5 Years Later, Valley Showing Strong Recovery Signs

Five years after the Northridge earthquake, Los Angeles’ housing stock has recovered significantly, with only 2% of the 65,000 damaged properties remaining to be rebuilt, city officials said Thursday.

The signs of recovery are particularly strong in the San Fernando Valley--the epicenter of the 1994 temblor--where 99% of the housing units in so-called “ghost towns” have been rebuilt or are under construction and rental vacancy rates have dropped substantially, according to a report Thursday.

“We showed the world that Angelenos have what it takes to triumph in the face of adversity,” Mayor Richard Riordan said.

For Lauretta Martin, a Northridge real estate agent, the report is not surprising. Martin lost her home in Granada Hills to earthquake damage and remembers how grim it was driving on residential streets in the north Valley after the earthquake.

“It looked like a war zone,” she recalled. You had one house that was fine and five more that were completely destroyed.”

“Granada Hills, Northridge and Chatsworth were just devastated,” she added.

Today, Martin says neighborhoods have been restored and many look better than they did before the earthquake, thanks to a massive infusion of cash from insurance companies and government agencies that helped fund the reconstruction.

“There is a lot of pride of ownership that you see,” Martin said.

The Jan. 17, 1994, earthquake, which registered at a 6.7 magnitude, killed 57 people and caused $40 billion in damage, including heavy damage to 65,000 houses, apartments and condominiums in Los Angeles.

More than 19,000 of the residential units--mostly condominiums--were ordered vacated by the city Building and Safety Department. The Housing Department reported Thursday that 2% of the housing units remain unrepaired while all others were either repaired or in a small percentage of cases demolished.

Construction permits have been issued for repair of 53 of the unrepaired properties, representing 757 housing units, about 47% of the remaining damaged residences.

“It’s been marvelous,” Garry Pinney, Housing Department general manager, said. “When you consider that half of the units damaged in the San Francisco earthquake were not repaired four years later. Here we are five years later and 98% have been taken care of.”

Using $360 million in federal grants, the city was able to help finance 13,038 damaged housing units, the report said.

The Housing Department focused much of its attention on 17 ghost town neighborhoods, where large numbers of apartment buildings were left empty, having been condemned because of earthquake damage. Eleven of the ghost towns have been totally rebuilt, compared with five a year ago, Pinney said.

Pinney said two ghost towns continue to lag in repairs, including the Cadillac Avenue-Corning Street ghost town in West Los Angeles, where some owners have refused city assistance, leaving their buildings in disrepair.

In the Valley, the owners of five apartment buildings in the Victory Boulevard-Tampa Avenue ghost town have been slow in making repairs because of a legal dispute between owners and contractors, but Housing Department officials are hopeful the issue will be resolved soon and work can resume, according to Sally Richman, a spokeswoman for the agency.

Two years ago the Housing Department was pressing a group called Neighborhood Empowerment and Economic Development to begin work on some buildings in the Orion Avenue-Parthenia Street ghost town, but Richman said Thursday those projects are all completed and the buildings occupied.

“There’s no problem there anymore,” Richman said. City officials cite a steep drop in the vacancy rate for rental housing as another sign of recovery.

The vacancy rate for apartments skyrocketed after the earthquake. Since then, the vacancy rate has dropped 6% citywide, the city report said.

In Northridge, the vacancy rate jumped from 8.5 % in November 1993 to 44% immediately after the earthquake, to 4% in November 1998, the Housing Department reported.

In Granada Hills, the vacancy rate for apartments increased from 8% in 1993 to 29% immediately after the earthquake, but has since dropped to 4%.

Martin confirmed the market has tightened, saying there are only two residential leases available of more than 2,000 square feet in Northridge, Chatsworth and Granada Hills.

Consequently, some companies are buying homes for executives rather than attempting to lease, she said.