Gracian balks at the notion that working-class people should have ugly things. Critics say the homes ELACC builds are too nice - that yuppie types, already snatching up units in the area, will come and drive out residents. Community Corporation, or ELACC, a nonprofit that works to bring affordable housing to Boyle Heights and other mostly Latino communities. “Not putting bars on my home was about reclaiming that space and saying I'm not going to be afraid in my own home,” Gracian says. She didn't want to give potential burglars control over how she lives.
He worried her home would be robbed or, worse, that she'd be attacked.įor Gracian, removing the bars was about power. Her father wasn't crazy about her decision - even though his home, five blocks away, didn't have them either. She bought a home there a few years ago in one of its highest-crime areas and removed the burglar bars. becomes less dangerous - with the exception of a startling, across-the-board spike in crime last year - the bars on doors and windows, physical markers of a violent, gang-filled past, make some Angelenos queasy. It's part of a larger citywide discussion about gentrification, crime, race and poverty. The developers, eager to spruce up the project and make it look more like part of the community and less like a misplaced correctional facility, decided against bars.
“Some people said, 'The bars are missing!' Then other folks said, 'Well, we don't need bars anymore!'” King says. But he says bar-less renderings of the new units, rolled out in early planning meetings, led to some sniping among attendees. “Obviously without bars looks better,” says John King, planning policy director at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), which manages the city's public housing. If these “mixed-income” apartments work out, they could inspire planners in urban areas to forgo the bars. Some of the 700 new units won't have burglar bars. She says many felt “jailed in.” A $700 million renovation and construction project at Jordan Downs, however, could help end the era of outfitting low-income housing with prisonlike designs. “The bars on the windows fencing has been an issue that is perceived by some communities of color as stigmatizing them,” says UCLA urban planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. The message to residents: You're trapped. bungalow and apartment neighborhoods, are all over Jordan Downs. Iron “burglar” bars, which cover windows and doors in L.A. The pallid yellow exterior, the unadorned grass, the cracked structure, the dying trees - instant day-ruiners. The Jordan Downs housing project in Watts looks like it was built to bum everyone out.
0 kommentar(er)
