Title: Chavez Ravine: Community to Controversial Real Estate | KCET
Headings: Chavez Ravine: Community to Controversial Real Estate
Chavez Ravine: Community to Controversial Real Estate
Content: Contending that Chavez Ravine was a slum -- an argument advanced by photographs that selectively depicted ramshackle structures and street patterns defying suburban norms -- the city called for the demolition of the entire community. Hills would be regraded, canyons filled, and access roads built through existing neighborhoods. In July 1950, the city's housing authority sent letters to the current residents of Chavez Ravine, informing them that "a public housing development will be built on this location for families of low-income...the house you are living in is included." "Later," the letter added, "you will have the first chance to move back into the new Elysian Park Heights development." As Alexander and Neutra refined their plans, the city housing authority used its power of eminent domain to purchase residents' property, spending roughly $3 million in the process. Some resisted, fighting the city's actions in court, but by the summer of 1952 most of Chavez Ravine was abandoned. Then, the political winds shifted. As Dana Cuff explains in her book, "The Provisional City: Los Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism," a coalition led by the Los Angeles Times, private home builders, and a public interest group named Citizens Against Socialist Housing (CASH) played up early-Cold War fears of creeping socialism. Support for the government-run housing project collapsed.