Housing Dept. to Blame for Lag in ‘Ghost Town’ Repairs

Despite good intentions and even better political connections, a nonprofit group with close ties to Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon should never have been awarded contracts to repair six apartment buildings damaged by the Northridge earthquake. Yet as easy as it is to blame the inexperience and, frankly, the incompetence of the nonprofit Neighborhood Empowerment and Economic Development, the fault lies with the city Housing Department, which awarded the lucrative contracts without sufficient review.

In the three years since the quake turned 17 neighborhoods across the Los Angeles into devastated “ghost towns,” repair work is virtually complete. But in the Orion-Parthenia neighborhood of North Hills--one of the poorest neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley--rehabilitation projects run by NEED have been marked by delays and mistakes.

Only one of the six projects awarded to the novice developer is finished. And construction has started on just one other. The rest remain dilapidated eyesores--magnets for drug dealers, prostitutes and gang members. They make a bad neighborhood worse and frighten tenants away from other apartments long since repaired by their owners. Some residents just want the buildings torn down.

NEED’s mistakes stemmed from ineptitude and unrealistic ideas, not corruption. Never had the group--headed by a former Alarcon campaign worker and backed by many of the councilman’s supporters--run a development project before it was granted the rehabilitation contracts in the wake of the quake. Its failures were the result of missed deadlines, misunderstandings and poor planning.

Following disclosures in The Times of NEED’s poor performance, Housing Department head Gary Squier vowed never again to give such big projects to novice firms such as NEED. Fine. But a little late. Already, NEED has received $6 million in low-interest loans. It will take many millions more to finish all the work because costs have ballooned well over initial estimates. What’s needed now is a strict program for finishing the work, with close supervision and guidance from the Housing Department staff.

In the meantime, Mayor Richard Riordan has called for a detailed report on the Housing Department’s decision to award the work to NEED. The goal should not be as much to assign blame as to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent a repeat. How did a firm with no previous development experience get such lucrative contracts? Some housing officials conceded that the contracts were given to NEED because no other developers wanted projects in such a tough neighborhood. But no firm should win a bid by default if it’s not qualified for the work.

Once work gets underway, NEED must focus its efforts solely on getting the buildings back together and open for business. Some of the delays have been caused because NEED and Alarcon wanted to do more than simply fix broken buildings. In one case, they wanted to partially convert an apartment building into a shelter for victims of domestic violence. Problems with the plan added a year to the project--time in which the neighborhood continued to spiral. However noble the extras are, they add nothing if they’re not there. Waiting for them only increases the burden on current residents and owners.

It’s time to get to work.