The Ninth Commandment

The Secretary of the Interior is responsible for establishing standards and advising Federal agencies on the preservation and rehabilitation of historic properties.

Rehabilitation is defined as, "the process of returning a property to a state of utility, through repair or alteration, which makes possible an efficient contemporary use while preserving those portions and features of the property which are significant to its historic, architectural, and cultural values".


Like other sacred endeavors, there are ten commandments, most are straight-ahead, reasonable guidelines. Then there's commandment number nine: New additions, exterior alterations, or related new construction shall not destroy historic materials that characterize the property. The new work shall be differentiated from the old and shall be compatible with the massing, size, scale, and architectural features to protect the historic integrity of the property and its environment. Compatible but differentiated.

This is the one that gives the architects, the egoists, the history infidels, wiggle room.

Pictures please, historic branch library on Jefferson Boulevard (in historic West Adams).







Does this look compatible to you? Differentiated sure. Compatible? This is about as compatible as the Luxor cleaved to Fallingwater. Like the Jetson's toaster collided with Aladdin's lamp. Like Christy Brinkley and Billy Joel.


Apparently, 'differentiated' means build whatever dissimilar thing you want, Modernist-revival pitch can, Bauhausian up-chuck, hypermodern sharp-cornered cinder-block bomb shelter. Good grief.

Stuccalow--No Mas!

Amongst the most misguided remodeling or "modernizing" efforts is the application of stucco over wood clapboard. Contrary to stubborn belief, stucco neither acts as an insulator nor protectant, nor does it add to property values. It is however, quite decharacterizing and can also lead to an increase in--sometimes hard to detect--termite issues. Nor is stucco a low maintence product, frequently developing cracks, and requiring paint as often as wood siding.

Louis and Lisa are just the latest to embark on a de-stucco-ing campaign.



The stucco is usually applied over chicken wire, nailed to the clapboard. The stucco can by cut, by a diamond blade on a circular saw, or simply smashed with a hammer to permit a hand hold, and then pulled or pried loose. A wire cutter can be helpful too, to sever the chicken wire, often exposing a poor surface bond, with allows the stucco to be pulled away in large chunks.



Ordinarily the clapboard is only damaged at the bottom, or skirt, near the ground where the stucco is applied most heavily. Holes in the clapboard can be filled easily and then normal paint prep pursued. Sometimes stucco is used to mask deficiencies in the siding, like covering a hole in the floor with a rug; still even then, siding can be replaced ("patched") by a carpenter of average skill.

Washout

The Laundry Debate

We all agreed, the current laundry set-up, choking a back entry way, was problematic. But where else might the washer/dryer/utility sink go?

The owners bucked for their un-California like basement, a high ceiling-ed space, nearly 300 square feet, with only a furnace and a rusty game table.

"Too far from the bedrooms", the contractor argued, "Inconvenient carrying all those baskets up and down."

"We're talking laundry here folks", I quipped, "not bags of cement."

Outside was considered, and quickly shot down. "Who wants to do laundry when it rains", went the refrain.

"What's that", I sassed, "Fifteen days a year? Besides it'll put you next to the clothes line. Perhaps that's the most convienent option of all."

Their eyes fell upon me. An evesdropping workman unsuccessfully supressed a laugh, the cable installer silently shook his head, Seymour the cat lost interest in my hemp Addidas. I knew what they were thinking: 'how vulgar, how unsophisticated.'

Nobody bothers with a clothes line any more, even my wife likes the towels better out of the dryer, "less coarse", she insists.

"What's wrong with drying and exfoliating," I ask.




Sadly, even in the Eco-hoods no one uses a clothes line. There are some communities in California where they're prohibited altogether. In the projects, the drying greens appear deserted. Some prefer to hang inside, on a clothes horse, so as not to be detected by judgmental neighbors. Only the Chinese immigrants in Alpine Village, with their rotary carousels, seem impervious to the status shaming.

I like using my nerdy rack, and I don't care if it takes longer. It's a little more trouble to separate my garbage into three cans too, but I do that also.

Mole City

Markets and Migration

Despite an increase in inventory levels, an accumulation aided by a purchase volume deduction, housing inventory remains low throughout West Adams and South Los Angeles.

Inventory, in my recent experience, has been most commonly generated by death, departure (persons leaving Los Angeles for cheaper housing markets), and divestment (the liquidation of "Single Family" rental properties).



Chief among the departing, African Americans are leaving Los Angeles, some for the relatively inexpensive exurbs like Palmdale and Fontana, many for the South.

This "reverse migration", largely attributed to an improved racial climate, family ties, cost of living factors, cultural identity ("kinship") and the African American college system has made the South the country's only region with a growing African American population.

Between 1996 and 2000 alone, according to Black Enterprise magazine, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles each lost between 3 and 6% of its African American population. Conversely newcomers made up 5.5, 7.6, and 9.6% of the growing black populations in Dallas, Charlotte, and Atlanta respectively.

According to an analysis by Manuel Pastor, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, the city of Compton in 1980 was 80% African American and 20% Hispanic; and, by 2000 had become 60% Hispanic and 40% African American.





In Los Angeles, one Rand Corporation study suggests that African Americans have been unable, possibly displaced by immigrants, to infiltrate the growing service economy.

Derek and Jay, who asked to be described as "black businessmen", were willing to speak on the subject:

Jay: "African Americans moved/are moving to the suburbs and elsewhere for the same reason whites did, concerns about gangs, schools. It's more unsafe for us here than it is for you."

Derek: [Regarding Reverse Migration] "Sure there's concerns about a loss of political influence too, but a lot of it is business."

Jay: "There's a "roots" thing. Most of our families don't come from here and are only here in part. So there's a social network which we can easily tap into elsewhere."

Derek: "The poor can't afford to leave and the rich don't have to, but the middle class--our entrepeneurial backbone--is going."

Jay: "It's an immigrant city, and the opportunities in business are here for the immigrants. Not just the Hispanics, but the Chinese, the Persians...."

Derek: "It ain't no Chocolate City."

Jay: "It's a Chocolate Mole City."