THE PLIGHT OF 7 CROWDED CITIES : Immigrants See Dreams Turn Sour in 7 Crowded, Poor Communities

For years, Elsa Saravia fantasized about her future in a distant land called America, about 2,500 miles from the poverty of her village in the Honduran jungle.

But almost a decade after following her son to the United States, the 58-year-old, part-time housekeeper’s dream home has turned out to be a cramped, two-bedroom apartment that she shares with 11 family members in the predominantly Latino section of Bell in Southeast Los Angeles County.

Living in the middle of Bell, a community that is among the poorest and most overcrowded in the county as a result of a decade of unprecedented Latino immigration, Saravia tells a familiar story.

“I always dreamed of coming to America, but not to live like this,” she lamented as she sat at the rickety Formica-topped table in her small kitchen. “My son said that life was better here.” But, Saravia said, the apartment on Flora Avenue has a leaking roof, rotting floorboards, a broken toilet and rats.

In fact, she said, her hand-to-mouth existence in Bell is not much different from her life in Central America.

Saravia’s is the story of tens of thousands of Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented, who have followed their dreams to seven contiguous Southeast cities: Maywood, Cudahy, Bell, Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, South Gate and Lynwood.

The seven Southeast cities together total 22.5 square miles, the size of Pasadena. But they have a combined population equal to that of a 65-square-mile area encompassing Pasadena, Glendale, La Canada Flintridge and San Marino.

In fact, Maywood, with four times more people per square mile than either Beverly Hills or the city of Los Angeles, may well be the most densely populated city in the state, said Terry C. Bills of the county population research section.

Once quiet suburban cities that were known by such nicknames as Billygoat Acres for the Anglo farmers that originally flocked here from Midwest and Southern farmlands, these cities are now bustling centers of Latino life.

Spanish is spoken in most classrooms, stores and homes, and Spanish music is heard on the streets. One of the more popular supermarkets in the area is the Tianguis, a Mexican-oriented food store, where the cashiers say “Muchas Gracias” instead of “Have a Nice Day,” one immigrant explained.

Spanish language billboards abound. They urge newcomers to try products, usually alcohol and tobacco, and to use a variety of social and legal services.

But the dreams that helped mold these cities into Latino centers have in many ways become nightmares, both for the immigrants who have flooded this suburban area and for longtime Anglo residents, who have seen their communities undergo drastic changes.

“There’s a tremendous dynamic at work there,” said David Lopez-Lee, a Chicano studies professor at USC who has conducted surveys that show more than 50% of residents in the area speak little or no English.

“The area has become sort of a mecca” for immigrants looking for financial security or a haven from the ravages of civil war in their homelands, he said. “Of course, it has created a whole host of problems.”

For example:

* The limited housing in these cities has forced Latino immigrants to share living quarters. It is not unusual for two or three families to live together to make ends meet, officials said.

* The public schools are among the most crowded in the county, school officials said. Consequently, hundreds of pupils are bused out of neighborhood schools.

* Aging and overburdened sewer and water systems along with narrow roadways built in the 1930s are forcing city officials to think about ambitious construction programs.

* Law enforcement officials say there is an increase in gang-related crime as a result of the increased population. About 40 small Latino gangs have been formed in the past three years, police said. Cities are looking for ways to add police officers, despite tight budgets.

* Social service workers are scrambling for additional funding to meet the demands of immigrants. Welfare rolls have increased and food lines are longer than they have ever been.

The wave of immigrants has changed the character of the cities and altered the nature of housing demands in what were once rural bedroom communities.

Maywood is the most densely populated city in the county, with 21,993 people per square mile, according to estimates of the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning. The other cities follow close behind, said Bills, research analyst for the department’s population research section. In fact, the seven cities and Hawaiian Gardens rank among the county’s 15 most densely populated cities, he said.

Specifics Expected in 1990

Exact population figures, however, will not be available until the 1990 census. City and county officials know there are changes taking place in the communities, and they expect the census to show a large increase in the number of immigrants. The estimates are based on changes in school populations and patterns of housing occupancy.

Demographic experts said that word of mouth is the main reason for the decade-long immigration to the area, despite the limited housing stock. “There’s an elaborate friends’ and relatives’ network working here,” said Peter Morrison, a researcher for the RAND Corp., a Santa Monica-based think tank.

At first glance, the increase in density is hard to see. The buildings look the same as they have for decades. Neighborhoods of small, bungalow-style homes, many of which were built in the 1930s and 1940s, are interspersed among commercial and industrial districts that are indistinguishable from each other.

