Group Ties School and Housing for First Time in Valley By SHELLY GARCIA Senior Reporter To all appearances, the five acres that runs along Canoga Avenue at Cohasset Street in Canoga Park looks like any other construction site. But behind the chain link fencing, something unusual is taking place a development geared specifically for single parent families that will combine affordable housing with an elementary school and a learning center that provides after school activities for the kids and a range of continuing education classes for their parents. The project, Tierra Del Sol, is the work of New Economics for Women, an L.A.-based not-for-profit that, since 1985, has specialized in assisting families using a holistic approach that attacks not only basic survival needs but also provides the skill sets and services they need to climb the economic ladder to success. The roof is just the beginning. Families living in New Economics developments get access to ESL classes, courses in managing finances, saving for home ownership or starting a new business, job preparation workshops and other skill training that has seen them increase their annual gross income by an average of 50 percent within five years of moving into the residence, New Economics boasts. New Economics, which has a $3 million annual budget, has so far provided some 419 apartment units southeast of downtown Los Angeles, but with Tierra Del Sol, the group is building its first project in the San Fernando Valley. It is also the first partnership struck between a not for profit and the Los Angeles Unified School District. The $25.4 million housing development will include 119 apartment units in three structures next door to a 35,141 square foot elementary school that will serve 520 students. The LAUSD will purchase the $15.8 million school and operate it upon completion of construction sometime next summer. As the child of a single parent, Maggie Cervantes (photo, above), a 13-year veteran of New Economics for Women, saw first hand the needs of working moms struggling to earn a living and raise their families. She joined NEW after working as a budget analyst for the city and now uses her administrative expertise to help provide families with alternatives to her own latchkey upbringing. Question: How are New Economics communities designed? Answer: It’s a web of services built around family to help that family become economically self sufficient. So based on that concept and based on the concept that a family really knows what it needs and wants when we design anything, when we build anything, it’s always based on the needs and wants of that community. For this area when we met with different stakeholders in the local area, a big need initially we saw was affordable housing with senior housing and a community center. When we talked to (then) council member Laura Chick she had indicated a real big need in this area was alleviating the overcrowding in schools. So at that point we talked to LAUSD and came up with this partnership that you see coming together now with affordable housing on one piece of the property and a 520 student elementary school that will service the local children. Q: What are some of the programs that are offered to adults? A: We’ll have ESL classes besides the other host of services that NEW provides which is financial literacy. Families need to know how to manage their money and how to go to that next economic level. How to use a financial system in this country, consumer education classes, how to use your credit cards or not use your credit cards, how to save up for home ownership. There’s a lot of fraud in the Latino community especially in the Spanish-speaking community and so we address those issues as well. Q: Did New Economics begin with this holistic approach or is it something that has evolved over time? A: New Economics for Women was started by five Latinas who grew up in poor communities, who went to college and became professionals and now had a middle class standard of living. Back then they were looking at what were the differences that helped them move from where they came from to a middle class family, and a lot of it had to do with family values, with the culture the family created about success and prosperity and really how the mother played such a huge influence on the lives of these women. In combination with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory, which says your basic survival needs need to be met in order to move onto the next level, the members looked at housing with onsite supportive services to begin to address some of those issues. Q: These projects appear very complex and expensive. How did the Tierra Del Sol project come together for instance? A: New Economics for Women is really a team effort so we have various individuals with different expertise that come together to put a deal like this together. Bea Stotzer, our board president and a founding member, who is a San Fernando Valley resident, was influential in having her contacts with the Dept. of Water & Power who sold us the property. The executive committee worked at negotiating the LAUSD agreement. We had other individuals that helped us put the financing together on the housing side as well as the school site. We conducted focus groups with families and community stakeholders and business owners to ensure that what we were proposing is something they were interested in and to get their input about the school and housing. Leslie Lambert at the Community Redevelopment Agency was instrumental in helping us through that process. Q: Who is financing Tierra Del Sol? A: It’s a complex deal. It’s a combination of public and private financing so our lenders are: US Bank, Los Angeles Housing Department, Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, California Dept. of Housing and Community Development, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco and Western Financial Bank. Q: Why is New Economics for Women able to boost the incomes of the families it serves in ways that other programs, such as Section 8 housing cannot? A: The difference is the services and the way that we work with our families. Each of our families has a case manager attached to the building that services those families. That case manager working with that family puts an economic plan together where they have certain milestones they want to reach. So a family may want to save up to buy a house, or it could be to start their own business or maybe they finished school and they now want to be a chef or a nurse or a physician’s assistant. What our staff does is to help put those pieces together and refer them out to other services in the community to help them get to that next level. There’s a level of accountability within our organization, our social contract that each family signs is tied to the lease, so that it’s not a free ride. If you’re interested in living here you have to commit to what you say you will do. Q: What was the most difficult aspect of putting this deal together? A: The school site was a challenge because it’s never been done before in the sense that this is the first time the LAUSD has a partnership with a non profit. Because they were able to jump on our bandwagon so to speak we were able to create a unique site that combines housing and schools. Q: Why haven’t others proposed this kind of partnership do you think? A: It’s not easy to do. We’ve been working on this for the last four years. It took a lot of perseverance and Bea Stotzer and the executive committee worked with LAUSD for a long period of time to work on that mindset. Q: How does the current budget crunch affect you? Are you looking at alternatives to public funding for your projects? A: We’re still struggling with that. Just in terms of the construction costs going up I think that adds another layer of difficulty, so projects are getting more costly and there’s going to be less public money to spread out, so funding will become even more competitive, and its’ going to be more difficult and more expensive to do deals. Q: How did you get involved with New Economics for Women? A: I grew up in a single parent family so I think my childhood experience gave me a passion to help other families and children. When I was growing up there were no support services or any affordable housing that we knew of that could help relieve the burden off my mom’s shoulders of having to work two jobs and raise her kids. So for me this is a perfect job because I help families create a better quality of life for themselves and their children. Maggie Cervantes Title: Executive Director, New Economics for Women Born: Oct. 27, 1958, East L.A. Education: Bachelor of Arts degree in Chicana Studies at Loyola Marymount University; Masters degree in Public Administration from University of California, Riverside Personal: Single, no children Most Admired Person: Mom, Dolores Career Turning Point: Volunteering at Comision Feminil where she learned she could combine her administrative talents with her passion for the community.