Downey
Downey is a city located in southeast Los Angeles, CA, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The city is best known as the birthplace of the Apollo space program, and is the hometown of Richard and Karen Carpenter. City of Downey was incorporated December 17, 1956.
Mission San Gabriel Arcangel was initially founded on September 8, 1771, near these concentrations of Tongva population, at a site in the Whittier Narrows on a bluff overlooking the Rio Hondo near the intersection of today’s San Gabriel Blvd. and Lincoln Ave. After five years, flooding forced the relocation of the mission to its present site in San Gabriel.
In 1784, Governor Pedro Fages granted to former soldier Manuel Nieto (1734–1804) the largest of the land concessions made during the Spanish control of California. Its 300,000 acres stretched from the Santa Ana River on the east to the Old San Gabriel River (now the Rio Hondo and Los Angeles River) on the west, and from the mission highway (approximately Whittier Boulevard) on the north to the ocean on the south. Its acreage was slightly reduced later at the insistence of Mission San Gabriel on whose lands it infringed.
The Rancho Los Nietos passed to Manuel Nieto's four children upon his death and remained intact until, in 1833, his heirs petitioned Mexican Governor Jose Figueroa to partition the property. The northwestern portion of the original rancho, comprising the Downey-Norwalk area, was granted as Rancho Santa Gertrudes to Josefa Cota, the widow of Manuel's son, Antonio Nieto. At approximately 21,000 acres, Santa Gertrudes was itself a sizable rancho and contained the old Nietos homestead, which was a center of social life east of the pueblo of Los Angeles. After the Mexican-American War concluded in 1848, many of the California ranchos were obtained by affluent Anglo-Americans who were immigrating west under the United States manifest destiny doctrine, and marrying into established California Spanish families. This migration was distinct from that prompted by the California Gold Rush farther north.
The largest employer was what became known as Vultee Aircraft, whose facilities were the birthplace of the systems for the Apollo Space Program as well as the Space Shuttle. For over 70 years, Downey's Rockwell NASA plant produced and tested many of the 20th century's greatest aviation, missile, and space endeavors. By the post-Cold War 1990s, Downey was brutally hit by cutbacks in the defense budget. Rockwell International, who once had over 30,000 employees, had less than 5,000 in 1992. The seventy year history of airplane and space vehicle manufacturing in Downey came to an end when the Rockwell plant closed in 1999. The former North American Rockwell plant was demolished, and the site now features the Columbia Memorial Space Center, Downey Landing shopping center, a Kaiser Permanente hospital, a city recreation fields park, and the former movie studio site of Downey Studios.
The county provides the Mortgage Credit Certificate Program that offers qualified first time homebuyers a 15% federal income tax credit.
Benefits:
- The homebuyer receives a federal tax credit each year.
- The homebuyer’s federal income taxes are reduced.
- The homebuyer’s buying power is increased.
Guidelines for Homebuyer:
- Must have not owned a home the previous three years.
- Must meet income and purchase prices restrictions.
- Must use the home as their primary residence. The MCC program is administered by the Los Angeles County Community Development commission.
The WISH Program is available in the city of Downey.
For additional information and find out how to qualify, please contact Andres Morales at (949)306-9260. You may also email directly at ThankYou@AndresCanHelp.com.