Urban Homesteaders

They are raised, one-level, ranch-style houses, stoutly suburban and freakishly out of place amid the decaying tenements and grimy rubble of New York's South Bronx. Ten have gqne up since October, and 80 more will be delivered by next fall, assembled on site at the rate of one a day. The new housing project on Charlotte Street, one of the most abject and unsavory slums in the country, was so unprecedented there that

when the first owners moved in last December, cynical neighbors called them "pioneers."

Shoe Shop Owner David Rivera, 35, and his wife Irma, 33, were the first to settle into the new project, genteelly christened Charlotte Gardens. Proudly showing off his fully equipped three-bedroom house with its cathedral ceilings, plush carpeting and small backyard, David notes, "This is a hell of a deal compared with the hellhole we lived in before." The Riveras jumped at the chance to desert their often heatless $400-a-month rental apartment near by. They took possession of their new $47,000 home with an initial $7,500, and will pay a mortgage of $370 a month.

Charlotte Gardens is the project of a nonprofit local agency, the South Bronx Development Organization, which five years ago took on the burden of salvaging the neighborhood. Until recently the area was so celebrated a symbol of urban decay that Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan both traveled there to voice concern and promise federal assistance that never quite seemed to materialize. Instead, the development organization, noting the success of a few tenants' association takeovers and restorations, concluded that owner occupancy of South Bronx buildings would spur reconstruction. The first 90 homes have already been sold, more than half to South Bronx residents.