The Fight for Wyvernwood

(This post originally appeared on August 10, 2008, on the now-defunct LAEastside blog.)

For sure, everyone reading this blog cares about keeping up with local happenings, not just of cultural or artistic significance, but also of social and political—of human-life—consequence, which the commercial media cover so poorly on the Eastside (a problem exacerbated over the years with the disappearance of once-competing newspapers and the continual downsizing of the Los Angeles Times).  So even if the Times doesn’t shed much light on the life and times of the people of Boyle Heights/East LA (we really are a single entity, you know, despite the city’s borderline at Indiana), I know many of you have heard about the struggle to save our homes at Wyvernwood Garden Apartments (most recently, the marching hundreds on two separate occasions last month) and that you might be hoping to get a little more background on it all.  Here is this piece, which I hope answers some basic questions about what Wyvernwood and this fight are all about.

The apartment complex tucked in between Olympic Blvd and 8th Street, Grande Vista and Soto streets (yes, a short walk from the iconic Sears building also being eyed for redevelopment and a bit more than a mile south of the future Gold Line) is made up of 1,187 rental units in 153 buildings scattered across seventy acres.  Only a few car-accessible streets wind their way through this unique neighborhood, meaning that the two-story, bright orange structures are separated mostly by green open areas and connected by a network of footpaths.  In a city where parks and public spaces are so scant and out of reach to poor people of color, you can imagine how precious this particular layout (dotted with countless large, beautiful trees) is to the largely bus-dependent, Latino immigrant families settled here.

Wyvernwood was inaugurated in 1939, a product of the Garden City movement in architecture and urban design that sought to foster a greater sense of community for residents than what seemed possible in the growing industrial cities of the era.  As el Chavo and his younger sister (themselves fellow Wyvernwood natives) once noted in a homemade ‘zine they published many summers ago, the experiment worked:  The six thousand people who live in this “village,” who by and large view the proposed demolition with dread, cite as their top concerns losing their homes, losing their foothold in the city, and having their lives tossed upside down just like that—but also seeing a live community disbanded.

Everyone at Wyvernwood knows this is a special place, even if few can pronounce the name.  Men and boys playing “futbol” and boisterous children on bikes or playing hide-and-go-seek mark a typical afternoon here, while every day, at dawn and at dusk, dozens of señoras can be seen determinedly walking their laps in groups, in pairs, or solo.  Neighbors pulling chairs together outside someone’s door for a carne-asada picnic, or a brief chisme visit, is also a daily sight. 

But there’s more:  Clans, not just families, make this their home.  If you ask around, you’ll learn that while some extended families transplanted intact from some ranchito south of the border over the decades, other such bands of kinfolk are homegrown.  One case is that of the Helguera siblings, all eight of whom were raised at Wyvernwood and who are now raising their own children and grandchildren in the same place.  Consider all their other blood relatives also living here, their compadres and comadres they’ve acquired among the neighbors over the years, then add their kids and grandkids, and you basically have a clan.  A child growing up within a short walk to several relatives is common at Wyvernwood; it’s a reason people move here.  Moreover, this is the kind of place where your neighbors come to feel like family.

However, this doesn’t work for Fifteen Group, the Florida real-estate company that bought Wyvernwood ten years ago.  Since the multi-family complex stands within LA city limits and was built before October 1, 1978, the Rent Stabilization Ordinance provides tenants here with some safeguards against unfair evictions and excessive rent increases.  But given that the market-rate price of housing in LA has soared over the last several years, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a profit-seeking landlord would be driven to look for loopholes in the RSO—like the clause that allows an owner to evict his tenants when he wants to convert the rentals into condominiums, or demolish altogether. 

Encouraged further by many city officials’ pro-development mood these days and the Community Redevelopment Agency’s eagerness to add elegance and exclusivity to downtown and the surrounding older districts, Fifteen Group is now betting that it could make big profits by tearing down Wyvernwood and building luxurious new homes east of the river—that’s right, east of the river!

Folks at Wyvernwood may not always speak good English, but you can't call them naïve either.  Over the summer of 2006, Fifteen Group’s new development specialist and main man in LA, Steven Fink, organized outdoor gatherings with tenants in about a half-dozen sections of the complex.  The purported aim of the meetings was to find out from the community what improvements the landlord/developer should make to Wyvernwood. “Don’t worry about whether it’s possible or not,” we were told by Fink’s team of architects and landscape designers, “just tell us what you would like to have, if you could have it.” Although a few inevitably dreamed big, as encouraged to by the “facilitators” (I admit I foolishly blurted out “swimming pools” at one point), people mostly stuck to basic, common-sense longings:  replacement of tattered old carpets that were awfully cheap to begin with; better landscaping, like in the old days; a long-overdue new coat of paint in their units.  In a few cases, they just wanted to change the color of the buildings to something more palatable!  Not quite satisfied with the responses, Fink’s people specifically asked if we’d also like swimming pools, underground parking or bigger units with A/C.  But participants were reluctant about these ideas, sensing that such amenities would come with new price tags they couldn’t afford (“si ya no quieren ni cortar el zacate de vez en cuando… ¿a poco nos van a dar tanto lujo sin cobrar más caro?”).