But apartments, built in the back yards of many small homes over the years by property owners looking for extra income, tell the story. Long apartment complexes, resembling military barracks, line some narrow streets. Mailboxes listing the names of several families testify to the overcrowded conditions.

“It’s greed,” said Bell Gardens building inspector Carlos Levario about a trend by absentee landlords to rent to several families. “(Landlords) are out to abuse people. They prey on them (the immigrants) all the time.”

Couple Now Has Privacy

On Cecelia Street, overlooking the Rio Hondo Golf Course, a young couple from Guadalajara live in a leaky, one-room shed that is surrounded by piles of discarded bricks and lumber. Virginia Madrigal points to the dirt floor, deteriorating wallboard, dangling electrical wires and lack of plumbing. But she also noted that the couple now have privacy in the room, which was bathed in sunlight from holes in the roof.

“This is much better than how it looked when we moved in,” she said as she stood outside the shed watching her 2-year-old son play among the foot-high weeds. She and her husband, Guillermo, a laborer in a porcelain factory, moved into the shed a year ago. They had been living with 10 family members in a two-bedroom apartment on Eastern Avenue.

“At least we have more room,” she said.

Levario claims to have lost count of how many times he has found apartments where a family lives in each room of the unit. “It’s outrageous,” he added. “I can’t remember how many times I have cited landlords for substandard conditions brought about by double-bunking.”

Several landlords said, however, that many immigrant families share living quarters meant for one family without landlords’ permission and that property owners are powerless to stop the practice of double-bunking without an ordinance against it.

“There should be a law against it,” complained Marina Martin, a local property owner and member of the Southeast Board of Realtors. “That way we don’t have to look like the bad guys.”

Doubling Up Is Widespread

Although there are no firm figures that show how many people share living quarters in the area, Levario and other local officials said that school, city hall and other records suggest that double-bunking is widespread in their cities.

Another indication is a sense among local officials that populations in their cities are up to 20% higher than official county estimates. They hope the 1990 Federal Census will help reveal the extent of double-bunking.

“It’s a big problem in our city,” Maywood Mayor Rosemarie Buscigilio said recently. “It goes on all the time. Almost every house on some blocks has three or four cars parked in front of it.”

The density occurs, in part, because of landlords who attempt to squeeze all the profit they can from rental properties.

“These absentee landlords, they don’t care about the Latino community,” said Rudy Garcia, head of the Bell-Cudahy Chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a group that helps local immigrants gain citizenship, and find legal help, employment and affordable housing.

In Bell Gardens, for instance, about 75% of the landlords live outside the city, City Manager Claude Booker said. And in Maywood, City Administrator Leonard Locher estimates that eight of 10 property owners do not live in the city. The figures are similar in all of the overcrowded cities.

For the past decade, residential development in the area also has lagged far behind other suburban communities in the county, according to regional planning statistics. About 58% of all residential development in the county has occurred in outlying areas, but in the seven Southeast communities, located south of the industrial areas of Vernon and Commerce and east of South-Central Los Angeles, housing growth has been 8%, county figures show.

Not Enough Housing

“The housing crisis is here,” said Joseph Carreras, a housing expert with the Southern California Assn. of Governments (SCAG), an agency organized and controlled by local city and county representatives who set policy in the Southland. “There is just not enough decent affordable housing to meet the tremendous need.”

The living conditions caused by overcrowding, however, are chiefly the result of poverty. County studies of income levels reveal that even if adequate housing were available, few immigrant families could afford it.

Statistics show that per-capita income in all seven cities and Hawaiian Gardens is among the lowest in the county. Cudahy had the lowest per capita income, estimated at $4,831, in Los Angeles County in 1985, the last year these estimates were prepared, according to a county survey published last year. South Gate’s estimated per-capita income of $7,070 was the highest of the eight cities.

Other recent studies support the claim that Latino immigration is a major reason for overcrowding and poverty in the Southeast. A UCLA study states that the overall poverty rate is rising for Latino families in Los Angeles County.

About 25.2% of Latino families in 1987 lived below the poverty level, earning less than $11,600 per year. That figure is up from 16.6% in 1969.

Poorest Cities in the Nation

The study came on the heels of a report by a Chicago-based urbanologist, who said that Cudahy, Bell Gardens and Huntington Park were the poorest communities in the country.

Pierre DeVise, the urbanologist from Roosevelt University, noted that the high percentage of Latinos in those communities is a major reason for the poverty. “The nation’s poorest suburbs represent the American nightmare,” DeVise wrote.

The problems associated with high density have spilled over into education, school officials said, where classrooms mirror the overcrowded conditions of the neighborhoods.

