District Weighs Evictions to Make Way for Schools

As the need to build classrooms grows in one of the nation’s most densely populated and ethnically diverse communities, the Los Angeles Unified School District is considering a traumatic solution: evicting hundreds of families from their homes to create space for schools.

The district’s willingness to consider so controversial a course reflects the enormous pressure in the mid-Wilshire neighborhood, where every year, on a Sunday night in May, parents line up and wait for morning so they can get the first chance at signing up their children for the local school.

Some succeed. Most do not, and the children of those who are turned away pay the price. In this one small community, more than 1,000 children, some as young as 5, board buses every day and ride for as much as an hour to attend schools in less crowded areas.

School district officials understandably want to end that, and at the same time they are trying to limit evictions as much as possible. Just last week, in fact, they decided not to condemn and demolish one large apartment building that the district had been considering.

But the district is still weighing plans that would eliminate more than 200 residential units--some of them densely crowded ones housing extended families, others that are home to elderly men and women--to make way for classrooms.

“It’s very tough,” said Kathi Littman, a construction management expert brought in to help the district find sites and build schools. “One man’s blighted housing is another man’s affordable housing. . . . Unless there is no other way to get around taking housing, we are going to avoid it at all costs.”

And yet, there’s no avoiding it altogether. School board member Caprice Young, who represents the area, predicts that hundreds of families will be affected. “It’s absolutely certain that some homes will be taken,” she said.

The battle over the small area north of Wilshire Boulevard--bordered by Catalina Street on the east, Western Avenue on the west and Beverly Boulevard on the north--is of huge interest to that community, but it has implications beyond there as well. It is a microcosm of the stresses created by Los Angeles’ pressing need for new schools, and it is a harbinger of the community battles looming, as the district tries to balance the competing pressures of a bulging student population and state rules limiting classroom size.

In mid-Wilshire, ground zero is a roughly 100-square-block area strewn with Craftsman-style houses on some blocks and large apartment buildings on others. It is an area of vast diversity. Stores have signs in Spanish, Korean and Arabic; English ranks a distant fourth. Local stores race to keep their food inventories apace with changing demographics. One sign of the times: Two neighborhood markets recently dropped kimchi for frijoles.

And it is a community bulging with children. Even with a year-round operation that allows 1,300 students to attend Cahuenga Elementary School, a staggering 1,400 children a day board buses there to go to far-flung schools.

“I bus away more children than I have,” said Cahuenga Principal Lloyd Houske, an enthusiastic, beloved fixture at the school and in its neighborhood.

“Some of those children ride buses more than an hour each way. Their parents aren’t as involved in their schools. They can’t be; many don’t have cars. There’s not as much language support. . . . It’s harder [for the children] to make friends because they live so far from school.”

But if the need for schools is clear, so is the hardship that could be created by the school district’s plan for building them.

‘What Am I Supposed to Do?’

Take the case of Vila Tweedt. She is 86 and has lived in the same apartment for 29 years. She suffers from asthma and doesn’t drive. She pays $400 a month for her small but tidy apartment, conveniently located a half-block from the bus stop, two blocks from a market.

“What am I supposed to do if they take this place for a school?” she asked. “I’ve lived here for a long time, and I really don’t know how I would manage if I’m displaced at my age.”

Antonio Villaraigosa, speaker of the Assembly and a candidate for mayor, acknowledges that stories such as Tweedt’s are compelling and decisions to oust anyone from a home are wrenching.

“In the past, the district’s just gone in and started saying: ‘We’re building here, here and here,’ ” Villaraigosa said. “There’s no question that the district has a credibility problem. . . . But at the same time, we gotta build these schools.”

Even some residents with children, ostensibly those whom the new schools would benefit, are irritated with the school district.

“They say they’re trying to help the community,” said Greg Havens, whose son is in third grade. “They’re going to destroy this community, at least for us.”

As much as anyone, Havens is emblematic of this neighborhood. He worked for Fedco and moved to the Cahuenga community last year for its schools and sense of place. He and his wife have an 8-year-old boy--bright and mischievous, handy with a crayon. When they came to Los Angeles, the young family rented a relatively inexpensive apartment and began to sock away money in hopes of saving enough to make a down payment on their first home.

Then, last summer, Greg Havens was laid off. Money suddenly tightened. Their low rent went from a luxury to a necessity. Now the district may take the building, and the family is anxious.

