Residents, Developer Battle Over Housing Plans

The community opposition facing a proposed affordable housing apartment complex in Boyle Heights crystallizes a broader argument brewing among residents:

What type of affordable housing -- if any -- should be built in this part of the city known for its housing shortage?

Opponents warn that high-density complexes overburden public services and will import crime-prone families to their neighborhoods.

Similar community opposition to a handful of multi-unit apartment complexes on the Eastside has surfaced in recent years from residents trying to improve the image of Boyle Heights, an area most known by outsiders for its low property values and its crime.

At issue now is the 49-unit Lorena Terrace Apartments, which would include a child-care center, proposed for a neighborhood known as El Hoyito -- the gully -- an area mostly made up of modest single-family homes.

On one side of the Lorena Terrace conflict stands the East Los Angeles Community Corp., the nonprofit affordable housing developer fighting to build the complex.

To Maria Cabildo, the 35-year-old executive director of the corporation, Boyle Heights -- with multiple families sharing single houses and some living in converted garages -- epitomizes the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles.

Cabildo, like some of the other staffers in the corporation, grew up in a crowded home on the Eastside where her brother slept on a fold-out bed in the living room. After graduating from Columbia University, she returned to the Eastside to help build housing.

“We are all doing this work because we have [experienced] how important this resource is for families,” she said. “Why shouldn’t children have their own bedroom?”

On the other side stands a vocal group of longtime homeowners.

Some of the opponents are elected officials in the Boyle Heights neighborhood council or members of a political action committee that advises public officials about redevelopment in Boyle Heights.

“What the community needs is homes,” said Arturo Fierros, 50, a representative on the neighborhood council and one in a key group of neighbors fighting Lorena Terrace. “We have roots here. Boyle Heights has culture. It has history.”

Opponents argue that Lorena Terrace would be out of character in the neighborhood and would worsen the already bad traffic and overcrowded schools.

“Affordable housing units breed gang and drug activity,” opponents wrote in a letter to public officials.

The letter also says people using the federally subsidized Section 8 housing program are “families with kids to become gang-affiliated.”

In short, the opponents predict that the apartment complex would come to resemble the crime-plagued government-owned housing projects that are fixtures on the Eastside.

“My feelings are that all these are projects,” said Eileen Tapia, who owns two homes in El Hoyito. “To me, these low-income housing [complexes] are just another form of welfare. We talk about welfare reform, people to do for themselves, and all this is just another form of welfare.”

But to ELACC, the need for housing is clear.

In the last decade the Eastside -- Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights and unincorporated East Los Angeles -- has lost about 1,000 units that were razed to make way for public works projects. There could be more homes lost when education officials select up to two sites for new high schools.

In all, ELACC, founded in 1996, has built or refurbished 40 single-family houses and 15 apartment units, Cabildo said. It has three houses and 11 apartment units -- excluding Lorena Terrace -- in development.

The need in the community, Cabildo said, is exemplified by the 107 people who inquired about the seven units that the organization recently opened in Boyle Heights.

Cabildo admits that her organization could have done better in keeping the community informed about the plans for Lorena Terrace.

In the face of opposition, the organization scaled back its plans for the apartments.

But, Cabildo said, the corporation will not give in to the opponents’ final demand: that the corporation build a couple of single-family homes on the property and abandon plans for the child-care center.

“There’s a greater need and people need to face that,” she said.

The opponents are led by a group of residents, some of whom have generations-deep roots in the area.

El Hoyito is a modest but proud neighborhood where most people are homeowners, said Fierros. Many of the residents -- such as Fierros’ mother, Anita Fierros, 71, who started the Neighborhood Watch program -- have fought for years to clean up crime in the neighborhood.

“After all these years my mom has worked to mellow out the area,” Fierros said, “this is just going to fuel the problem.”

The opponents found support in a bigger community organization -- the Political Action Committee of the Adelante Eastside Redevelopment Project. (The redevelopment project is a city-funded effort. The PAC is a group of citizens that advises city officials.)

In one of its meetings, the committee approved a letter to city officials opposing Lorena Terrace -- consistent with some of the members’ opposition to any multi-unit housing in Boyle Heights.

High-density housing “is not in the best interest of the community,” said Arturo Chayra, 70, who has lived in Boyle Heights since 1934. “There are going to be kids all over the place. It’s typical of the things we do not want to see in the community.”

Supporters of affordable housing have been offended most by what they perceive as classist and anti-immigrant statements by the opponents.

James Rojas, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority urban planner involved in Eastside community affairs, attended the PAC meeting where the resolution was passed.

Rojas spoke about the need for affordable housing on the Eastside. Many Eastside residents, he said, work in other parts of the city where they can’t afford the high rents.

Many of the opponents’ comments “were downright racist against fellow Latinos,” Rojas wrote in an e-mail to the Latino Urban Forum, a group of urban planners, artists and other young professionals.

“The same arguments that the PAC members were using against this project are the same arguments that keep Latinos out of many neighborhoods,” Rojas wrote. The letter by the PAC “will send a bad precedent for developers who are looking to develop in the Eastside. If a nonprofit from the community cannot build housing, who can?”

Opponents insist their comments merely address concerns about overburdened public services and crime.

“I’m a high school teacher,” said Ivonne Mora, who teaches at a local continuation school. “I really want to help people. But I don’t think that the complex is going to help the community.”