale of tax credit investments for affordable housing and lenient loans from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and the Federal Home Loan Bank.

Floor plans were changed and asbestos was removed. Windows and electrical and plumbing systems were replaced. Architectural details from 1926 were restored, including the ceiling beams in the lobby and doorway archways in the Martin apartment. As a result, the overall cost per unit was about $130,000, according to Christina Duncan, Hollywood Community’s executive director.

At those prices, new houses might have been built in the outer suburbs, not in a neighborhood that is battling a reputation for drug dealing. But there is also a social good, Duncan stressed, in reviving a structure infamous as the site of the December 1994 murder of a young man, tortured to death by other transients. And there is a need to keep city families within easy commutes of jobs.

“For us, it’s about not just providing housing, but it’s about neighborhood rehabilitation. We always have an eye out for buildings that were dilapidated and gang-infested,” she said.

Even though interiors change, new layouts also are viewed as a way to preserve landmarks. For example, the former Sheraton Townhouse hotel, built in 1929 on Wilshire Boulevard, is being converted into apartments for low-income families and senior citizens. Just across Lafayette Park, the 1914 Bryson apartment tower is scheduled to undergo similar changes for bigger units although some current tenants are battling relocation.

The last construction booms, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, created mainly one- and two-bedroom flats, according to Charles Isham, executive vice president of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles.

“There just wasn’t the demand for three bedrooms,” he said. “Single-family housing was so cheap then, and we didn’t have such a big immigrant population.”

Apartments with three or more bedrooms are very rare and, when available, “rent at the blink of an eye,” said Mark Dolan, a property manager who runs 45 buildings in the Wilshire district and Hollywood area.

In relatively new buildings, rents for three-bedroom apartments reach $1,500 a month. Tenants tend to be young single roommates or small families who want an in-home office. Meanwhile, a recent study by the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that Los Angeles County and the Santa Ana-Anaheim area have the highest proportion nationally of low-income tenants living in overcrowded conditions.

“The mismatch is really grotesque,” said Dowell Myers, a USC associate professor of planning and development who studies Southern California housing. Although some families choose small, cheaper apartments to save for down payments on houses, many others have no other option, he added.

The Posadas family of Van Nuys--carpenter Manuel, wife Reyna and their five children, ages 3 to 12--searched a long time for a bigger apartment or a house to lease. But $1,200 rents discouraged them. Then last year, they landed a two-story four-bedroom apartment in an Oxnard Street complex reconfigured for larger spaces after severe damage in the Northridge earthquake. Their subsidized rent is $650 and includes use of a swimming pool.

Eleven-year-old Emmanuel enjoys his own room now, with a television and desk. “I can do my homework now and my brothers don’t bother me,” he said.

His mother said she does not mind cleaning the extra space. “I feel so happy now, because this is so much bigger and nicer,” she said in her immaculate living room, decorated with family photos.

The nonprofit Los Angeles Community Design Center, which owns the complex and designed the make-over, plans a more ambitious, $7.5-million project in Wilmington. It expects to turn a rundown five-building development with 183 apartments, all one- and two-bedrooms, into a family haven with 132 apartments, including many large units.

A Relatively Easy Conversion

The Wilmington Boulevard complex is appealing because it is only 12 years old and does not need new utilities, said Community Design Center Executive Director Robin Hughes. The grounds have room for play structures and a basketball court. Plus, the current layouts, with entries along breezeways, make it relatively easy to break through walls and turn kitchens and living rooms into bedrooms.

However, older buildings with narrow public corridors present floor plan problems, according to Ali Barar, the design center’s architectural director. “You don’t always wind up with a unit layout that is the most efficient,” he said. For example, bedrooms may have to be shoehorned into separate ends of apartments.

Some older buildings have invisible cost advantages, such as being exempted from current zoning requirements for off-street parking spaces. But the need for asbestos and lead removal can sharply increase costs. And the lack of yards and the distance from parks may make them unsuitable for children.

In its plan for the four Estrella Avenue buildings, the Esperanza Community Housing Corp. hopes to improve a vest pocket park across the street, alongside the Harbor Freeway. The park is dominated by gangs and by chickens apparently owned by some area resident. Similarly, plans are in the works for a park on a lot across the street from a Budlong Avenue building that the agency converted last year from 30 derelict units into 12 family-sized ones.

In Hollywood, the Yucca building offers only a thin outdoor alley as a play space. But access to parks was not a big concern for Trinidad Rodriquez, a single mother who works as a part-time housekeeper. She recently moved into a four-bedroom unit there, along with her four children, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren.

At their old place, a roach-infested, two-bedroom unit in South Los Angeles, some family members slept on the living room’s soiled rug. The rent was $625, $166 more than they now pay in the subsidized and renovated unit, which has fresh carpeting and new bathtubs.

“Everything is better,” Rodriquez said.

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Family Room

In a trend toward bigger apartments in older buildings, the Los Angeles Community Design Center plans to overhaul a Wilmington complex. By reconfiguring doorways and walls, a floor plain of mainly one-bedroom apartments will change to accommodate larger units.

Source: Los Angeles Community Design Center.