A PLACE IN THE SUN

...CDC has also brought hundreds of senior citizen housing units up to building code...

...We were the ones being accused of ripping off the taxpayers' money and we were not receiving it...

...Ludlam and the other welfare rights activists tried to get government agencies to provide community development funds...

...And the Reagan Administration's unwillingness to fund solar projects has made her work even more difficult...

...And it is difficult to expel someone from the program who cannot endure a day without drugs...

...The system cuts the owners' utility bills by 45 per cent...

...This article is adapted from their book, "Power and Light: Political Strategies for the Solar Transition, to be published in October by The Pilgrim Press...

...The Veterans Administration held title to many abandoned west-side houses through foreclosures...

...And so CDC has turned to sources of private funding, such as the Ford Foundation...

...The program has a dropout rate of only 5 per cent, and trainee job placement is high...

...But Ludlam refused to go back to San Bernardino empty-handed...

...I'd been involved in the NAACP, CORE, the Freedom Schools— I'd been chased by the Ku Klux Klan...

...Grumman and Jet Propulsion are not self-supporting, so why should we be expected to be...

...These kids are right off the street—they have no prior job experience...

...The sun's energy can also be tapped, Ludlam realized, to foster a sense of pride and self-determination within an impoverished community...

...We knew that our people were having a hard time meeting their utility costs," says Ludlam...

...All the freeway off-ramps curve to the east, and this is the direction in which traffic and fortune have flowed over the years...

...The organization's crowning achievement will be the thirteen-acre industrial park, its buildings powered by various forms of renewable energy, including photovoltaic cells...

...The firm has functioned as CDC's think tank, supplying the community organization with the economic and technical data it needs to establish sound programs and attract government financing...

...The houses were falling down around our heads...

...Some Government officials seem to believe that if you've been involved in solar training programs in the past, you should not be eligible for any more money...

...CDC consultant John Dukes hopes that the organization's solar ventures will some day become self-supporting...

...We saw that it was a major new business opportunity, a new frontier," recalls Ludlam...

...The mother of three children, she had worked as a beautician and a psychiatric technician, but she wound up on the welfare rolls after a bout with alcoholism...

...After touring the offices of the local member of Congress, George Brown, who had installed demonstration solar equipment on his roof, Ludlam and her staff began to recognize the significant economic development potential contained within the sun's energy...

...The unique solar system which was built as a result of Ludlam's persistence consists of seventy collectors mounted on sawed-off telephone poles...

...In 1980 the organization assumed ownership of an abandoned motel which had once been a local brothel...

...The community can't afford to lose any more of its housing stock...

...Building a solar greenhouse to grow healthy food or installing a solar water heater to cut the monthly utility bill can give people a sense of power...

...In the past eight years, the San Bernardino CDC has taken over dozens of abandoned houses, rehabilitated them, and made them available to low-income residents...

...When you don't have much," she says, "you can't go home without any...

...Perhaps the most deeply involved of them is Valerie Pope Ludlam, who moved to San Bernardino from Detroit in 1962...

...We just need to get through the research and development stage...

...You walk with them around the neighborhood, and they'll point to a solar collector on somebody's roof and say, swelling up with pride, 'Hey, I put that there.' Well, that's what makes my day...

...In 1972, Ludlam and the others decided to disband their welfare rights group and incorporate themselves instead as the San Bernardino West Side Community Development Corporation...

...They thought I was crazy to walk into their offices with a solar energy proposal...

...So when I found myself in the position of a welfare recipient, it was very clear to me that if you've got a problem and there are several people around you with the same problem, you organize to solve the problem...

...The labor power for these projects is provided by hundreds of young Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) workers, who are trained at CDC's vocational school...

...Richard E. Morgan, an economist with the Environmental Action Foundation's Utility Project, has written and collaborated on many books and reports on electrical power...

...When John Dukes [a partner in the firm] first walked into my office, he had to convince me to talk to him...

...Where does Ludlam, a buoyant woman in her late forties, find the inspiration to keep scrounging for money year after year so that her grand community enterprise will remain solvent...

...It is difficult for young people who have never held a job to take orders from a supervisor, she says...

...One bureaucrat told me that it would be better for everybody if a university developed the system...