For several years, educators in the Los Angeles, Montebello and Lynwood Unified School districts have been struggling to provide enough desks to accommodate the influx of Latino students and enough bilingual teachers to ensure that the sons and daughters of the new immigrants receive a quality education.

Year-Round School System

Despite efforts by the Los Angeles Unified School District to alleviate overcrowding by creating year-round schedules, schools in Cudahy, Huntington Park, Bell and South Gate remain the most crowded in the 708-square-mile district.

Hundreds of pupils are bused out of the area each school day to attend less crowded schools in other parts of the district. Bell High School, for instance, with a capacity of 3,500 students, now buses more than 600 students to schools outside its area, said Los Angeles Unified School District administrator Gordon Wohlers.

Huntington Park High, with a capacity of 3,300, buses 350 students into other regions, and South Gate High, despite adding 24 new classrooms recently, must still bus pupils, Wohlers said.

Some schools in the Southeast area, known as Region B, are 98% Latino, according to Los Angeles district reports. Bell Gardens schools, part of the Montebello Unified School District, and Lynwood schools are also facing similar overcrowded conditions and a corresponding increase in Latino enrollment.

Face Expensive Programs

As a result, all three school districts face the high cost of improving bilingual education and sponsoring expensive construction programs, school officials said.

South Gate, Bell and Huntington Park high schools have all been slated for ambitious expansion programs to ease the classroom shortage, said Los Angeles district spokesman Max Barney. The projects are expected to cost as much as $21 million, he said. Millions of dollars more are being raised to upgrade elementary and junior high schools.

But despite plans to build and expand schools in the area, officials said, at the rate the population is growing, the new classrooms will be filled the day they are ready for use.

“We’ll never be able to build schools fast enough to catch up with the overcrowding,” said Willene Cooper, chairwoman of the Southeast Commission on School Overcrowding, a private watchdog group.

The increase in density in Southeast cities has been accompanied by an increase in crime. Law enforcement officials report that in the past several years, there has been a rise in the overall crime rate, much of it due to an increase in gang-related activity, especially among teen-agers.

Crime Rate Up as Much as 50%

Local police departments have reported crime up by as much as 50% in the past year, police said, creating a need for more officers.

In Huntington Park, for instance, the City Council attempted to impose a 7% utility tax, partly to raise money to hire 15 uniformed officers. Voters rejected the ballot measure.

Social service agencies, both public and private, are also under pressure. Their work with Latino immigrants increased by as much as 52% since the 1980 Federal Census. The agencies provide legal advice, counseling, food and medical attention to new immigrants.

“We really need money,” said Barbara Hernandez, an administrator for the Bell Gardens-based Human Services Assn., which has been helping low-income residents in the area for more than 50 years. She said that the agency’s $1.8-million yearly budget is not enough to help all the immigrants who walk into the organization’s office on Ludell Street.

“We try to make things stretch,” she added. “But we’ve just seen a real increase in the number of people who need food.”

The changes brought about by the immigration, although not actually catching local officials off guard, has left them scrambling to preserve a way of life that many admit has all but ceased to exist.

Some property owners say they remember how it was before their cities became teeming urban immigrant centers.

Elbert Jacobs, 78, a retired truck driver who has lived in Maywood since 1946, stood under a shade tree in the back yard of his 52nd Street wood frame home and described the almost bucolic life style he once enjoyed.

Jacobs was forced to raise his voice each time a truck rumbled by on nearby Atlantic Boulevard, visible from over his back-yard fence. He pointed to apartment buildings where fields once stood.

“Yeah, it’s all built up,” Jacobs said recently. “Maywood used to be a real quiet town. In fact, this used to be a quiet neighborhood of all older people.

“Now all you see is a lot of kids,” almost all of them Latino, Jacobs added. Down the street, dozens of young children playfully chased one another, dodging between rows of parked cars and yelling in Spanish.

Huntington Park Councilman Jack W. Parks was more critical of the wave of Latino immigration that has changed the face of the city in which he was raised.

“It was a quaint community,” he said, but because of white flight, much of the business and life style became dominated by the “Hispanic element.” He blamed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for the influx of immigrants.

“To slow down the infiltration (of immigrants into Huntington Park), we need to slow down the illegals,” Parks said in a telephone conversation.

Parks half-jokingly talked about a conversation he had with San Diego officials recently. “I told them that we wouldn’t have problems if they take down that sign that says: ‘Huntington Park--150 miles,’ ” he said.

But the answers do not come readily.

