Los Angeles Housing Authority Receives $35 Million Federal Grant For Watts Housing

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles announced Thursday that it had received a $35 million federal grant to create more affordable housing in the Watts neighborhood.

"Watts in the 1960s was synonymous with unrest," Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday in his daily coronavirus briefing. "For decades [the neighborhood] has waited for investment, new affordable housing, commercial spaces, restaurants."

The Choice Neighborhoods Implementation grant from the United States Department of Housing will support with HACLA calls the "Watts Rising Transformation Plan," which includes the redevelopment of 700 public housing units at Jordan Downs into 1,569 units.

"At a moment when so many of us are hurting, these federal dollars will help us assist the people of Los Angeles who live in and around the Watts community," Garcetti said. "Now we asked for this money long before COVID-19, and we received the money separate from the crisis, but it really came at the exact right time for exactly the right place."

HACLA officials said the funds were leveraged by $685 million in private, local and state resources.

The federal funding will build on the authority's Transformative Climate Communities grant from the state used to invest in community health, jobs and entrepreneurism.

HACLA provides affordable housing to over 83,000 households in its public housing and Section 8 departments throughout the city.

(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)