 |
HOME |  |
SCHEDULE | |
PROGRAMS | |
KIDS & FAMILY | |
LOCAL | |
SUPPORT KCET | |
ABOUT US | |
SHOP KCET |  |
| About Us | Contact Us | |
 |
|
 |
          |
|
|
 |
 |
||
|
|
Life & Times Transcript
08/24/05 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Why are these people laboring under the hot sun after working forty hours a week at a day job? To have a home of their own. Maritza Galvan>> We value it more because, when our relatives come, we say we built it. We built the floor, we built the ceiling, we built my room, everything. I built it with my own hands. Val Zavala>> And then, this Hollywood home is ready for its close-up. We preview Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House after a five-year multi-million dollar facelift. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> How hard would you be willing to work to own your own home? Well, some families in the Coachella Valley are willing to contribute forty hours of hard labor a week to help build their own home. That's in addition to their regular job. So does it pay off? Sam Louie tells us about a program that takes sweat equity to a whole new level. Sam Louie>> Octavio Zazueta and his wife, Rosa, are among dozens of people putting in forty hours each week hammering, cutting and slowly erecting homes in the Coachella Valley. Octavio Zazueta>> It gets very hot. Right now, it's actually not very hot compared to earlier in the day. It gets to about a hundred ten degrees and one feels like fainting almost. It is hard, but we keep at it. Sam Louie>> Octavio and Rosa are not construction workers by trade and they aren't getting paid for this, so why are they willing to brave the heat and put in forty hours of hard labor? This is why. This is what their family currently calls home, an old, deteriorating trailer in Indio. They own it, but there's less than three hundred square feet for two adults and three growing children. The kids, ages ten to fifteen, sleep at one end of the trailer. Their two daughters must share a bed. Rosa Zazueta>> It is difficult for the fifteen year old especially because she is older than the other younger sister of hers. She sleeps one way and the other girl sleeps another way, so they're very uncomfortable in having to share the bed. Sam Louie>> The family uses fans to deal with the heat. Temperatures often top one hundred degrees. There is an air conditioning unit, but it doesn't work too well. And there are plumbing problems. The toilet has a cracked toilet tank. Rosa Zazueta>> The tank cracked when there was an earthquake recently, so we do not use the tank at all. It does not have any water at any time. Otherwise, it would leak through the crack that's there. What we do to flush the toilet is to take a bucket of water and the force of the water pushes the contents into the sewer. Sam Louie>> Octavio and Rosa desperately want a better future for their children. Rosa Zazueta>> It is very sad for us to think that our children would never have anything better than this. For us to not be able to provide for them something better was really very sad for us. Sam Louie>> The chance for that better future came when they heard about a home building program. They didn't hesitate a moment and signed up. With a combined income of only thirty-five thousand dollars a year, they qualified, but then came a long wait. For five years, the family's name sat on a waiting list. Five more years of living in the trailer. Finally last March, their names were called. Now they come here to put in forty hours of work a week in addition to their jobs as a furniture builder and a landscaper. Rosa Zazueta>> The thing that they will be most happy about once they're in their new home is the privacy. The children are very excited. They're looking very much forward to having privacy and having their own rooms. Sam Louie>> This home building program is run by the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition. It's an innovative way to get around high home prices and give low-income families a decent place to live. It's called the Mutual Self-Help Program. John Mealey is the Executive Director. John Mealey>> There's no housing being made available for people who have those kinds of incomes and those kinds of lower-paying jobs and to be able to buy a house on the market, so we started to be able to fill that gap. We're providing housing for people who can't get housing from the traditional real estate brokers and developers, so we're kind of like the houses of last resort. Sam Louie>> The program started in 1988 as a way to tackle the horrible housing conditions of farmworkers. John Mealey>> There are several hundred unlicensed farm labor camps that have been identified here in the eastern Coachella Valley and a lot of them do have sewer water backing up into peoples' living units and unsafe electrical wiring. Sam Louie>> The nonprofit agency has since expanded to include needy families. So far, more than one thousand low-income families have put in the work and become homeowners. To qualify, families must have good credit and be able to qualify for a loan. A single person cannot earn more than thirty-one thousand dollars a year and a family can't earn more than forty-five thousand. The interest rates on the loan are often below market. John Mealey>> The Department of Agriculture provides financing with interest rates as low as one percent and up to six percent, depending upon the family's income. So the families pay back the loan on the house. They get a loan like anybody else does. They pay that back. It's