“We’ve known for a long time that we are considerably overpopulated,” said Maywood’s Locher, who grew up in the small city. “But there’s no answer to the question, ‘What do you do about it?’ ”

For several years Bell Gardens officials have attempted to reduce the number of people in their city by launching an ambitious redevelopment program that has included tearing down more than 300 homes for open park space and commercial development.

An entire neighborhood has been leveled to make way for commercial development near the Long Beach Freeway and Eastern Avenue. And a block-long row of rental units bordering Bell Gardens Park is being torn down for a park expansion.

The actions have infuriated local community leaders, but some Latino community leaders admit that they don’t have enough political power, despite their numbers, to oppose various plans devised by the almost all-Anglo local political bodies.

4 Latino Officials in 7 Cities

There are only four Latino elected officials on councils in the seven cities.

“These people will do what they want,” said Garcia of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “We’re hoping the amnesty will create a lot of voters. That’s what they (the white power structure) are afraid of.”

But despite redevelopment efforts to change the face of the 2.3-square-mile city, Bell Gardens remains the fifth most densely populated city in the county. “They just keep on coming,” Bell Gardens City Manager Booker admitted. “So far, nothing we have done has worked very well.”

The Huntington Park Community Redevelopment Agency has sponsored several single-family and condominium developments to replace worn-out rental housing on Miles Avenue and other streets near City Hall, partly as a way to cut down on the number of people living in the city, according to city officials.

Tenants who are displaced are given $2,000 in relocation fees. Bell Gardens and Huntington Park officials said that they do not know how many of the displaced residents find other units in the city.

Huntington Park, however, is still the fourth most densely populated city in the county, according to county Department of Regional Planning figures.

Late last year, Bell and Maywood officials adopted temporary bans on residential construction.

In a report urging the 10-month moratorium that ends in November, Bell acting planning director William Phelps warned: “The new residents have placed an unprecedented pressure on the outdated, undersized, inadequate, community facilities.”

In fact, city officials in several cities are considering financing multimillion-dollar construction programs to replace sewer and water systems--some as old as 60 years and built to accommodate one-third the current population. Moreover, many city streets need improvements to handle increased traffic, city officials said.

Echoing warnings issued by officials in surrounding cities, Bell’s Phelps last year said that the population growth has already filled the city’s sewer lines almost to capacity. He also warned that because apartment buildings often were built without adequate parking facilities, it is becoming more difficult for the Police and Fire departments to answer emergency calls.

County sanitation officials say that if the population increase continues, the three main sewer lines that move sewage from that district to Long Beach could reach capacity within 10 years, creating the need for a major overhaul.

“That will take millions of dollars,” said David Bruns, an administrator for the county Sanitation Districts.

Some urbanologists blame many of the problems that have beset the cities on years of poor planning and lack of foresight by city officials.

“Lousy policy makes lousy communities,” said Abram Krushkhov, a regional planning professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills. He said that the cities, once agriculturally oriented communities, never were rezoned properly to accommodate the urbanizing trend that began taking place after World War II. “They just did not adequately meet the need when they had to.”

‘It Just Doesn’t Make Sense’

For example, almost 95% of the residential property in Bell is zoned for multifamily construction. “It just doesn’t make sense,” Krushkhov said. “That decision was made a long time ago and should have been changed.”

In fact, for the past year, Bell officials have slowly come to the same conclusion. But, they say, although they are considering several slow-growth laws to limit future growth, they are powerless to change the density brought on by the thousands of apartment complexes that were built over the years.

The controversy over the city’s high density arose last year when planners began to review the zoning code.

Knowing that much of the city was zoned for multifamily housing, city staffers for decades allowed property owners to build apartment buildings behind small, single-family homes to increase their income.

Consequently, the practice more than doubled the number of available rental units in the city, putting a severe strain on power, water, sewer and trash services, city officials said.

During last year’s review, city officials determined that the multiple housing provision does not allow mixing apartments with homes on a single lot. Thus, hundreds of property owners who owned apartments and homes are in violation of the zoning code.

Selwyn Enzer, director for future research at USC, said he does not expect the immigration flow to subside in the near future. He predicted that Latinos will continue to flock to this area for the next 15 to 20 years.

“I do not see anything, quite frankly, that’s going to stop that, given the political and social problems that persist (in Latin countries)” Enzer said.

The challenges city officials face in coping with density are a world away from the day-to-day problems of the Latinos struggling to survive in these Southeast cities.

Members of the Romero family, for example, moved to Cudahy from Leon, Mexico, over a period of years.

