A lift for 107th Street

Among the many L.A. neighborhoods that could use some good housing news is Watts, where in September the median home price tumbled 54.5% to $162,000 from the same month a year ago based on 22 sales, according to statistics from DMA DataQuick.

Here an usual arts endeavor called the Watts House Project is lifting, if not home values, at least community spirit.

Local artist Edgar Arceneaux is directing the arts-driven revitalization of nearly two dozen houses on 107th Street, reported Lynell George in Sunday's Los Angeles Times. Centered on the landmark Watts Towers, the collaboration of residents, artists, designers and architects is being called by its director "a large-scale artwork" in the shape of neighborhood redevelopment. The goal is to overhaul the neighborhood with facade and streetscape improvements, designed to meet the needs of the individual residents, over a five-year period.

--Lauren Beale

Thoughts? Comments?

Photo: Edgar Arceneaux's Watts House Project is part conceptual art, part activism. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Suzi]

54% tumble isn't much when you consider the increases year over year the previous 10 years..so we still have a long ways to go before the bottom is seen. I keep track of this data at:

http://www.homepricetrend.com

[dot]

Anybody can come to Watts and say what they are doing
to improve the community but the community does not
know anything about this project or any other projects
brought to the community because no one goes door
knocking to inform the residents of Watts.

These projects will hold a event and take the sign-in
sheets as community participation, when there is no
community participants or knowledge of the program.

This has been the problem in Watts for the last twenty
years and no on e will investigate the problem.

[buz]

I would consider buying in Watts for 40-50K. Nothing more. And having some innane art project doesn't begin to sway me about living there. Jordan Downs has nice art projects also and I am not moving there anytime soon.

[Tim K.]

It is GOOD NEWS that housing prices ARE dropping in Watts. There was no rational way the people who live there could possibly afford those homes.

I don't hear any complaining about how the fall in gas prices is BAD NEWS, unless you've filled you basement with hundreds of gallons of unleaded hoping to flip them to your unsuspecting neighbors when you thought prices would be $10 per gallon.

[srla]

Lauren,

You will find in no time flat that if you continue to use non-objective terminology like "good housing news" on this blog, you will get slammed by the majority of readers. There are certainly countless reasons why lower prices in Watts ARE good news for residents, but that is beside the point.

As a reporter, I would hope you would learn lessons from the mistakes made by your paper (and most others) during the bubble years and attempt to OBJECTIVELY report financial news, rather than serving as a cheerleading corps for one industry or one segment of the economy.

Readers of this blog are, by and large, very well educated on the current economic situation, and they will not tolerate such a lack of objectivity.

[Nick]

The problem with trying to improve neighborhoods like Watts is that without a way to make an area safe, it's going to be undesirable as a place to live, no matter how attractive you try to make parts of it. The fact that you can't walk around at night without fearing for your life trumps any amount of investment in art projects.

If LA wants to clean up areas of the city and make them more desirable places to live (and thus increase housing prices), they need to figure out how to stop the crime, plain and simple. Anything else is the proverbial lipstick.