not a give-away program. Sam Louie>> As a part of the program, groups of ten to twelve families work together to build each other's homes. This is considered sweat equity where their labor is used as a down payment for their future home. John Mealey>> Typically, the labor accounts for about fifteen percent of the cost of the house, so that's how the families get into the house. That's how they're able to have a down payment to buy the house through that work they put into it. Sam Louie>> It usually takes anywhere between ten months to a year to complete the homes. The families admit that it's not easy, but they realize that this may be their only chance at owning a home. Octavio Zazueta>> It's very difficult. Others tell me, how do I do this? They ask me how can I work so hard first at my regular job and then come here and work on my home? I tell them, yes, it's hard, but at the end, I'll have a great place to call home. Sam Louie>> The homes have three or four bedrooms, two baths, and are appraised at about a hundred sixty thousand dollars. Maritza Galvan>> This is our living room. Sam Louie>> Maritza Galvan is one of the newest homeowners in Coachella. She and her family moved in three months ago. Maritza Galvan>> We're very happy because we accomplished our goal of having our home for our kids. Sam Louie>> Her husband makes only eighteen thousand dollars a year as a construction worker. The Self-Help Program helped them achieve the impossible. And by picking up a hammer and helping to build the home themselves, they have that extra sense of pride and ownership. Maritza Galvan>> We value it more because, when our relatives come, we say we built it. We built the floor, we built the ceilings, we built my room, everything. I built it with my own hands. Sam Louie>> Back at their trailer home, Octavio and his wife are grateful they'll soon be saying goodbye to this. Rosa Zazueta>> We never thought that we would be able to move from here. It seemed an impossible reality to some day leave here and have a home of our own. Sam Louie>> The Mutual Self-Help Housing Program puts about a hundred fifty families into new homes each year. One hundred fifty families much like the Zazuetas who are willing to work long hours in the hot sun for a home that would otherwise have been out of reach. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> Of the twenty-two police agencies that serve Orange County, which one is the best? Well, that's the question that The Orange County Register set out to answer in a special investigation report called "Unequal Protection". They looked not only at overall crime rates, but at response times and the ratio of officers to residents. What did they find out? Orange County reporter, Roger Cooper, talked with Tony Saavedra, one of three reporters on this investigative story. Roger Cooper>> Tony Saavedra, investigative reporter for The Orange County Register, you've been investigating at least a year on "Unequal Protection", just published. What's it about? Tony Saavedra>> Well, we decided that there really is not a comprehensive study or report card that looks at how police do their jobs. Every year, the FBI puts out crime stats. The State Attorney General's office puts out crime stats. But there's nothing that looks at how fast police arrive, how many crimes they solve, the ratio of police for residents. So we put it all together and put together a report card that tells the people in their community how well their police department stacks up against the others in Orange County. Roger Cooper>> How do you go about getting this information and then making sense out of it? Tony Saavedra>> A lot of the information is available from the California Attorney General's office. Some of the information is only available from the police departments themselves. So through the California Public Records Act, we were able to put in a request and to get the information from the departments. Now as a whole, none of the police agencies were happy we were doing this. They gave us information that they had to legally give us, but for the most part, it was like pulling teeth. That's kind of the reason it took so long. Some departments took a long time in answering simple questions. Roger Cooper>> So you took almost all the cities in Orange County and the Sheriff's Department and you gave them basically report cards? Tony Saavedra>> What we did was, we developed a scientific methodology. It's called a Z Score method. It basically weighs how far you are below or above the county average. The ones that are above will get a three star or, if they're really far above, they get a four star. Ones that are below the county average would get two stars or one star. Roger Cooper>> After putting all these figures together, what have you learned about the police departments and how they vary throughout Orange County? Tony Saavedra>> Well, I think the primary finding was that the cities that pay the Sheriff's Department for protection get fewer officers and have to wait longer for help than cities that have their own police departments. Roger Cooper>> Now you got a response from the Sheriff about your findings regarding areas policed by the Sheriff's Department. What's the answer they gave you? Tony Saavedra>> Well, Sheriff Corona told me that, yes, they do have fewer deputies in contract cities. What he was saying is that they feel they're cost-efficient. His direct quote was, "We don't hire people just to hire people or just to add more bodies." They feel that, since the crime rate is lower in some of those