Havens wants two things, and reconciling them is extremely difficult in that community: He wants to keep his home and send his child to a nearby school. That’s such a common refrain in the neighborhood that it’s almost universal. That’s why parents stand in line overnight in May, when enrollment at Cahuenga opens for the following fall.

Few achieve it. Principal Houske said almost the only way for children to get into Cahuenga today is as kindergartners. After that, the grades are full.

Those who make it into Cahuenga relish it. One day last week, hordes of young children cheerfully bustled around the immaculate campus. Houske’s outer office was crowded with parents offering their help. Two former students also dropped by. One was there to volunteer her time to her old school while the other, now a high school senior, stopped in to wish her former principal a happy new year.

“Everyone loves this school,” she gushed as she left.

In the neighborhood outside the campus, feelings are much more complicated. Residents are eager for schools, but nervous about how the district may get them.

As is the case with many of those who rent apartments in the area, Havens did not hear of the district’s plans from anyone at Los Angeles Unified. He found out only because he was in front of his building one evening and a neighbor happened to mention that something was afoot.

Many of his neighbors report the same thing. Some have yet to hear of the issue; others learned through a tenants organization called the Coalition for Economic Survival.

School board member Young said the district has tried to get the word out, aggressively soliciting community input through an organization known as New Schools, Better Neighborhoods, and even leafleting some of the affected areas. But she acknowledged that some residents are still finding out. “The best you can say is that we’ve done our best,” she said.

Havens inquired and learned that, indeed, his apartment building sits on one of four sites that the district has identified in that neighborhood for possible school construction. According to district records, the Havens family is one of 184 living on a 3.9-acre site near Vermont Avenue.

Other nearby sites include one with an office building and carwash along with about 22 homes. Another combines commercial space and about 54 units.

A fourth, an apartment building with roughly 230 units, was on the list until Thursday. Officials withdrew it, worrying that displacing so many people from one building was harsh and financially impractical.

Still, hundreds of units remain on the block. Because some of them are occupied by young, single people who would not find it difficult to move and others are homes to large families or older people who might find a move extremely disruptive, it’s impossible to gauge the scope of the dislocation.

What is clear, however, is that Los Angeles is a city desperately short of affordable housing, and anyone who is forced to move will have to wade into one of the nation’s toughest rental markets.

They will not go with nothing. The state’s rules for taking property call for any renter who is displaced to get a check for $5,250.

District officials concede that’s not enough. “That might work in Bakersfield,” Littman said, “but not here.”

It’s also a “one size fits all” approach that might suit some residents but not others. A single person with a job might find the payment a bonus, might actually appreciate the chance to relocate and put a few dollars away at the same time.

The stakes are very different for a large family with children in neighborhood schools, though. Or older people. Or people without cars. Or residents who have lived in the same apartment for many years and, therefore, are receiving the full benefits of rent control.

For those people, relocation is perilous and frightening.

As a result, they question whether the district has done enough to avoid taking rental housing. Some believe the process is tilted toward protecting homeowners at their expense, a view also advanced by the Coalition for Economic Survival, which is trying to get renters to band together to put pressure on the district.

“They’re dealing with overcrowded schools,” said Larry Gross, executive director of the coalition. “By dealing with overcrowded schools, they’re contributing to overcrowded housing. . . . It’s important to look at the total picture. They’re just going through like bulldozers.”

Urging Consideration of More Novel Ideas

Jennifer Peterson, a tenant organizer with the coalition, agrees. “It’s just a travesty,” she said.

What those organizers and other Los Angeles Unified critics want is for the district to consider more novel ideas for schools. They want it to consider building up, so the schools will use less land. They want the district to put parking underground, again to save land. And they want the district to take into account the problems it will create for those it kicks out--problems that may or may not be solvable with $5,250.

District officials say they are investigating all those ideas, and also are hoping to minimize their impact on the community by building several small schools rather than one big one.

And yet, even if it succeeds in all that, the district needs land--and it needs it fast.

State law forces schools to hold down class size, which prevents them from packing in students at existing sites. And, every year, more children keep coming.

In crowded areas, the choice is stark: Build schools or bus kids.

“I’m not sure that there’s any answer that will make up for the loss of your home,” said Houske, the Cahuenga school principal. “That’s tough. And yet, is the answer to say that from now on, we have to bus away 1,400 or 1,500 or 1,900 children a day?”