New Council District Is Quilt of ‘Leftovers’

“A sort of Frankenstein creation--it was everybody’s spare parts.”

That is the description of the newly created 1st Los Angeles City Council District by one City Hall aide who watched the council carve out the district last summer.

The scorpion-shaped jurisdiction was born in response to a federal government lawsuit charging, in effect, that the council had gerrymandered the political boundaries of council districts in such a way as to dilute the voting power of Latinos.

While the 15-member council struggled to realign those boundaries, one of its members died. The sudden absence from the council of Howard Finn left an open seat and permitted the council to create its new, heavily Latino district--and at the same time preserve a district for each of the remaining 14 council members.

Out of those two unrelated events--the lawsuit and Finn’s death--sprang the district that meanders from northeast to central to South-Central Los Angeles. In accordance with the lawsuit’s concerns, the district has a 69% Latino population.

Now the district is up for grabs in a special election Feb. 3 among four candidates--two Latinos and two Asians. They are, respectively, Assemblywoman Gloria Molina (D-Los Angeles), school board member Larry Gonzalez, businessman Paul D.Y. Moore and former anti-gang organizer Leland Wong. Most recent figures show Molina with a more than 3 to 1 edge in fund raising over nearest challenger Gonzalez.

As the candidates travel from the hillsides of Mt. Washington to the largely depressed Pico Union area, they find that the council gave them a Rubik’s Cube of a district that is a microcosm of Los Angeles’ political challenges as the city enters the 21st Century: a district that is heavily Latino but whose voters are 60% non-Latino; a district that attracts thousands of Central American immigrants; a district full of distinctive neighborhoods close to major downtown development and which fear being swallowed up by it.

“We’re the leftover areas nobody wanted,” said Sue Nelson, president of the Elysian Heights Residents Assn. “But the one thing we have in common is we’re all in that corridor of urban expansion. We have not gotten much political attention on this side of town. The freeways have served as dividers and there’s a lack of common knowledge in the district about each other. One thing we do know: We are people, many of whom have lived here for 40 years in one house, who hung in there when everyone moved to the suburbs. That takes a special breed of cat.”

Many neighborhoods of the 1st District--Highland Park, Echo Park, Lincoln Heights, Temple-Beaudry, Pico Union--served as the first suburbs of a burgeoning turn-of-the-century Los Angeles. They were bedroom communities that sprang up for those drawn here as a result of various mining, oil, railroad, agricultural and real estate booms.

As their fates were linked to the prosperity of downtown, so were they linked to the general decline suffered by the central city in the 1960s and its business redevelopment, begun in the 1970s. Today each community in the district is struggling in its own way to combat the effects of decline and redevelopment. Those in the blighted areas reach out in hope of moving the redevelopment their way; those in the more affluent areas fight to keep office and condominium developments out.

The northernmost section of the district, Highland Park, has been plagued by a series of shootings this year, a result of rival gangs trying to establish and hold onto turf. While some residents can trace gang activity back about 40 years, the recent frequency of night shootings has unnerved many.

“I love Highland Park, but sometimes I’m afraid for it,” said longtime resident Diane Alexander, president of Residents and Others for Highland Park. “It isn’t just gangs. We want to see neighborhood preservation. But the way this area has been cut up and mis-zoned just funnels too much of the wrong type of development here--gas stations next to apartments next to old Craftsman homes.”

However, she said, she is “excited” about a major segment of Highland Park being included in the district “because at least we’re with some other communities who are like us, fighting development.”

Southward in Montecito Heights, more affluent residents enjoy a panoramic view of downtown Los Angeles. On a clear day, residents boast, you can see Santa Catalina Island. They enjoy the view--and so do many others who come there to park.

The “flattop” of Montecito Heights, via a dirt hill, has become “a lovers’ lane for some of the kids,” said Garnett Ruiz, president of the Montecito Heights Improvement Assn. “It has become a traffic problem, as well as litter with whiskey bottles and the like.” Crime is a major concern in the area that fights a steady battle with graffiti, Ruiz said.

Across the Pasadena Freeway, one of four freeways that cut across the new 1st District, is Mt. Washington. It is, as one candidate and others have described it, the “Bel-Air” of the area.

Mt. Washington, with its lush canyons and narrow and sometimes unpaved roads, is a semi-rural environment that has attracted many professionals, including writers and artists, who value the seclusion that still is just 10 minutes from downtown.

There the concerns are less about crime and more about making sure that residents hold onto the life style they enjoy.

“We are seen as easy pickings for people who want to put up condos, apartments, without any regard for how they affect the sense of the place,” said Louise Padden, vice president of the Mt. Washington Assn.

The neighborhood, like several other areas in the district, was “split right down the middle” by the council when it drew new political boundaries, Padden said. The result is fragmentation, a political boundary line down the middle of Padden’s block that places her in the 1st District and her neighbor in the 14th District, represented by Councilman Richard Alatorre, the architect of the redistricting plan.

Next door are Glassell and Cypress parks, two working-class areas near the Los Angeles River that are heavily Latino, with a growing Asian population. The areas are stable, with 47% of the residents homeowners, according to Census data. More expensive hillside homes are on the other side of Mt. Washington; the flatlands are poorer.

West of the Los Angeles River is the center of the district, Dodger Stadium. Neighborhood purists consider nearby Elysian Heights, Elysian Valley and Angelino Heights separate areas, while others simply consider the area surrounding Dodger Stadium as Echo Park.

