Women under Fire: Public Housing Activism in Los Angeles

Abstract

Blackened and twisted metal remains; only the remnants of charred signs reveal that the fire destroyed a check-cashing store, a laundromat, a market. Stripped gas pumps and boarded-up convenience stores are surrounded by chain-link fences. Many lots are entirely cleared of debris; other stores are open for business but with few goods inside. For women who live in South Central Los Angeles, this landscape translates into longer trips and more time spent to get money, find food, clean their clothes, and take care of their households. For them, life shifted and became harder in the aftermath of fires following the April 29, 1992, verdict in which jurors in the Simi Valley courthouse acquitted four Los Angeles policemen in the beating of Rodney King. The Bush administration responded lukewarmly to the underlying conditions of poverty and racism that contributed to the burning and looting. They recycled policies. Public housing became one focus as Bush reluctantly supported Jack Kemp. Kemp, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has been pushing a policy to convert renters to home owners and get government out of public housing. Any attention to public housing is a de facto recognition of a largely woman's world. In South Central Los Angeles, where five public housing developments are in relatively close proximity to each other, just such a concentrated women's world exists. Public housing is primarily inhabited by women of color and their children. Among the residents are leaders for whom positive attention is long overdue. These women have been fighting for years