Fault found with San Housing Authority's housing project

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08/12/2002

Fault found with housing project

By Jeanne

San Express-News

The San Housing Authority's ambitious overhaul of a West Side

housing project has produced new houses so shoddily built it could become

more slum than showplace, residents and community activists say.

Photo: Emmanuel, and Patlan play in the back yard of their

home in the Mirasol community. Many of the homes were built with no windows

in back. Some parents say that they worry about not being able to watch

their children at play.

Calzada/Express-News

The single-family homes in the $50 million project are less than a year old,

yet frustrated renters and neighbors complain of falling cabinets, shaky

bathroom fixtures, busted doors and listing porch beams.

Some question how the Mirasol Homes community will look in 10 years. Others

make angry comparisons to urban renewal failures of the past.

" We are building slums, " says Ralph Velasquez, a community activist who has

made Mirasol his personal crusade.

Observers agree the development replaced an eyesore: a run-down 500-family

complex.

It took seven years, but by summer's end SAHA will have built 390 new

houses, duplexes and townhomes, at an average cost of $105,000 per unit.

SAHA had to stop construction to clean up a landfill, with the cleanup and

redesign expected to cost $889,000.

" One of the things that's bothered me is the area that's contaminated - who

dropped the ball on that? " asked SAHA Commissioner Charlie Peña, who

represents the Mirasol area.

That question has not been answered to his satisfaction, but he's pleased

with the project overall, he said.

So are some residents. A SAHA survey in June of about a quarter of the

residents found 93 percent satisfied with their homes, and 90 percent

satisfied with the community.

" I don't know who they asked. I didn't get any survey, " said Griselda

Patlan.

Her husband, Patlan, who works in construction, pointed out a string

of problems in their home: buckling walls, a leaky sink, a loose toilet,

gaps between the tub and shower wall where water enters, missing wall trim

and a faulty door.

Griselda Patlan said she phoned in a long list to SAHA's maintenance hotline

a month after they arrived in October.

After months without a response, she quit calling, she said. Other residents

also said the hotline was unresponsive.

SAHA CEO and President Melvin Braziel said many delays in the project were

beyond control - the landfill contamination, zoning decisions, a fire in one

of the buildings.

" When you put all that in perspective, and we're putting the finishing

touches on it and we hear from the community that the project looks pretty

good, I think we did pretty well, " he said.

A hole in the ceiling is all that is left of a smoke alarm that residents

say shorted out as a result of rainwater seeping into this home in the

Mirasol community on the West Side.

Calzada/Express-News

Unlike in many subdivisions, the builder didn't have to pay for the land.

The authority owned most of it and bought the rest for $844,490.

SAHA also shouldered site development costs of $3.7 million, built the

streets and even bought the refrigerators at $400 a pop.

Even with those expenses out of the way, SAHA paid $20 million to a joint

venture team of Magi Realty and KB Home to build 247 single-family houses,

an average of $81,000 per house, not including other costs related to

building the development.

That's $17,000 more apiece than the amount spent by two nonprofit groups -

the San Alternative Housing Corp. and Neighborhood Housing

Services - on slightly smaller houses built nearby, mostly three-bedroom

models with detached garages.

Professional builders said they were amazed SAHA didn't ask those nonprofit

groups - or any other area construction firm - to bid on Mirasol.

" Had the package been brought to our office, we would have looked at it

pretty aggressively, " said Gordon Hartman, owner of Gordon Hartman Homes,

one of the city's largest homebuilders.

The size of Mirasol was " nothing to sneeze at, " Hartman said, adding he has

a well-known interest in affordable housing and regularly talks to public

organizations about their building projects. A notice in the newspaper isn't

enough to inform busy builders, he said.

" Wouldn't you think that the local bidders, with a bid that size, would want

to bid on it? " asked Kinlaw, SAHA's vice president of development and

asset management, explaining why she didn't make any phone calls to solicit

bids.

" Are there things we could have done differently? Probably, " Kinlaw said.

" But given the requirements we were under, I just don't know how to answer

that. We were under a time crunch. But I don't want to say that is a reason

for the problems. "

Quick fixes

In a hurry after being chastised by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban

Development for its slow pace, the housing authority awarded the contract to

build Mirasol's single-family houses to the only qualified bidder in 1999.

