Avalon Gardens – Los Angeles CA

Description

Avalon Gardens was one of the developments in Los Angeles, CA completed under the city’s New Deal–era public housing program. In 1941-43, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) constructed 10 public housing developments for $16 million, funded 10% by city bonds and 90% by federal loans from the United States Housing Authority (USHA). Located on 14.9 acres of land in southeast Los Angeles, Avalon Gardens was constructed between November 1941 and April 1942. It received additional funding from the Federal Housing Authority (FHA).

Avalon Gardens featured 62 frame-and-stucco bungalow-style residences, including apartment buildings, scattered single-family homes, and about 30 duplexes. There were 164 living units total. The development also included an administration building with large meeting rooms, a craft room, kitchen facilities, and offices and shop spaces. Initially reserved for defense workers and veterans, the housing development was open to the public after 1947. Two years later, another development by the same name was constructed further south.

The other nine HACLA/USHA public housing projects were: Ramona Gardens, Pico Gardens, Estrada Courts, Pueblo del Rio, Rancho San Pedro, Rose Hills Courts, Hacienda Village, William Mead Homes, and Aliso Village. They were all designed as modern, garden-style complexes with low-rise, one- to three-story buildings.

To make way for these housing developments, HACLA conducted federally-sponsored “slum” clearance of outdated, inner-city neighborhoods. While former residents and low-income families were promised priority, nine of the ten projects were temporarily converted to wartime housing reserved instead for defense workers and their families. After the war, the HACLA developments transitioned to public housing over a period of five years (1947-52) and became open to the low-income residents for whom they were originally intended. In contrast to federally owned housing developments, HACLA complexes were racially integrated at a time of widespread segregation, housing Americans of different races and ethnicities.