By volunteer contributing writer Rebecca Koppenhaver
David Mosley has a view of his apartment’s courtyard from his front porch: a lush green lawn, blossoming trees and bushes, a colorful children’s slide, and a meandering concrete path where kids ride their scooters from building to building. This Rolland Curtis Garden Apartments complex is in a bustling neighborhood—the Expo Line speeds by at regular intervals and bikers and pedestrians travel to and from nearby USC.
David, 73, is an artist and an active leader with T.R.U.S.T. South L.A., a Liberty Hill partner. He smiles when he talks about the sights and sounds of his neighborhood. “This place is a breath of fresh air. I like it here! I like raising my daughter here, and I get to meet a lot of interesting people.” But this positive environment only exists here because Mosely and his neighbors fought a long, intensive community campaign to preserve the complex’s long-held status as affordable housing when a developer tried to force tenants out and convert to market-rate student housing.
Two years ago, David, who lives with his teenage daughter, and the rest of the tenants at Rolland Curtis Gardens were faced with the looming threat of eviction from the apartment complex, which had been purposefully neglected and allowed to fall into disrepair.
David is a soft-spoken man, with piercing hazel eyes and an air of wisdom that floats through his words. Inside his tidy second floor apartment, the white walls are hung with his colorful drawings and paintings, a testament to his intriguing history of 50-plus years traveling the country as an artist, painting portraits of the likes of Angela Davis and Malcom X, working for The Brotherhood Crusade, and designing posters and album covers for boxing promoter Don King, Bob Marley and other high-profile personalities.
David’s base was Watts, where he had lived most of his life, but in 1997, looking for a good place to raise his daughter, he moved to Rolland Curtis Gardens. He quickly got to know his neighbors, mostly families trying to make ends meet, in the 48-unit complex. Many relied on Section 8 subsidies. The 1981 complex had been built with Community Redevelopment Agency and HUD funds and therefore carried the responsibility of being low-income housing until 2011. Tenants enjoyed spacious apartments in a secured complex with plenty of room for kids to play outdoors and parking.
In 2004 Rolland Gardens was sold to a real estate developer. When the low-income covenant expired in 2011, tenants immediately received 90-day eviction notices. Meanwhile, the owner had already begun a campaign of neglect to the building and the grounds, hoping tenants would move. Maintenance stopped, trash pickup was irregular, and tenants often went without hot water and electricity.
“We had heard the owner had big plans for the property. He wanted to make it housing for students, and he was hoping we would all just leave,” says David, adding that many residents were scared and confused, and didn’t want to leave. “There were families here that had been here for a long time. They liked it here. They watched their kids grow up here, like me.
“I saw these poor families that didn’t know how to come together and make their voices heard.”
David says that back then, he didn’t know what, if anything, could be done, but he sensed that as tenants they had rights, and they were being ignored.
T.R.U.S.T South L.A., a community land trust organization dedicated to preserving affordable housing and a grantee of Liberty Hill, began organizing tenants with the ultimate goal of acquiring the 2.3 acres of Rolland Curtis Gardens and preserving it for permanent affordable housing. David’s respected presence among tenants immediately made him a leader at their weekly meetings at a nearby church.
Sandra McNeill, Executive Director of T.R.U.S.T South L.A., says, “David quickly materialized as a respected voice in the room at our meetings. He has a strong capacity for articulating the tenants’ concerns and also has the ability to rally people.”
McNeill describes how Mosley brought people to meetings, made media contacts, and did his own research. He was successful in getting a letter from the tenants published in The Los Angeles Sentinel, which resulted in a previously unresponsive city council member finally offering his assistance to the group.
Tafarai Bayne, Director of Mobility and Recreational Programs at T.R.U.S.T South L.A., says the process of organizing and working to purchase the Rolland Curtis Gardens was a long journey. “Our course shifted and stopped and started many times within the long process,” says Bayne. “David really helped tenants work through their concerns and fears about a process that is never easy.”
The process of preserving the affordable housing status of the complex began with the tenants countering the purposeful neglect of the buildings and grounds by reporting code violations. Citations for more than 300 violations including electrical, plumbing, and safety hazards were issued as T.R.U.S.T South and its partner Abode Communities sought funding to buy the property. Negotiations stalled numerous times. During that time of uncertainty, about half of the families at Rolland Gardens moved out.
David had decided early on that in spite of the problems, he would see it the fight through to the end and encourage his neighbors to do the same, but privately he was sometimes unsure. “I would have my doubts,” he remembers, “but Sandra opened my mind and gave me strength and encouragement. She was very dedicated.”
Mosley credits his art with him helping survive the turbulence of his early years in Watts and McNeill suspects it is Mosley’s progressive political nature and his ability to overcome an oppressive background that has made him an optimistic and powerful force in the Rolland Curtis Gardens saga. “David understands the need for solidarity and organization when you are working towards a goal,” she says. “He is also a fundamentally hopeful and faithful person.”
In July 2012, a purchase offer from T.R.U.S.T South LA and Abode Communities for Rolland Curtis Gardens was accepted, and the deal closed later that month. David and the other tenants continue to meet monthly through T.R.U.S.T South LA and Abode Communities to to participate in the planning process for rebuilding the site with permanently affordable housing, for these and future families.
David is proud of the tenants’ achievement and shares the Rolland Curtis Gardens story with new tenants who move in. But most of all, he likes that his teenage daughter is mindful of what has happened. “She understands what it took to get where we are, and that is what I want for her: to learn to be right and fair with people—and to do some good in the world.”
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