cities, they don't need as many officers. Yet when you look at Irvine where the crime rate is very low, they still have more officers there. So it just depends on the jurisdiction and it just depends on what the people want. I'm not sure whether they knew what services they were getting and how it compared to other cities. Now they do. Roger Cooper>> So basically, any citizen of Orange County can go to your investigative piece, find their city and learn things they probably didn't know about the response time and how they effective they are. Tony Saavedra>> The Register report card is not the last word on, you know, crime fighting in Orange County. It looks at eight specific measures and it tells you how well your department's doing on those eight measures. That said, you can look at it and you can tell how well your city is doing on each of those measures, compared to any other city in the county, compared to the county as a whole, and you can decide for yourself whether you feel your department is doing an adequate job or not. Roger Cooper>> I'm guessing the finding most people are going to be intrigued by is the response time, how long it takes a squad car, once called to an emergency, to get there. Tony Saavedra>> For a lot of people, that is important. We found that the response times go anywhere from below four minutes, well below four minutes, in the two or two and a half minute range, to nine minutes and twelve seconds in Anaheim. It's important to think of it this way. If you're in your bedroom and you hear glass breaking below and you call the police, nine minutes can seem like an eternity. You know, even two minutes can seem like an eternity. That's the way we looked at it. We asked police to give us their response times for top priority, life-threatening calls and that's what they gave us. As you can see, there's a wide disparity. Roger Cooper>> Help us with some of the figures. Who had the best times? Who had the less desirable times? Tony Saavedra>> The city with the worst response time in the county was Anaheim where the response time was nine minutes and twelve seconds. The cities with the best response time were cities like Los Alamitos, Costa Mesa, Brea and La Habra. You call those cities -- you press 9-1-1 and there will be a cop on your doorstep generally in less than four minutes. We put together a map that shows you each city and you can see that some cities have very small square mileage, but still had large response times. So again, it's hard to explain why that is. Roger Cooper>> Now you also looked at the ability to crack cases, to solve homicides, to solve break-ins, whatever. Some surprising figures there as well. Tony Saavedra>> Some of the cities with the best reputations as the safest cities in the nation, Irvine comes to mind and Huntington Beach. We found that, although they did a good job of preventing crime, if they can be credited with low crime rates, but they didn't do a very good job of solving crime, of cracking cases. Roger Cooper>> What kind of reaction have you gotten from the public and from the police? Tony Saavedra>> The reaction we've gotten from the public has been positive. You know, they're happy to see us do this type of thing. They think it's useful. The reaction we've gotten from the police departments has been a loud silence. Roger Cooper>> What do you hope cities will do with the information? Tony Saavedra>> Well, I hope they'll use the information to get whatever level of service they're comfortable with. You know, if they're comfortable with a nine minute response time, well, then they've got the information and they've decided that's good for them. Basically, you know, we're not trying to say you should be here and you should be there. We're just trying to give residents the ability to say this is what we have here and, for me, it's good or maybe it's not so good and, you know, take it from there. Roger Cooper>> Now you published your investigation, but the information lives on on your website. Tony Saavedra>> There are even more stories that didn't appear in the paper that are on the website. You can do quite a few things with the website. Roger Cooper>> Tony Saavedra, investigative reporter for The Orange County Register, thanks for sharing your year's worth of work with us. Tony Saavedra>> Thank you. To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> It's considered a superb example of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, the Hollyhock House here in Barnsdall Art Park in Hollywood. For many years, it fell into disrepair, but now it's been restored and, for the first time in about five years, it's open to the public. Hollyhock House was part of an unfinished dream by an unconventional oil heiress from Pennsylvania. Aline Barnsdall loved art, music and theater. In 1915, she came to Los Angeles and found a thirty-six acre hillside in Hollywood. She hired renowned architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, to design the center with residences, shops and theaters, everything from the façade to the furniture. But Barnsdall and Wright clashed and only three structures were built. One of them was Hollyhock House, finished in 1923. This film by the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department recounts its restoration. [Film Clip] Brenda Levin>> It's important that we understand today how this house originated because its association in the public's mind is within Frank Lloyd Wright and, to a large extent, this is what draws people to this house. It is a work by Frank Lloyd Wright and