LOS ANGELES : U.S. Gives $4.66 Million for Public Housing Units

A federal grant of $4.66 million has been awarded to build 40 units of public housing scattered around Los Angeles as replacements for low-income apartments damaged in the Northridge earthquake, officials announced Tuesday.

The award to the Housing Authority will be used to build low-rise apartments or townhouses designed to blend into neighborhoods, said Don Smith, the Housing Authority’s executive director. Tenants will not necessarily be people displaced by the quake, but the subsidized housing will help ease the shortage of affordable apartments made worse by the temblor.

Officials announced the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development award in front of a seven-unit building under construction on North Tularosa Drive in Silver Lake. They said that building’s design, which makes it look like a small, private condominium complex, is an example of what the agency wants to construct elsewhere.