REAL ESTATE : Little Plaza Savings Shows a Big Heart in Financing Low-Cost Housing Project
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Home builders have been complaining bitterly that the federal government’s crackdown on the savings and loan industry is drying up financing for their projects.
But the feds also are requiring S&Ls--many; of which got into rather unorthodox investments in the 1980s--to start showing a social conscience by participating in redevelopment projects.
One that seems to have taken the message to heart is tiny Plaza Savings in Santa Ana. The 5-year-old thrift recently financed a $1-million construction loan for a 20-unit, low-cost apartment complex, La Esperanza III, at Buena Street and Westminster Boulevard in Garden Grove’s Buena Clinton district.
The apartments are a project of the Orange County Community Housing Corp., a nonprofit developer of affordable housing.
In a interview less than a year ago, Alan Baldwin, OCCHC executive director, complained that S&Ls;, once the nation’s premier housing lenders, were staying away from programs like his in droves.
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