Housing, Not Bulldozing

San Pedro, home to the huge Port of Los Angeles, has its gripes against the city. Too few dollars from the port are reinvested in the community. Tons of diesel pollution generated by the port besmirch its air. Its downtown contains a disproportionate share of group homes for troubled youths and poorly supervised rehab centers for addicts. The phrase “low-income housing” brings to mind the grim Rancho San Pedro project.

All of this helps explain why Los Angeles city leaders are so vigorously fighting a plan to convert 545 San Pedro homes vacated by Navy personnel in 1997 into transitional housing for families at high risk of ending up on the streets.

What the opponents aren’t seeing is the likelihood of the project’s success and the amount of state and federal funding that it would bring in. Local officials including Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who represents San Pedro, and U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), who also represents the area, are pressing the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to set aside only 70 of the units for low-income housing. At least 245 would be bulldozed so single-family homes could be built on the site and sold at market rates. That plan could gain HUD approval as early as today.

The city’s plan is far stingier than need be. Volunteers of America, one of the largest nonprofit housing providers in the U.S. and the would-be organizer of the assisted housing plan, has built dozens of well-run projects nationwide. What it wants to do in San Pedro, far from erecting a grim barracks, is restore the modest single-family homes on the Navy property, surround them with parkland and work with other nonprofit groups to ensure that residents get job training, counseling and other social services. Since the mid-1990s, one of the partner organizations, New Directions, has operated a successful “supportive housing” program for veterans in Brentwood. The San Pedro project also has local support from a large coalition of religious organizations.

The model for San Pedro is a 500-unit North Hollywood apartment complex that Volunteers of America purchased in 1969 and renovated for families that are “homeless or at risk of homelessness.” City leaders back then voiced the concerns now sounded in San Pedro: that the project would increase crime and drive down property values. Instead, the well-maintained garden apartments have helped move thousands of families to self-sufficiency and improved the neighborhood.

Volunteers of America says it will sue the city if HUD approves L.A.’s plan and the city goes ahead. It argues correctly that the city failed to comply with a 1987 federal law, the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, which requires surplus federal property to be offered first for low-income residents.

The city is already fighting lawsuits alleging it stinted low-income housing in its downtown redevelopment plan. It should compromise substantially on the San Pedro project, which would bring in funding from Proposition 46 -- a state bond measure to finance affordable housing -- as well as federal dollars. Los Angeles has everything to gain in responding to its severe housing crisis by working with a group that has a successful track record.