Cleaning House : A New Owner Rallies Residents to Save Park Village Project

COMPTON —  Even for a housing project, Park Village in Compton had a bad reputation.

“Guys used to drive in and ask if we wanted to buy drugs,” said Erica Williams, 17. “There would be fights all the time, loud music. Cars would be stolen. And it seemed like once a month, somebody would get killed.”

“The gangbangers used to hang out, beating up people,” said Lynn Melei, 28, who has lived in Park Village for 20 years. “It was awful.”

But after Bill Dawson’s company and a group of concerned residents took over the 164-unit complex in March, the disorder, like the trash that once littered the yards, has virtually disappeared.

A year later, tenants say they see definite changes. “It’s come a long way,” Melei said.

Colorful murals, painted by a local artist and the children of Park Village dot the southern fence along Alondra Boulevard. Drug dealers have been evicted. White picket fences are going up in areas where garbage once piled up. Thanks to an after-school program, many parents say the children who live in the apartments are doing better in school.

“People are gaining pride in where they live,” tenant Cynthia Ballard said. “Park Village doesn’t look like the projects anymore.”

Built in 1942, Park Village once served as Navy housing. It was later owned by a series of corporations and other absentee landlords.

In 1976, using federal funds, the Los Angeles County housing authority remodeled the units for moderate- and low-income tenants. Still, problems festered.

Beneficial Asset Management Inc. of Long Beach bought the property in March, 1991. “The place was allowed to deteriorate by the previous owners,” company President Bill Dawson said. Dawson and his wife, Sam, supported the tenants’ efforts to improve the neighborhood. One of their first actions was to invite all the tenants to a meeting.

“Bill was like a guardian angel that was sent to our rescue,” said Margie McKenzie, a tenant and the driving force behind the project’s new security patrol.

“He was behind us, always asking us how he could help us make this a better place.”

But at the meeting, McKenzie said, 20 out of 1,000 residents showed up.

McKenzie said cultural differences among the ethnic groups in the complex “kept some people from wanting to help out.” About 60% of the tenants are Samoan, 25% are African-American and 15% are Latino, she said.

Despite resistance, a few women helped form an after-school education program, a 24-hour unarmed security force and a tenant relations and beautification committee.

Park Village’s after-school program is temporarily housed in a vacant four-bedroom apartment and staffed by volunteers. It helps about 35 children, who range in age from 3 to 12, with their homework. High school volunteers serve as part-time teachers.

One of the Park Village mothers formed a drill team, and another teaches Samoan dance. The tenants hosted bake sales and barbecues to raise money for uniforms for both groups.

Jan White, a tenant since 1969, said the program gave her daughters, ages 7 and 13, something fun to do.

“They are in the drill team. They’ve gone to game shows, summer camp. I like that. I can’t afford to do it, so (the volunteers) do it for me,” she said.

After taking care of the children, the tenants’ most pressing problem at Park Village was crime.

At first, Dawson hired a private security agency to patrol. “But all they did was stay around in one place. I figured, what’s the use of paying them when they don’t do anything for us?” McKenzie said.

That’s when McKenzie and the security committee decided to form their own security force.

“We knew who lives here, who isn’t supposed to be here. We knew who was selling drugs,” she said.

Dawson hired Rickie Tedford, a reserve Los Angeles police officer, to train the tenants. “There was a lack of experience on the tenants’ part,” Tedford said, but “they were responsive, eager to learn.”

He taught them how to patrol the area, log incidents and write reports.

At one point, 32 tenants were on the Park Village security force, Tedford said. Dressed in blue shirts and black jackets, the force patrolled the complex and rousted loiterers. They also installed a guard booth at the entrance, where visitors must check in.

“Usually, they were people who didn’t live here,” said McKenzie. “We’d tell them to leave and not come back.”

That’s where complaints surfaced.

Sometimes a tenant would forget to give the security officer the name of a friend who was coming to visit, McKenzie said.

“We’d turn them away if we didn’t see their name, and the tenants would complain,” she said. “But they know the rules.”

As the crime problem decreased, so did the security staff--to 13.

When a tenant’s children disturbed the peace, McKenzie said, the security force would tell the family.

“We would go straight to their relative and tell them: ‘Look, we saw your kid causing trouble. Take care of it, or we’re going to do something about it.’ ”

The security force has worked with the Compton Police Department.

“I think they are doing an outstanding job,” acting Police Chief Hourie Taylor said. “The tenants are buying into making it a nicer environment.”

He said the tenants’ support has also helped raise morale on the force.

“When you are in a Police Department, and when the officers sense there are people who want to make things better, there is a tendency to try your best,” the chief said. “When you see a program like this, you become more enthusiastic.”

Park Village tenants say police now respond faster to calls from the project, and even assigned undercover officers to live there briefly to investigate drug sales from one apartment.

The tenants were later evicted.

“They have been very aggressive in terms of the drug activities,” Taylor said. “Putting those drug dealers out is a tool we don’t have. Holding the threat of eviction over a person’s head is very effective.”

The tenants say the improvements in Park Village have benefited the children most.

“The outdoors are safer for our kids,” said Mary Williams, who has a daughter, 17, and a son, 12.

“Everybody knows everybody. We’re all like family,” Williams said.

The youngsters see a difference too. “I was getting into trouble a lot,” said Quincy Auelua, 12. He said he and a friend broke into the Park Village food bank. “We started taking stuff, boxes of cookies. And we took the boxes and hid them in a vacant apartment.”

When the break-in was discovered, Auelua said he felt bad about it. “I told Margie (McKenzie) the truth,” he said.

Auelua and his friend had to find ways to repay the food bank. “So we started working, fixing the gates.”

Now he doesn’t have time to get into trouble, he said. He works on the grounds committee, which checks the yards for trash and helps with maintenance.

And he dances with the Park Village Samoan Dancers. That group joined the Park Village Rhythm Dancers and the drill team a few weeks ago to perform during halftime at a fund-raiser--a football game played by two semi-professional teams at Compton High School. They took in $1,000 to help buy a mobile classroom to house the after-school program. Sam Dawson figures they will need about $6,000.

The activists who live in Park Village say they have a way to go to reach their goals. But the future looks brighter, and they are working together.

“Parents I’ve never seen before are beginning to come out and volunteer,” McKenzie said. “They’re finally beginning to understand that getting involved is something that is going to help the entire community.”