In January 2008, Fink—whose resume highlights his previous work with G.H. Palmer and Associates, the developer responsible for downtown’s Orsini, Medici, and other high-end “Italian” apartment towers—publicly unveiled his most faithful interpretation of “the people’s” vision:  a lavish, gated paradise made up of 4,400 condos and rentals; 300,000 square feet of office, commercial and retail space, including some 24-story buildings and several new streets intersecting the property.  “Towering ambitions for Boyle Heights,” the Times trumpeted the next day, untroubled by journalism ethics and standards.  (The article also reported as fact Fifteen Group’s assertion that the buildings are decrepit and too costly to repair when, really, anyone who has ever visited the place would see how much more structurally sound these buildings are than your typical rental in LA, despite the landlord's determined lack of attention to upkeep over the last several years.) 

So what was the real point of these meetings with tenants then?  Is Fifteen Group really just an enlightened, socially conscious sort of company looking for ways to help a working-class neighborhood, as Fink and his staff let on that summer?  Or as a San Francisco Chronicle editorial--commenting on Fifteen Group’s havoc in the Bay Area a few years ago--wonders:  Can this developer really be “trusted with its sudden expression of commitment to community improvement”?  

I think a former neighbor of mine was on to something when she suggested two years ago that the owners merely wanted to claim, eventually, that it was the people themselves who had asked for redevelopment.  The Guatemalan wife and mother of three—who after a generation at Wyvernwood was evicted last year when hard times caused her to fall ten days late with rent—further hypothesized that Fink was working to ingratiate himself with the public by projecting the semblance of a caring, charitable property owner and developer.  If successful, the resulting public trust he would gain for the company would make it easier for city officials to allow the project.

In fact, Fink seems to know the game of public relations well.  If you check out the company website, you’ll find out how the company has “partnered” up with a couple of Boyle Heights nonprofits providing important community services (i.e., Puente Learning Center and Jovenes, Inc., on whose boards Fink sits).  Pictures of the white middle-aged man in casual dress attentively listening to his Latino tenants at a gathering now grace the website and much of his promotional materials, illustrating his “sensitivity” to the needs of people whose hard-earned cash supply his income.  And ask around in the community and you’ll hear how much Fifteen Group has donated to other nonprofits and churches in the Eastside, how many neighborhood and religious leaders Fink has cozied up to, and how committed a Boyle Heights citizen and philanthropist he seems to have become.  “Steven is passionate about community service…” reads his bio.  

In his efforts to get the families of Wyvernwood to embrace the project that could give them the jolt of their lives, since the 2006 meetings Fink has invited tenants to about a dozen more on- and off-site “forums” to “continue the dialogue about the future of Wyvernwood.”  Unsurprisingly, these events have been nothing more than opportunities to bombard us with images of Fifteen Group’s Playa Vista-style vision for this little corner of EastLos, and deceptive promises that current residents would be part of that future.  Just to add to one’s distress, we’ve also heard reports that the company uses our signatures on these meetings’ sign-in sheets as expressions of support for its redevelopment plans. 

Oh, right… And the “dialogue” component of the gatherings always comes in the form of Fink himself reading and responding to a handful of written questions and comments that, interestingly enough, always seem favorable to the project!

Despite such painstaking, wily orchestration by Fink and his crew though (including the contracted PR firm, Consensus Planning Group, which promises to “deliver community support” for its clients’ projects, whatever they may be), the Miami Beach company must now deal with the glaring, overwhelming defeat in its quest for consent from the people of Wyvernwood.

The casual visitor strolling through the community any afternoon asking residents how they feel about the prospect of redevelopment will likely see a grimace on the responder’s face and almost invariably hear something like: “Pues, no nos conviene—obvio.”  A little pressing will reveal that people find this place safer and more comfortable than ever, thanks to the lowest crime rates in the area anyone can remember; that nobody wants to suffer the same hardship of families who have moved to the Inland Empire in search of affordable housing while leaving their jobs, schools, and hearts in LA; that families yearn that stability so frequently elusive for working-class Latinos, and that elderly residents just won’t be moved; and that despite the many grievances against the landlord, like widespread harassment and lack of maintenance, the uniqueness, communality and homeliness of Wyvernwood make it one of the few places in Los Angeles today where folks of modest means, young and old, can enjoy rich lives in a real community.