Activists Seek Agreement With USC
In a few years the parking lot at Figueroa Street and Jefferson Boulevard will be transformed into a Trojan’s dream come true.
Inside the proposed $70-million sports arena, thousands of fans will cheer the USC basketball and volleyball teams. Neighborhood kids will receive free tickets to games, and city schools will have a place for graduation ceremonies.
But a community group is asking the university to give local residents something more to cheer about.
The Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice is pushing the university to negotiate a “community benefits package” that would include affordable housing and jobs for local residents. Organizers say the package is needed because the university has helped drive up the cost of community housing by not providing enough student housing.
Throughout Southern California, rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing have often placed property owners and tenants at odds. In Los Angeles County last year, the average rent for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment climbed 4.7% to $1,523. In August the median price for homes sold in the six-county region stretching from Ventura to San Diego was $338,000, according to DataQuick Information Systems.
The current market gives landlords an incentive to remove tenants who pay low rents, at the same time giving those tenants an incentive to stay put. In the area around USC, the presence of the university provides a twist: With only 20% of students living in university housing, students and residents compete for rental units, and the area’s low-income residents often lose.
“If the university is going to pursue this plan to build an arena
Last week, Carolyn Webb de Macias, vice president of external affairs at USC, declined to sign an agreement to negotiate exclusively with the coalition. In an interview, she outlined the benefits the project already is expected to bring.
“We are thrilled and excited to put on this corner about $100 million of investment,” Webb de Macias said. “We see this as a total win-win proposition .... FCCEJ is a particular organization, but we must be respectful of the other 90% of our community residents and organizations, all of whom support this project.”
USC is the largest private employer in the city, employing nearly 20,000 workers and contributing an estimated $1.5 billion to the region’s economy.
Concerns About Future
As the Galen Center -- the school’s long-awaited first basketball arena -- moves closer to reality, coalition members are stepping up their concerns about the future of the 4.75-acre site. Formed in 1999, the coalition of 29 organizations hopes to ensure that development dollars spent in the 40-block strip between USC and the Staples Center benefit the people living in the surrounding neighborhoods.
The land at Jefferson and Figueroa was included by the CRA in the early 1970s as part of a plan to prevent USC from leaving the city, by eliminating blight and expanding the campus, according to a CRA report. The report notes that in 1991, when Steven Sample became USC president, some alumni were advocating “relocating USC to the west side or Malibu as Pepperdine University had done in the early 1970s.”
Instead, the report noted, the school “embarked on a major effort to improve facilities and strengthen ties to the community.” In 1990 the plan was to build USC Plaza, 916,000 square feet of development, including a 250-room hotel. According to coalition members, the hotel would have created 2,700 jobs and $1.6 million in special taxes to the CRA -- money which could have been used to build affordable housing. But the economy took a downturn. Ultimately, the university decided not to pursue the project because of a weak downtown hotel market. A 2002 university report determined that the best use for the site would be academic or athletic uses or student housing.
The new arena project will provide its own benefits, Webb de Macias said. Among them: 174 full-time union jobs, with a payroll of $80.7 million; an annual contribution of more than $440,000 to the city’s general fund; and hosting of the 2006 Academic Decathlon.
There are also other advantages to living near USC, Webb de Macias said. These include many programs that students and staff offer residents, such as Kidwatch, which trains community members to watch over neighborhood children as they travel to and from school.
“While our students create extra residents in the community, they participate in the community,” she said. “They do mentoring and tutoring at the local school. They work on projects to paint out graffiti. There’s a very positive element to it, even while we recognize they put additional pressure on housing.”
For their part, coalition members say the benefits outlined so far are not enough, given the previous plan’s potential benefits.
“We’d like to see the university make a comparable commitment to ensure concrete economic benefits in the form of affordable housing for community residents, access to the jobs at the university, as well as recreation opportunities,” McNeill said.
The need for housing is a key element of the coalition’s argument. Currently, the university houses 6,000 of its 30,000 students. A two-bedroom apartment that might have gone for $500 to $600 each month can reap $2,800 when rented out to four students paying $700 per bed.
Last school year, USC student Alex Tarr and his five roommates paid $2,400 a month for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment on 36th Place near Catalina Street.
“USC doesn’t really take any responsibility for students once they’ve left their [university] housing,” said Tarr, a coalition member. “Students are essentially thrown out into the community where they fall prey to the same pitfalls: exploitive housing prices, slumlords.”
Charging by the Bed
Some buildings in the area function like dorms, offering summer and fall leases and charging residents by the bed in individual rental agreements.
Coalition members Gloria Serrano and Araceli Rodriguez have lived in the neighborhood for decades. They have seen neighbors forced out by high rents. Whole buildings -- and blocks -- that once bustled with families now teem with students. The women say they have nothing against the students.
“As residents, what we want is for the university to house its students,” Serrano said.
Each Wednesday night members of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, a key member of the coalition, operate a weekly clinic for tenants facing illegal eviction, often to make room for students who pay higher rents. In many cases, residents are afraid and don’t know their rights, said Rodriguez, who fought a new owner’s attempt to evict her and won. Others have been forced out of rent-controlled buildings with no relocation fees.
The threat of families losing their homes persists, because the community has become attractive to buyers and student tenants are a selling point, said Sister Diane Donoghue, executive director of Esperanza Community Housing Corp., which owns affordable housing in the area and is a member of the coalition.
“I get these letters,” she said. “I know how aggressive the market is with investors wanting to come in and buy because they see such a profit to be made.”
The university is aware of the demand for student housing and is building more, said Dennis Dougherty, senior vice president of administration for USC.
“What we’re finding is, particularly in the undergraduate population, a real desire to be very close to campus, to be involved in academic as well as social and cultural life of the campus,” he said. “The demand for campus living is much greater than it has been historically.”
Three projects in various stages of planning or development will add about 4,500 units of undergraduate housing on or near campus. The university will either own the land or lease the units from a developer.
The dorm projects are significant, said McNeill, but do not counter the years of displacement the community has experienced. The coalition views its work in the district around Staples Center as a model for obtaining benefits that can help residents improve their lives. That development, known as the L.A. Sports and Entertainment District, includes plans for a hotel, a theater, restaurants, night clubs and apartments
Under a 2001 agreement between the coalition and the developers, 20% of the housing in that project will be kept affordable, McNeill said. In addition, 70% of new jobs will be unionized and/or pay a living wage, and 50% of new job hires will be local residents. The developers gave $100,000 to create a job training program.
University officials say they are in a difficult situation. The school has long-standing relationships with numerous community organizations, including an advisory committee that includes members of the coalition.
Webb de Macias welcomed the group to continue the dialogue about the plans for the arena -- along with other organizations.
“We don’t want to be in a position of antagonism or animosity toward any one group,” she said of the coalition. “And we don’t want to disenfranchise the other groups.”