...In 1976, CDC won a combination of grants from several state and Federal agencies which allowed the organization to develop its first solar project—a centralized system which supplies heat and hot water to ten rehabilitated, weatherized west-side homes...

...But Ludlam doubts that CDC will be able to unplug itself from Washington's support system...

...Dukes and Associates, a small black-owned consulting firm based in San Francisco...

...The grant enabled CDC to develop a sophisticated project design...

...We'll have a substantial solar industry within a few years...

...When she went to Washington to solicit support for the solarized industrial park, Ludlam's glowing reputation preceded her...

...But not this time around...

...These are Ludlam's "kids," the sons and daughters of the west side for whom she began fighting a dozen years ago as a welfare rights advocate...

...Solar can be a way to do that...

...It took two years, with me flying back to Washington and threatening to throw officials out of their windows before the Department of Energy awarded us a $1.2 million grant for the photovoltaic phase of the project...

...Number one, I'm a woman...

...The unemployment rate for the west side hovered at 12 per cent in 1980, while the city-wide rate topped off at 8 per cent...

...Wedged between a liquor store and a barbeque take-out joint in a scruffy shopping center, the San Bernardino West Side Community Development Corporation (CDC) has been, since its creation in 1972, the primary source of whatever hope there is on the west side of the freeway...

...Number two, I'm black...

...Despite CDC's growing list of achievements, Ludlam does not expect that her future fund-raising missions to Washington will be any less arduous...

...What little rehab work that was going on was being done by firms from outside the community...

...Ludlam reports with considerable pride that 65 per cent of CDC's CETA trainees stick with their jobs after they are placed, compared to the national average of 40 per cent...

...Almost one-third of the west-side population receives Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) payments...

...Letters of inquiry sent out this year met with the cool response that energy development is now the task of private industry...

...After the successful conclusion of this program, CDC won a grant from the Federal Community Services Administration to rehabilitate several hundred senior citizen housing units in various stages of decay...

...recalls Ludlam...

...We knew that all kinds of programs were coming down the pipe to deal with the problems we were faced with, but none of those programs was reaching us...

...We realized they were going to end up in the same position we were in unless we did something...

...They were being stopped somewhere along the way in the form of administrative budgets...

...But public officials were not inclined to extend much sympathy, let alone financial assistance, to a group of insistent black welfare mothers...

...Federal agencies, accustomed to pouring their dollars into large corporations and research firms, do not often confront the likes of Valerie Pope Ludlam...

...The shabby "Thrifty-Traveler" motel, where rooms went for five dollars a night, is now a twenty-four-unit solarized senior housing complex...

...The curriculum includes courses in mathematics, reading, writing, mechanical drawing, heat transfer theory, and "hands-on" training in solar manufacturing and installation...

...The San Bernardino CDC grew out of the local chapter of the Welfare Rights Organization, which was directed by a nucleus of twelve women...

...We have to teach them how to hang onto a job once they find one...

...The answer becomes clear after an afternoon in her office...

...It's a frightening moment when you realize that all your kids will get is what you've got—and you've got nothing...

...It is difficult to train someone who has spent a restless, uncomfortable night in a car because he cannot afford a place to live...

...Eventually five Federal programs contributed funds to the project...

...The discipline problems we deal with are the toughest part of the program— teaching solar skills is really secondary to that," says Ludlam...

...That's what it's all about...

...But there is an oasis in the midst of this hot, barren landscape...

...it has retrofitted public housing units and farmworker dwellings with solar water heaters...

...Ludlam says her trainees are also taught something less tangible—discipline and a sense of pride in their work...

...Since 1976, CDC has been actively involved in a number of solar ventures: It has built a centralized solar heating system, which provides water and space heating to ten homes...

...People's lives are controlled by a handful of huge institutions...

...CDC says this project will be "the largest industrial application of solar electricity in the country...

...They can't get that initial chunk of money to put together a solid plan...

...Her brightest moments, says Ludlam, come when a CDC graduate returns to the west side for a visit...

...But they graduate with a range of skills—such as carpentry, plumbing, welding, roofing, painting, and machine operating—which enable them to find jobs in other industries...

...They were graduating from high school without any job-related skills...