people put it in the context of Frank Lloyd Wright's overall career and they see it in the same way that they see FallingWater or the Robie House or the Guggenheim Museum. [Film Clip] We looked at Frank Lloyd Wright's original founding principles for the park, how the park was laid out, the landscaping for the park, how the individual buildings were sited and, of course, Aline Barnsdall's vision for the park as an art center, which would support a theater and fine arts. Eric Wright>> He had problems with Aline Barnsdall because she was always moving around and always traveling and also, at the same time, he was working on the Imperial Hotel. So, you know, it took quite a while when you took the boat in those days to get over to Japan and then you had to be there for several months, obviously, because it took you eleven days to travel one way and eleven days to come back, so that was almost a month in traveling. That always made it difficult and she was always traveling to Europe, so he would be home and she would be gone and there were numerous letters back and forth between the two of them asking each other to stop -- you know, for Frank Lloyd Wright to give more time to her building and my grandfather saying, well, you know, Aline, you need to be here. [Film Clip] Payton Mall>> Historic preservation projects, in general, are challenging because the materials that are in them represent an important artifact, so we have to protect them. [Film Clip] Mike Bandy>> We've given the art stone contractor approximately ten days to get far enough ahead of us so that we can all work up here together, but we're going to be removing the plaster in the areas where they've removed the art stone already and we're just going to be following right behind them as they go along and take the art stone off the exterior. Charles Kibbey>> When we get over to the B units which are the large ones, they weigh about a hundred twenty pounds each and they have, unfortunately, a step grout line. Mr. Wright was, unfortunately, very devious in his assembly pattern here and it's made it virtually impossible to slice the grout line with the diamond blade which would be the traditional method. So we're going to have to use a combination of drilling, chisels using light pneumatic Italian hammers especially designed for removing grout. We're going to be drilling, chiseling and very carefully leveraging and moving what's a hundred twenty pounds. Obviously, they don't want to break this stuff, so it's going to be a real challenge. Mike Bandy>> This is actually the next stage. When we start to fill everything in, you can see this whole section up to this point was broken off and you can see the breaks. We're slowly just filling everything in and trying to match the colors and the stone all the way down. Brenda Levin>> The major scope of our work in terms of architectural work is dealing with water infiltration. We know that the Hollyhock House has sort of suffered from major water infiltration problems and we have tried to use the FEMA and hazard mitigation work as a mechanism for dealing with that water infiltration so that at least at the end of the day we have not a watertight, but at least a water-resistant building so that, when we do move forward with the restoration, we'll be doing it in a protected house. Melvyn Green>> This particular building and the work we're doing is making improvements in its seismic performance, but it's not bringing it up to a level that we as engineers would prefer. What we're looking at is more risk reductions. [Film Clip] Brenda Levin>> What I think is important to realize here is that the basic plan of the building has never been changed. The same U-shaped configuration surrounding the interior courtyard has remained intact from design to the present day. Eric Wright>> The whole house in itself is one great feeling of my grandfather's work and the living room is certainly a wonderful statement of his feeling, having light coming down over that wonderful mural over the fireplace and the watercourse right around the front of the fireplace. It's a very really wonderful, romantic room and very dramatic. [Film Clip] David Judson>> The nice thing about Frank Lloyd Wright designs is that he never tried to imitate nature. I think he was trying to move himself away from what Tiffany and La Farge and other American art glass designers were doing. Trying to represent nature, he abstracted nature. In this particular house, hollyhock being the theme, he kind of picked up on that design and used that design to mimic nature, but not completely imitate it. Brenda Levin>> The Hollyhock House was declared a cultural heritage landmark in 1963. The American Institute of Architects nominated the Hollyhock House for preservation in 1963 as one of seventeen Frank Lloyd Wright buildings that has made an outstanding contribution to American culture. Kate Devino>> He had such a powerful vision and artistic mind and I hate to see that potential not being used. [Film Clip] Kate Devino>> I feel a little bit sad that she didn't carry through with it. However, I still think that it can happen here on this hill. Val Zavala>> Our thanks to the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department for that piece. And if you'd like more information on the Hollyhock House and tours, you can go to their website at hollyhockhouse.net. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
|
Home | Features | Arts | Health/Science | OC Edition | L&T Blog | Archives | About Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use |