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Morning News

Rich Neighbors Donate Houses to Poor in Northern California

Aired June 19, 2000 - 10:12 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: From Northern California, some low- income families, receiving an unexpected benefit from well-heeled residents in California's Silicon Valley.

Here's CNN's Don Knapp with more on that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DON KNAPP, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tammy and Roger Gaw are giving away their house, not their lot in tony Los Altos, just the house. They want to build a bigger, better house on the lot, but rather than bulldoze the old house, as other well-to-do neighbors have done, they decided to move it to less fortunate East Palo Alto.

TAMMY GAW, HOMEOWNER: I was there at one point, and can understand how parents who don't have the means to make it in this expensive community.

KNAPP: The idea quickly caught on. A tax break for well-to-do home builders who pay all moving costs, and a nearly free home for a needy family, all add up to good business for real estate agents.

CHRISTINA LUIZ, REAL ESTATE AGENT: There's so many homes being demolished in Palo Alto, that sometimes the homes are really nice quality homes. And I thought, how could we possibly use these homes in a more positive way.

KNAPP: In no time, the city of East Palo Alto found itself with eight donated houses.

MAYOR SHARIFA WILSON, EAST PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA: Well, one of the dilemmas that East Palo Alto has, is that we don't own any property. So the dilemma is, what do we do with these houses that people are offering us?

KNAPP: Over the past few decades, East Palo Alto has been an island of difficulty in a world of affluence. Poverty, drugs and drive-by shootings earned it the title "murder capital," a few years back. Now its benefiting from a trickle-down effect, from its wealthy neighbors, once it figures out how to handle the windfall and share the wealth.

WILSON: I can just imagine at some point that everybody will be screaming: Well, give me the house, give me the house, this kind of thing. So that's the only thing that I'm a little bit leery about.

KNAPP: For East Palo Alto, it's an embarrassment of riches, more houses than they know what to do with.

Don Knapp, CNN, San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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