Downtown News
August 31,1992
What A Concept Children's Education In A Housing Project
By Morris Newman

Downtown has many affordable housing projects. Only one project, however, has been designed to help children succeed in school. If home builder Kent Salveson has his way, he Will build the third of his innovative EEXCEL low-cost housing projects in South Park- The name stands for Education Excellence for Children with Environmental Limitations.

If construction starts as scheduled in 14 months, the project will contain special study rooms for school-age children, under the guidance of USC students and even a live-in tutor paid out of the rents of tenants. The program is also coordinated with local schools. One of its supporters is the Century Freeway Housing Program, which has provided $12 million for three EEXCEL projects.

"We had been looking for innovative private sector activity to address social problem . It seems to all of us after talking with Kent that this project provided the kind of refreshing new approach to affordable housing that went beyond just providing shelter," says Mike Kingston, chief of housing finance for the nonprofit assistance program.

Another supporter is the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, which gave Salveson a $450,000 pre-development loan in May to start his South Park project.

EEXCEL is like a mini-Head Start program, insofar as they are trying to improve the education level of students and take them a little bit out of the environment say Mike Craft; A CRA senior housing finance officer.

Assembly Line: Salveson comes from a big-business background that can be discerned in his choice of metaphors. "If you want to improve the product, you go to the factory," he says. "The home is the factory where children come from. "The government has many programs to help people but they are all outside the home. That is the fundamental problem. All the government programs to help people take place outside the home and nobody can get there."

Salveson's affordable-housing "empire" has grown very rapidly. His first building, 46 units at 120th Street and Vermont in South Central, is set to open in mid-September. Two other projects are under construction: 51 units at Budlong Avenue and Imperial Highway and 41 units at Western Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Discorporate: Both home building and an evangelical belief in education are recent to Salveson, who formerly worked as a corporate lawyer in Downtown office of Coopers & Lybrand. His attitude toward the poor and disadvantaged was not exactly liberal, he recalls.

"My prior view was, what's wrong with them? Why can't they do what I've done?'" says Salveson. His attitude changed abruptly a few years later, after Salveson had become an apartment developer. His conversion experience" occurred when talking with Latino mother in Atwater. A mother of five, she worked at the local El Pollo Loco and had a second job at Van de Kamp Bakeries.

"When I was doing maintenance, I passed her in the hall, and I jokingly said, 'I don't know how you do it! I was just kidding around. She stopped and said, 'I want my children to have more than I did - better education, to do the things I wasn't able to do!" "I compared what she was able to offer, and what her kids grew up with, and that's when so many things came together in my mind," says Salveson.

Grand Ambitions: The South Park building will be his largest project yet. Unlike his earlier projects, the building at Ninth and Grand is a comparatively large site of 2.5 allowing him to devote the entire 10,000-square-foot first floor to the EEXCEL education program. On the site will also be a 15,000-square-foot park, with the new Grand Hope Park just down the street.

The educational center will contain several classroom areas and a separate computer center. The center will also have several sound proof music rooms. Kids can do music or just be boisterous and they don't disturb anybody. Some of the tutors are African-American and Hispanic students, whom Salveson hopes will be role models to his tenant children. For every 20 units, Salveson contributes a "housing scholarship" for a live-in tutor. The tutors are required not only to live in the building, but to write a college thesis on the building and how it can be improved.

Children who do well in high school have a financial incentive: They will be offered scholarships to University of Southern California.

Tenants themselves do not support the program financially. EEXCEL pays for the tutorial program along with the various line item expenses in the budget including, property management, trash collection and lights. EEXCEL pays $60,000 annually in educational costs. Life has become somewhat more modest for Salveson than it was in his days as a Downtown lawyer.

"A lot of the funding that has been promised to be has been slow in coming,"- he acknowledges. Living with his wife and two children L" San Juan Capistrano, he answers his own phone. His company rarely has more than two employees, including himself. He has largely given up golf and sailing, his favorite sports.

He also spends much of his time battling lenders. "I've been redlined, turned down for loans and had credit lines yanked more often than I can recall," says Salveson, who adds, "Banks are half the problem."

But he says his adjustment to his new way of life was not difficult. "I'm doing something I believe in," says Salveson.

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