[CPEO-IRF] Homeless agency flips San Pedro (CA) land

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

FINDING A WAY HOME
Shame in San Pedro
Homeless agency flips donated Navy land for real estate profit.

Editorial
Los Angeles Times
May 19, 2006

TO UNDERSTAND WHY HOMELESSNESS is such an intractable problem for Los 
Angeles, one need look no further than San Pedro. That's where more than 
two dozen acres of former military housing originally intended for 
homeless families are instead being sold for millions of dollars.

Like many of the best bits of beach-adjacent real estate left in 
Southern California, this property has a tangled legal history. For 
decades, it housed workers for the nearby Long Beach Naval Shipyard. 
When that base closed in the 1990s, the plan was to use many of the 545 
housing units for the homeless, under a federal law requiring that the 
needs of the homeless be considered when the government disposes of 
surplus military land. Locals erupted in opposition, so a series of 
scaled-down proposals were considered.

Finally, in 2003, the city agreed to only a pittance of homeless housing 
on the site, over the loud objections and threatened lawsuits by 
advocacy groups such as Volunteers of America, or VOA, which had 
proposed building much more. The Department of Housing and Urban 
Development sided with VOA, a national faith-based charity that provides 
healthcare, housing and other services to the needy, and ripped up the 
city's agreement with the Navy.


...

For the entire editorial, see
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-ed-sanpedro19may19,1,6397585.story

--
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org

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