Then and Now
Architects once advocated for and designed public housing, allowing low-income, working class people to move from cold water tenements into affordable apartments. Today’s scenario is different. At a time when rent increases outstrip wages and when, in Los Angeles, four households compete for each affordable housing unit, many architects actually help reduce the number of affordable units.
The vehicle for dismantling conventional public housing is the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s HOPE VI Program. By act, if not intent, the architecture profession and allied fields endorse a policy that minimizes government intervention and increases reliance on the private market, in spite of the longstanding reluctance of private, for-profit developers to satisfy the housing needs of low-income people.
HOPE VI, an acronym for Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere, is reducing the number of permanently affordable public housing units through several policies. One is to reduce federal subsidies, forcing housing authorities to increase rents to market prices to cover their costs. A second policy lowers the percentage of very low income households who can qualify for public housing, thereby shifting subsidies to higher income families. Third, authorities are advised to sell units; existing public housing households are offered an option to buy—an unrealistic option, given that about 70 percent of all Section 8 or public housing households had incomes below 30 percent of the median in 1999.
As of 2000, HOPE VI is in 119 communities in 32 states. Overall, 82,000 public housing units will be demolished. Of these 82,000 units, 37,000 public housing rental units will be rebuilt; an additional 16,000 units will be rebuilt for low income homeownership and market-rate rentals. 29,000 units will not be replaced.
Pico-Aliso
The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) successfully submitted an Urban Revitalization Demonstration (URD) application to HUD in 1994, targeting Pico Gardens and Aliso Apartments (a.k.a. Aliso Extension South and Aliso Extension North) in the Boyle Heights area. The plan included a one-for-one replacement of units and retained a number of existing buildings for rehabilitation. In a move to forestall a conservative Congress making good on its threat to abolish HUD, the agency’s reinvention plan relied on a campaign against public housing, one of the more vulnerable and visible of its programs. In response to the “new” HUD, HACLA submitted a revised plan in 1995, and another in 1997, finally reducing the number of conventional public housing units by about one-quarter. Taken together with a similarly successful HOPE VI submittal in 1999 for the adjacent Aliso Village, the 1,262 public housing units drops to less than half.
Neighborhood Action
The Pico-Aliso “project” might be a matter of memory if not for the actions of Union de Vecinos, the Union of Neighbors, who fought to guarantee a house in the new Pico-Aliso for everyone who wanted one; succeeded in changing the configuration of new units in terms of bedroom size and eligibility for occupancy; and insured that 42 new units at Las Casitas would be public rental housing and not for sale, at least in the short run.
Membership in Union de Vecinos numbers 120 households, of whom 30 are very active. Its formation was linked to shallow participation techniques that HACLA employs and that HUD endorses. The flashpoint at Pico-Aliso was a flier posted on 36 doors at Las Casitas. Tenants learned they had 60 days to vacate, because HACLA wanted to expand an adjacent park. HACLA offered no guarantees for the residents’ return. Instead, the housing authority repeatedly sent documents declaring their right to remove tenants without cause. One hundred families filed grievances and refused to sign the documents. In retaliation, the housing authority threatened eviction and loss of relocation benefits, and demolished surrounding buildings. For 30 residents who withstood intimidation, and after Union de Vecinos threatened a lawsuit against HACLA, the agency provided a written guarantee that they would not displace the thirty from Pico Gardens.
Rarely do architects learn about the vibrancy of existing communities within public housing. Pro forma workshops are meant to satisfy federal participation requirements as a quid pro quo for funding. Amid the rhetoric, information dribbles down and issues are never fully explained to the satisfaction of many residents. HUD designates elected resident bodies, known as Resident Advisory Councils (RACs), as the official endorsement bodies to housing authority proposals. In turn, HACLA applies pressure on the RACs, transferring to them HUD’s impatience and threats of loss of funding. Tenants come to meetings and offer suggestions; architects typically respond by acknowledging feedback and may make some changes. In the case of Pico Gardens and Las Casitas, however, the out-of-town architects were not easily accessible, and tenants relied on HACLA to accurately convey their opinions and feelings. Detailed letters were sent to HACLA requesting information; consistently, response times dragged out. Moreover, by this time in the process, the parameters of the architects’ contract were set and basic decisions difficult to change.
In its campaign to better reflect the opinions of tenants who did not want to move and to protect the rights of those who did, the Union de Vecinos visited homes, held meetings where the tenants lived, waged its own survey, published newsletters, invited lawyers to explain tenants’ rights, hired an engineer to review structural conditions at Aliso Village, collaborated with artists to disseminate information, demonstrated, protested, and participated. The Union’s campaign was waged through a combination of two volunteer organizers, tenant volunteers, professionals donating services, and minimal funding from membership fees, private donations, and foundation grants. The Union’s small office, in a house located across from the old Aliso Extension Apartments, became a sanctuary for people, largely women and their households, whose everyday lives have been in upheaval since HACLA targeted their communities.