When the joint-venture team submitted its designs, SAHA's top architect

scrawled on them: " Crap! " " Weak! " " Trash! " " Hate it! " " Start Over! "

But SAHA didn't start over.

And today, residents point out flaws beyond mere ugliness - for example, no

back doors or back windows on some houses, making it hard to watch children.

" Everything seems, like, real cheap. You can tell, " said Elida , who

blamed the builder, not the authority.

She quickly noted that her new home, which her family rents for $579 a

month, is a lot better than the run-down apartments it replaced, and her

kids are no longer ashamed to bring friends home.

An angry Sharon stood on her front porch and kicked a beam. It moved.

She has requested a transfer.

" They say SAHA can't do anything about it - it's a KB Home, " said. " My

warranty is up in October. I know just what they're going to do - they're

going to wait until October and then say they can't do anything. "

After July's heavy rains, some of her neighbors reported leaky roofs and

water entering through smoke detectors. When Raquel knocked on 11 doors

on El Paso Street as part of a church ministry, she found many doorbells

already broken.

The 160 Mirasol-funded houses built off-site will be available for residents

to buy, after renting for five years, with a portion of their rent going

toward the down payment.

But Velasquez, the community activist, says residents will be asked to pay

an appraised value much higher than typical for their neighborhood, and will

end up worse off because the houses won't hold their value.

" You're condemning people to poverty because they don't have a huge pot of

money for a down payment, " he said.

After Velasquez repeatedly complained about the new houses, several top SAHA

personnel, a public relations firm hired by SAHA, city officials and the

builder inspected the project in December, noting and photographing " bowed

support beams, " " rotting fence boards, " " crooked and bad wood " and

" protruding sewer cleanout pipes, " among other problems.

Kinlaw said complaints have been addressed, but she acknowledged that public

housing residents, in Patlan's words, " don't complain, because you're afraid

they'll say, 'You complain too much, you have to move.' "

" I have a concern about (the residents') concerns, " Kinlaw said.

The builder reported 62 warranty claims and says it has responded to all but

two pending claims, each within 23 days. As for Velasquez's complaints,

" many of the items in question met the building codes of the city of San

, " the builder said in a written statement, adding that, " in the

interest of customer service, KB Home installed additional porch steps at

two homes and replaced broken fence planks. "

The warranty on most of the houses expires this month.

False hope?

Mirasol is part of a national effort to revitalize aging public housing,

born from the premise that high-density developments foster crime and that

housing for the poor should be spread around.

San received two of the nation's first HOPE VI grants, a program

conceived a decade ago when Henry Cisneros was housing secretary.

One of them, a $48.2 million federal award in 1995, was expected to

transform Mirasol into a " mixed-use " showcase, with social services,

apartments and homes.

A national study released last month sharply criticized the HOPE VI program,

up for reauthorization by Congress this year. The study called it " False

Hope " and questioned whether building " mixed-use " housing really solves the

housing shortage for the urban poor.

Delays have been common nationwide, with only $1.7 billion spent of the $4

billion allocated over nine years.

The slowness of many HOPE-funded projects meant many original residents were

" lost, " the study found. In San , just 44 of the original 500

families living at Mirasol returned.

San 's HOPE VI experience is typical in this and other respects, said

Wayne Sherwood, one of the authors of the study, which was completed by the

California-based National Housing Law Project and three other public housing

advocacy groups.

The Mirasol budget swelled with consultants. One received $947,150 to redraw

SAHA's master plan from the initial grant application.

It's too soon to evaluate the total project, as SAHA is just completing 67

townhomes on the original site at a cost of almost $5.8 million. Another 20

duplexes costing $1.6 million are nearly finished. SAHA also built 56 senior

units on outlying sites.

Adding the cost of the housing, including site improvements, acquisition and

related consultants, SAHA spent more than $96,000 per dwelling unit.

Including the cost of demolition, staff time, relocation, or environmental

remediation, the cost per unit rises to $105,000.

Not included in those costs are the $1.43 million SAHA paid for a health and

dental clinic, $902,377 it spent for a child care center, and $836,578

million for an administration building on the former Mirasol site.

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