Massive Public Housing Project Endangered in Los Angeles

Jessica Garrison and Kurt Streeter report on the disappointment in Watts after city officials and neighborhood leaders learned that they wouldn’t receive a $30 million Choice Neighborhoods grant that would have helped fund a $700 million makeover for Jordan Downs, a public housing project in South Los Angeles stricken with distressing levels of crime and unemployment.

“For years, officials have been touting their plan to spend upward of $700 million to transform the derelict and often dangerous housing project into a mixed-income community of up to 1,800 stylish new apartments, along with chain stores and new streetscapes.”

The Jordan Downs project was approved by the city of Los Angeles in August 2013, with plans to attract mixed income residents to the area while reserving residential units for 2,300 current residents.

The project’s failure to receive the federal grant compounded disappointment from earlier this year, when “South Los Angeles, including Watts, was left out of the boundaries of a new ‘Promise Zone’ in Los Angeles designed to marshal federal resources for poverty.”