Sophia Romero, whose husband works evenings as a cook at a local fast-food restaurant, spends her late afternoons cooking large pots of beans, rice and meat for the 14 family members who live in their three-bedroom apartment on Clara Street.

On one recent night, after sitting down to a hot meal of caldo, a vegetable and beef-rib soup, the 14 members of the Romero family talked about their hopes for a better future and made comparisons between life in Mexico and Cudahy.

Surrounded by family members, most of them young men who came to live in the United States illegally during the past two years, Sophia Romero said that her dream so far has not diminished, despite the poverty, the gangs and drugs and the questionable citizenship status of many of the members of her family.

Her chief dream, however, is to see her 16-year-old daughter, also named Sophia, graduate from Bell High School with honors and become a doctor. “Yes, that is what I want the most,” the 38-year-old mother of four said. The younger Sophia agreed with her mother, but scowled in embarrassment over the attention.

The younger Sophia speaks English with only a trace of an accent and often acts as an interpreter for the family. But as long as some members of the family remain in the neighborhood and speak only Spanish, there is no need for an interpreter.

“It’s like home here in many ways,” Romero said. Many of those who cbowded into the small living room for an interview agreed.

“I really like it here,” said Lalo Contrera, an illegal immigrant, who recently made his way to the United States with the help of a coyote, a guide who earns money helping Mexicans cross the border to the north.

“You can make $4 an hour here,” he said to the enthusiastic agreement of the other young men. “At home, you only make $4 a day.” Lalo sleeps in shifts with seven other cousins and nephews who share a room that has only four beds.

Romero said that she is not uncomfortable living with 13 others in a three-bedroom apartment. “They are all here because I want to help them and take care of them,” she said. “We help each other, we give each other strength.”

WHERE THE CROWDING IS WORST

Density Estimated Area in Persons Per Rank City Population Square Miles Square Mile 1 Maywood 26,018 1.183 21,993 2 West Hollywood 38,324 1.981 19,346 3 Cudahy 20,586 1.071 19,221 4 Huntington Park 55,966 3.018 18,544 5 Bell Gardens 37,970 2.397 15,841 6 Hermosa Beach 19,160 1.360 14,088 7 Lawndale 26,473 1.931 13,709 8 Hawaiian Gardens 12,910 0.959 13,462 9 Santa Monica 94,112 8.147 11.552 10 Lynwood 55,451 4.848 11,438 11 Inglewood 100,472 9.114 11,024 12 Lomita 20,293 1.891 10,731 13 Hawthorne 62,433 5.908 10.568 14 South Gate 76,356 7.321 10,430 15 Bell 28,392 2.810 10,104

Density Rank Incorporated 1 1924 2 1984 3 1960 4 1906 5 1961 6 1907 7 1959 8 1964 9 1886 10 1921 11 1908 12 1964 13 1922 14 1923 15 1927

SOURCE: Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning, Population Research Section

LATINO SCHOOL ENROLLMENT

HIGH JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL INTERMEDIATE ELEM School System 1979-80 1988-89 1979-80 1988-89 1979-80 LOS ANGELES UNIFIED 78.6% 94.7% 69.0% 85.3% 74.0 % Region B: (covering Huntington Park, Cudahy, Maywood, Bell and South Gate) MONTEBELLO UNIFIED 68.0 87.0 76.8 91.4 81.0 (covering Bell Gardens) LYNWOOD UNIFIED 36.0 61.8 47.0 72.8 60.0

ENTARY School System 1988-89 LOS ANGELES UNIFIED 84.0% Region B: (covering Huntington Park, Cudahy, Maywood, Bell and South Gate) MONTEBELLO UNIFIED 89.5 (covering Bell Gardens) LYNWOOD UNIFIED 77.8

Source: Annual Racial and Ethnic Surveys, compiled by school districts. CITIES WITH LOWEST PER CAPITA INCOME

Rank City 1979 1983 1985 1. Cudahy $3,734 $4,421 $4,831 2. Bell Gardens 3,796 4,550 4,988 3. Huntington Park 4,500 5,322 5,886 4. Maywood 4,457 5,340 5,902 5. Compton 4,363 5,617 6,161 6. Lynwood 4,926 5,842 6,222 7. South El Monte 4,466 5,674 6,454 8. Commerce 4,650 5,806 6,481 9. El Monte 5,002 6,246 6,823 10. Baldwin Park 4,955 6,100 6,915 11. Baldwin park 4,955 6,100 6,915 12. Hawaiian Gardens 4,849 6,194 6,968 13. South Gate 5,734 6,568 7,070

* Most recent statistics. Next survey scheduled for 1990. SOURCE: L.A. County Department of Regional Planning.