Echo Park was once pejoratively referred to as “Red Hill” because of the radical sympathizers the area attracted during the 1930s through the 1950s. Today, it is a bohemian mix--Latinos, Asians, elderly and gay, some of whom still shout a battle cry of “power to the people” during community meetings.

At a recent forum of about 200 residents, a small-town feeling pervaded. Questions were specific and indicated an informed populace: What about the library on East Edgeware Road? What about the proposal to extend the Glendale Freeway south? Where did the candidates stand on whether an aluminum roof should cover Elysian Reservoir?

In Chinatown to the south, community leaders held a meeting last month for the four candidates. Asians represent 14% of the population and about 15% of all district residents who are registered to vote, according to Caltech political science Prof. Bruce Cain and the main consultant in helping the council draw district lines. About 45% of the registered voters are Anglo and a small percentage are black.

So Latinos, who have 69% of the population, have at most only 40% of the vote. It means, according to the two Asian candidates, that a Latino victory is not assured, although the two leading candidates are Latino. All told, only 36,000 of the 200,000 residents in the district are registered, according to the city clerk’s office.

Asian-American leaders said they believe their vote could make a big difference in the outcome of the Feb. 3 special election because Asians are registered proportionately higher than their population. And special elections traditionally make for a low turnout at the polls.

At the Chinatown meeting, concerns about snarled traffic, lack of parking and the need for a police substation dominated the discussion.

“The Chinatown community will not vote along ethnic lines, we will vote for the best candidate,” said Lilly Lee, a businesswoman and community leader. “But Chinatown has . . . given a lot of money and waited and waited. Now we will keep track, watch voting records, see the performance and vote accordingly.”

The growing Asian influence is beginning to show north of Chinatown, in Lincoln Heights. Although still an overwhelmingly Latino area, many new merchants on North Broadway are Vietnam Chinese--Vietnamese of Chinese origin. With Chinatown already developed beyond capacity, the new merchants are moving into a thriving business district in Lincoln Heights. Some already have begun to put “North Chinatown” on their business cards, said Steve Kasten, president of the Lincoln Heights Chamber of Commerce.

Among some longtime Lincoln Heights Latino residents, “there are some cultural clashes, there are some people who have problems with the increase of Asian-owned businesses,” said Oscar Jauregui, a Community Redevelopment Agency official who has worked in the area for several years. Some residents go further, suggesting that there is a strong Latino resentment of Asians there. Kasten said there “may be a bit of jealousy” but added that “certainly no serious” conflicts have occurred.

The pressing issues, Kasten said, are those cited by residents at another recent area meeting. One by one, residents came forward to ask the candidates about the basics: how to combat drug sales, what to do about abandoned cars, how to get quicker responses from the police.

Those problems, plus some others, are evident in the Temple-Beaudry area, just west of downtown. The area is full of vacant lots waiting for development that has not come, and of once grand homes fallen into disrepair, most owned by absentee landlords. Residents several years ago fought redevelopment, looking at how adjacent Bunker Hill redevelopment left many low-income people without anywhere affordable to live.

Temple-Beaudry includes a concentration of Filipinos, many of whom come to the area when new to Los Angeles, said Luisito L. Lopez, chairman of the Filipino American Community of Los Angeles. The Filipino community in Temple-Beaudry is not particularly well-organized because “many are just working to save money so they can move on to another area,” he said.

The problems of blight are compounded south of Temple-Beaudry, in the Pico Union area. There the deteriorating streets and housing found in old areas of the city are but one layer of the problems facing the growing Central American immigrant community living near MacArthur Park.

An estimated 400,000 Salvadorans, 100,000 Guatemalans and 50,000 Nicaraguans live in the city, and a total of about 300,000 in the Pico Union area alone, said Robert Alfaro, executive director of El Rescate, a legal and social services agency in the area. Since the mid-1970s, wars in Central American have driven them out of their homelands and into Los Angeles, where chances for a job are better than other California cities.

One-bedroom apartments with 14 people living in them is not extraordinary, he said. But of such a group that size, only one or two are usually regularly employed, he added, leaving the illegal drug trade as a major means to make money. Public selling of marijuana is so prevalent that one council candidate, while driving through the area in the afternoon, got approached while pausing at a traffic light.

But there also are stabilizing influences in Pico Union, like the Vista Montoya condominium development built three years ago. It was the first government-subsidized condo project in the city for moderate-income people. The development, which has no vacancies, will not return Pico Union to its turn-of-the-century heyday as a bedroom community chock full of pristine Victorian homes. But, said Ellen Ong of the CRA, “it’s a good start down a long road.”

Research for graphic material accompanying this article was done by Ted Liebman of The Times Marketing Research Department, Caltech professor of political science Bruce Cain and Cecilia Rasmussen, Times city-county bureau administrative aide.

DISTRICT 1 BY THE NUMBERS Comparing the district statistics with those for all Los Angeles AGE. The district is younger.

Dist. L.A. Median Age 27.4 30.7

EDUCATION. The district is less educated than the city.

Dist. L.A. Some High School 59% 31% High School 19% 28% Some College 12% 21% College + 10% 20%

EMPLOYMENT. The district has more manual laborers.

Dist. L.A. Professional 6% 14% Executives, Managers 5% 12% Tech., Sales 23% 33% Crafts, Repair 13% 11% Laborers 34% 17%

INCOME, HOMES

Dist. L.A. Income $11,098 $15,819 Home Value $63,584 $96,072 Renters 81% 60%

HEALTH

L.A. Dist. County Tuberculosis* 43.4 16.4 Infant Deaths 10.2 9.8

* Per 100,000 residents Per 1,000 residents