Convergence with New Urbanism
Around the same time HOPE VI was introduced, architects and developers began publicizing the virtues of neo-traditional design as an alternative to suburban sprawl. In 1993, the Congress of New Urbanism (CNU) formed around principles including diversity, safety, neighborhoods, and accessibility. Proponents argue that these principles are relevant to infill and redevelopment projects. HUD embraced New Urbanism in its publication, “Principles for Designing and Planning Homeownership Zones.” Oakland-based architect Michael Pyatok has written, “It is not surprising that HUD’s public housing division has recently grasped the New Urbanism for help in face-lifting, and, as some critics contend, in gentrifying many of its older public housing projects under the guise of ‘mixing’ incomes before selling them off and getting out of the business of helping those most in need.”
New Urbanism’s design principles—seen in its site plan, bedroom distribution, and architectural features—distinguish Las Casitas from Pico Gardens. At Las Casitas, more vegetation surrounds townhouses that average 970 square feet; clustering houses around parking minimizes the intrusion of cars. Private housing surrounds part of the site, and some of these structures show signs of being rehabbed. By contrast, Pico Gardens’ smaller units, averaging only 860 square feet, are located in a less desirable location, with some units directly abutting one of L.A.’s busier freeways. A yet-to-be-built fence around the entire development will only reinforce its isolation.
New Urbanism at Pico-Aliso obscures the very issue that HOPE VI is supposedly addressing—that is, the concentration of poor people. New Urbanist principles call for a broad range of housing types and price levels within neighborhoods in order to “bring people of diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction, strengthening the personal and civic bonds essential to an authentic community.” At Pico-Aliso, however, New Urbanism reinforces income segregation and reduces units. Authority policies have “skimmed off the cream” of the tenants, identifying those who might qualify for purchase and thereby removing the mix of incomes that existed prior to HOPE VI. Consequently, Las Casitas is entirely rental and inhabited by public housing residents from the former Pico Gardens or Aliso Apartments.
Conclusions
These issues are not confined to Los Angeles. In the wake of HOPE VI, the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Community Change organized a Public Housing Residents National Organizing Campaign, with general principles about resident participation. These principles ask HUD to:
✤ 1. define resident participation in all relevant documents concerning HOPE VI;
✤ 2. state in writing that housing authorities must—not merely should or shall—include residents in formulating and developing HOPE VI application documents and in every other substantive step of the application and implementation process;
✤ 3. structure meaningful participation that involves residents in interviewing and selecting all consultants and developers;
✤ 4. grant HOPE VI funds provisionally, so that genuine participation is assured after the grant is awarded;
✤ 5. provide resources and funding for resident training and technical assistance, including procurement, planning, evaluation, relocation/re-housing, Section 8, mixed income, fair housing, income budgeting, job training, and all subjects critical to residents;
✤ 6. require housing authorities to write explanations to residents when their proposals are excluded, or when authorities’ decisions differ substantively from the submitted application or in other processes.
Even if these principles were adopted, monitoring would remain difficult under circumstances in which housing authorities stonewall tenants’ requests and ignore conflicts among tenants, and in which there is no Union de Vecinos. Architects might consider their obligation to go beyond design and to adopt or develop a set of principles about participation. Prior to signing contracts with housing authorities, architects might require face-to-face meetings with dissatisfied tenants and the open airing of conflicts among tenants as well as between tenants and the housing authority.
Architects need to be more than handmaidens to policies such as HOPE VI that reduce units, camouflage segregation, and draw attention away from issues such as economic development and quality education for poor and working poor households. The architecture profession may be unable to forestall HOPE VI, but architects can do more than advocate for diversity; they can help ensure more democratic participation.
In Boyle Heights, at Union de Vecinos, the struggle continues. Across from the new Las Casitas townhouses, tenants continue to meet. On Fridays, they run a de facto restaurant that serves the neighboring businesses. Displaced tenants, some of whom purchased homes, return here on a regular basis. Residents across the city with ties to public housing, along with their friends and relatives, rely on the Union as a place to get accurate information, support, and companionship. They are expanding the community ties that existed in public housing in the pre-HOPE VI era.
Author Jacqueline Leavitt, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. She writes and lectures on policy issues about housing and community development that affect low-income people, with a particular impact on women and their multiple roles. Leavitt works directly with grassroots people and their advocates to formulate strategic plans.
Photos by Jacqueline Leavitt.
Originally published 2nd quarter 2001, in arcCA 01.2, “Housing Complex.”
