Aliso Village Residents Divided Over Demolition Plan

A group that opposes the demolition of a Boyle Heights housing project called a news conference Thursday to try to bolster its position but, by the end of the day, the organization came under heavy attack from some tenants, a prominent community leader and city officials.

City Housing Authority officials are bent on demolishing the 56-year-old Aliso Village project, calling the units in a gang-plagued neighborhood structurally unsafe. Twenty-three families who live in what officials call the most precarious structures have already received a fall deadline to move.

But a group representing some residents is determined to make sure the demolition doesn’t occur. Union Vecinos Pico Aliso wants the units repaired, not torn down. The group called a news conference Thursday to unveil an interim engineering report to support its view.

The study by Parlee Engineering, a structural engineering firm in Pasadena, was based on a “visual survey” of the units’ exteriors. It suggested that some structures in the 685-unit project be retrofitted.

“It would be a lot cheaper to retrofit than to demolish the project and start all over,” said Heythem Aboud, a manager at Parlee.

But housing officials said fixing up Aliso Village would cost $66 million--only $17 million less than the cost of an entirely new and improved development. In addition to lack of structural integrity, officials said, major problems include dangerous lead paint, outdated plumbing and a faulty sewage system.

David Ochoa, president of a tenant committee, favors demolition of the aging structures to make way for new facilities. He called critics of the demolition plan “lease violators” who want to stay in Aliso Village because they know an understaffed Housing Authority can’t be as strict as a new landlord might.

“Here they get away with everything,” said Ochoa, a 12-year Aliso resident.

Ochoa singled out Leonardo Vilchis and other Vecinos leaders for instigating residents’ opposition to the city’s plan. “Vecinos has done all kinds of dirty tricks to get residents roused up,” he said.

Housing Authority spokesman George McQuade also took aim at Vecinos. “There are vultures taking advantage of the situation to get notoriety,” he said.

But spokesmen for Vecinos said the Housing Authority is using demolition as a smoke screen to hide its continuing neglect of structures that house some of the city’s poorest residents.

Although officials say residents would have priority status to return once Aliso Village is rebuilt in six years, there would be fewer units than now exist to accommodate the lowest-income residents. Under the city’s plan, some of the units would house senior citizens and others would be targeted to middle-income residents.

Father Gregory Boyle of the nearby Dolores Mission Catholic Church said Thursday that he has high hopes for the Housing Authority’s plans. “I think it’s a good call,” he said.

“I don’t get it,” he said of the critics’ stance. He assailed Vecinos as an “irresponsible” outside group that was needlessly “fomenting” people’s fears.

“I don’t think having poor people piled on top of poor people is what God had in mind,” said Boyle, endorsing the housing agency’s plan to create a mixed income community.

“If I thought anyone was going to be left out [of new housing], I’d be at the top of the march,” he said.

Vecinos organizer Vilchis said more than 300 Aliso Village residents have signed a petition opposing the demolition, which would begin, city officials said, if and when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approves expenditures for the demolition, relocation of tenants and rebuilding.

In a counterattack on Ochoa, Vilchis criticized the tenant committee leader as a bully who has pulled the plug on meetings attended by Vecinos members and sympathetic residents.

Xavier Mendoza, director of urban revitalization for the Housing Authority, took a hard line. “If we have to force people out of Aliso Village, we will,” he said. “We can’t wait for a disaster to happen.”

Most of the project’s residents, meanwhile, are split on whether they want to stay in the aging complex--cracks, peeling paint and all--or move out. City officials contend that their $83-million redevelopment plan would lead to a safer, economically promising and more attractive neighborhood.

Josefina Castellanos, for one, wants to stay. “In a [Housing Authority] map I saw, I could see that my apartment no longer exists,” she said. “We have no guarantees that we’ll be able to return.”

But Rosa Mejia, a native of Honduras and mother of a 2-year-old boy, agrees with the demolition plan and is willing to move as long as she receives rent subsidies for new temporary housing.

Referring to crime that besets the projects, she said: “I sometimes think we’re practically throwing our kids to their death by living here.”