Act Now! Developer Evicting Families in LA from Model Urban Farm Project

Clara T

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Wed Feb-01-06 10:21 PM
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Act Now! Developer Evicting Families in LA from Model Urban Farm Project

Trouble in the Garden
The 350 families who banded together as the South Central Farmers transformed an industrial dump into a jungle paradise. But now they’re being evicted

Let it rain: John Brown, 11, helps farmer Lucino Cardozo and his son, Enrique, 11

The space is the South Central Community Farm, a 14-acre community garden just south of downtown smack on Alameda Street, right up alongside the industrial warehouses of the City of Vernon. The contrast with community gardens elsewhere in the city is shocking. These aren’t tiny weekend projects with a few tomatoes and California poppies. The 330 spaces here are large, 20 X 30 feet, many of them doubled- and tripled-up into larger plots, crammed with a tropical density of native Mesoamerican plants – full-grown guava trees, avocados, tamarinds, and palms draped in vines bearing huge pumpkins and chayotes, leaf vegetables, corn, seeds like chipilin grown for spice, and rank upon rank of cactus cut for nopales. The families who work these plots are all chosen to receive one because they are impoverished by USDA standards, and use them to augment their household food supply. These are survival gardens.
The thick chains, padlocks, and security on the entry gates are evidence that these gardens are something more, too. Since Los Angeles developer Ralph Horowitz took control of the property in late 2003, they have become a symbol of resistance. The farmers, who have now been working these plots since 1992, were given eviction notices in 2004 and are suing everyone involved – Horowitz, the city, and original permit-holder the L.A. Regional Food Bank, whose massive building sits next door just across 41st Street – in an effort to turn the block into a new city park that would include continued gardening.

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If it’s not already too late. On January 13, Tezozomoc and the captains among the South Central Farmers were gearing up for what they thought might be an imminent raid by L.A. County Sheriff deputies. According to the e-mailed responses from the City Attorney’s Office, Horowitz’s company has sued the L.A. Regional Food Bank for unlawful detainer, since they were the group administering the gardens, and once that’s settled, the eviction might begin. “A judgment is anticipated this week in the unlawful detainer case,” said the Monday e-mail from city attorneys. “That case is between Libaw-Horowitz and the L.A. Regional Food Bank, which administers the garden. The Food Bank is not resisting. A judgment for possession can be enforced using the County Sheriff.”
So the Food Bank, which Tezozomoc considers the farmers’ “enemy,” is all that is standing between them and eviction. The Food Bank’s Darren Hoffman says they’re not sure that, if the city were to take possession of the land again, their permit would still be in place or not. He says they have to wait for the “quagmire” in the courts to be settled.“From my window here, I can see this beautiful urban garden,” says Hoffman. “We’d be sad to see it go. It would definitely be a loss to the community.”

Horowitz, for his part, says he would consider a buyout offer from the city.
“I wouldn’t agree with their rationale for doing it, but if they wanted to pay fair market value for the property to solve what they foresee is a problem, I wouldn’t stand in the way,” he says.
Meanwhile, the South Central Farmers are appealing to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has visited the site with his family, and to members of City Council, while they gear up for civil disobedience when and if the eviction comes. “I’ve been so busy organizing I haven’t had time to eat my own produce,” says Tezozomoc, snatching sweet guavas off a tree planted by his dad. “I just want this place saved so I can get back to farming, get back to school, pay some bills. But this fight’s a long way from over.”

What you can do here:
http://www.southcentralfarmers.com/