...The work was carried out by young CETA trainees...

...Community development organizations have been ripped off so many times by slick private consultants...

...As the dozens of young CETA trainees stream through, she exchanges wisecracks with them, ministers to them, sweet-talks them, instructs them—and they respond in kind to this outpouring of affection...

...CDC has also set up a solar machine shop where it manufacturers its own "breadbox" and flat plate collectors...

...The organization's young repair crew set to work on it, bolstering its sagging frame and equipping it with a solar water heating system...

...Heat is transferred from the collectors to a 5,000-gallon underground storage tank, big enough to store heat for the ten homes through four sunless days...

...We banded together to fight for our kids—they were our main concern...

...That's the main obstacle which many community organizations never manage to clear," Ludlam observes...

...In desperation, they once occupied the offices of a local agency for six weeks...

...The VA agreed to assign forty-two of these properties to Ludlam's organization, which rehabilitated them and sold them for modest prices ($8,500 for a two-bedroom house) to low-income families...

...I'd been actively involved in the civil rights movement so I had a long track record of organizing...

...We're trying to stop the city from tearing down any abandoned buildings/' says Ludlam...

...Ludlam recalls that she was "kicked out of some of the best offices in the country" during her first trip to Washington...

...And it is constructing a thirteen-acre solarized industrial park, including a light manufacturing center that will be powered by photovoltaic cells...

...0 David Talbot, a member of the editorial staff of Mother Jones magazine, is the author of "Creative Differences: Profiles of Hollywood Dissidents...

...It is simply impossible to generate enough income in a depressed community like this to become self-supporting," she says...

...But the association between Dukes's firm and CDC turned out to be a successful one...

...The only reason we formed the CDC," says Ludlam, who became the nonprofit corporation's president, "is because bureaucrats respond more favorably to that name then to 'welfare rights.' We're the same people, but we're not on welfare any more...

...And we were determined to get involved early enough so that we could reap the benefits...

...It doesn't seem to get any easier...

...And number three, I don't have any advanced degrees...

...It was not easy to pry loose the CSA award and subsequent Federal grants...

...We have to keep running just to stay in place...

...But Ludlam again had to employ her full powers of persuasion...

...Low-income minorities are always excluded from enjoying the rewards of technological innovations...

...The solar industry is not yet big enough to absorb all the graduates of CDC's training program...

...CDC's first step was to develop a comprehensive revitalization plan for the west side with the assistance of Dukes...

...The key award was the initial $25,000 planning grant from the Community Services Administration...

...Solar is a new opportunity for us to participate in the American Dream...

...Entire neighborhoods on the west side of San Bernardino, a parched, smoggy city sixty miles east of Los Angeles, have taken on this dreary appearance...

...We saw that it could create a whole new job market...

...We were the whipping boys for politicians who said welfare mothers were keeping our Federal budget up in the sky," says Ludlam...

...These kids will come back in a new car, with a baby in their arms, they're earning seven or eight bucks an hour somewhere, and they're grinning from ear to ear...

...Ludlam was wary of dealing with private consultants...

...CDC has worked on several other solar projects in the intervening years, including the installation of solar water heaters on public housing in San Bernardino and farmworker dwellings in arid Indio County...

...CDC became interested in renewable energy in 1974 as rising fuel prices began to create even greater economic distress in the west side...

...Many of them could not read or write...

...A freeway separates the west side, which is more than 75 per cent black and Hispanic, from the rest of the city...

...A PLACE IN THE SUN We're the same people, but we're not on welfare any more' BY DAVID TALBOT AND RICHARD E. MORGAN It is an all too familiar scene: Rows of sun-bleached stucco houses line the streets, abandoned and tightly shuttered like empty coffins...

...CDC can't build a nuclear plant or drill an oil well...

...We need to develop a feeling of independence, of self-sufficiency...

...A key part of CDC's revitalization plan involved the rehabilitation of the west side's rapidly deteriorating housing stock...

...I don't think we'll need to depend on the Government to carry us much further," he says...

...But we can provide the community with solar power...

...More than 600 young men and women have been trained in CDC's vocational school since 1974...

...it has set up a machine shop where it produces its own low-cost systems...