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Queen Covan said she remembers well a meeting this summer at which Los Angeles city officials told tenants of Hacienda Village in Watts that nine mobile homes would be put on the project grounds to shelter homeless families.
What Covan, a 61-year-old Hacienda Village tenant representative, said she remembers most about that meeting is that there was surprisingly little opposition.
"Some people thought (the mobile homes) would take up some of the space that the children in the project play in and a few people worried about how they looked," Covan said. "But nobody was really protesting."
Upset by News Accounts
That's why she and other tenants-some of whom say they are only one welfare check removed from homelessness themselves-were surprised and offended by news accounts last week of an arson fire that destroyed one of two mobile homes that had been installed at the project.
The Herald-Examiner said "city lawmakers and project tenants" had resisted the trailers. The Times published a wire service account that said the structures were placed at the project "under heavy opposition from residents."
More than two dozen tenants of the project said that as far as they are concerned, nothing could be further from the truth....