HIGH HOPES FOR HOME PROJECT BUILDERS FOCUS ON ONCE-BLIGHTED AREA.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

LANCASTER - A partnership between a home builder and a nonprofit organization is building the first homes in a project that city officials hope will spruce up an area once noted for its crime-ridden fourplexes.

Forty-five homes of the 79-home SkyView development are under construction at Avenue H-13 and Beech Avenue. The first homes should be ready for occupancy in January and the entire project should be completed in early 2007.

The homes are being built by Avenue I Trust Homes LLC, a partnership between MBK Homes Ltd., a division of Mitsui & Co. Ltd., the world's 13th-largest corporation as rated by Fortune magazine, and Community Foundation Land Trust, a wholly owned subsidiary of the California Community Foundation.

The partnership is attempting to provide affordable housing for people who would otherwise not be able to buy a home. The prices for the homes, which will range in size from 1,446 square feet to 2,223 square feet, will start at $238,000.

``We have the home-building expertise,'' said Tim Kane, president of MBK. ``They (the foundation) are able to get the land and have the subsidies to make homes affordable. It's a perfect pairing.''

Norie Harrower, chief executive officer of the foundation, said a partnership was the only way to make the homes affordable.

``I hope this is a model for the future,'' Harrower said.

The partnership is looking at the possibility of doing a second project of roughly 50 homes in the neighborhood.

The homes are being built in an area where the city launched an anti-crime effort in October 1992 called Operation High Desert Storm. The program's aim was to get rid of blighted conditions in the north downtown area, an area that had crime-ridden multifamily housing units.

In the year before Operation High Desert Storm began, 87 felony arrests were recorded in the area. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had stepped up patrols in the area, but the city began acquiring property in the area and demolishing mostly vacant fourplexes that attracted drug dealers and prostitutes.

The city's redevelopment agency sold the property to the partnership in 2003 for $1.7 million.

Jim Skeen, [phone]

james.skeen(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Norie Harrower, chief executive officer of the Community Foundation Land Trust, speaks near the housing tract as Tim Kane, president of MBK, listens on Thursday.

(2) A sign is posted outside the houses in Lancaster, which should be available for occupancy in January.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer