Housing Strained at Seams in Parts of L.A. County

By HUGO MARTIN

Dec. 19, 1999 12 AM PT

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Gonzalez family of Maywood is in a tight spot. Rosalva and Pedro and their six children and two grandchildren live in a cramped, two-bedroom apartment in a poor, rundown neighborhood near railroad tracks and a packing company.

At night, the couple share a bedroom with their two youngest daughters--ages 2 and 4--while their three older daughters--ages 10, 14 and 18--and two infant granddaughters cram into the second bedroom. Their 17-year-old son sleeps on a twin bed in the living room.

Rosalva, a recent Mexican immigrant, dreams of buying a roomy house with a big backyard. But as it is, her husband can barely afford the apartment’s monthly rent of $550 on the minimum wage he earns washing cars.

“It’s difficult,” she said sadly, “but we have become accustomed to this life.”

It is a common story in Maywood, the most densely populated city in California and among the most crowded in the nation, according to state and federal statistics.

The plight of families like the Gonzalezes illustrates the sweeping demographic and economic changes that have taken place in southeast Los Angeles County as immigrants have moved in, looking for work and housing in communities that for many years were white suburban enclaves.

According to a recent study by the state Department of Finance, the southeast area is home to four of the state’s five most densely populated cities: Maywood, Cudahy, Huntington Park and Bell Gardens.

The intense crowding has local officials scrambling to provide more low-cost housing, parks and improved city services.

Maywood is a tiny, blue-collar community with an official population of 30,100 living in a 1.2-square-mile patch of land southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

Nationwide, only a handful of communities on the East Coast--among them the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn--have a higher population density.

Maywood officials say that the crowding is even worse than such rankings show because the city’s actual population is probably closer to 40,000, including those living in illegally converted garages and subdivided homes.

Housing experts predict that overcrowding in southeast Los Angeles County and throughout Southern California will only worsen as construction of affordable housing continues to lag behind population growth.

“I expect the 2000 census will show that newcomers are coming into more crowded conditions,” said USC urban planning professor Dowell Meyers.

Thirty years ago, Maywood was home to mostly white residents who earned union wages at the steel mills, tire plants and car manufacturers in nearby Vernon, Commerce and South Gate. But many of those businesses closed in the early 1980s.

New jobs at textile mills, recycling firms and other lower-paying industries attracted many recent immigrants, especially Mexicans and Central Americans. But with Southern California’s sky-high housing costs, many have to share small homes or apartments with extended family members.

It’s a common history among the four most crowded southeast communities.

Density is measured as inhabitants per square mile. Maywood has 25,083 people per square mile, compared to San Francisco with 16,927, according to a January estimate by the state Department of Finance.

The density contributes to worn, overused streets, traffic congestion and crowded schools, parks, libraries and churches.

Maywood police say the lack of elbow room contributes to cases of domestic violence. Parents and teachers say the lack of privacy at crowded homes makes it difficult for students to study.

Rental units in the southeast are among the most overcrowded in Southern California. In Maywood, the rate of overcrowding among renters is 47%, compared with 27.5% countywide, according to county estimates. An overcrowded home is defined as having more than one person per room, excluding bathrooms, foyers and porches.

Rosa Castillo, a textile worker in Maywood, lives with her sister, her brother-in-law and their two sons--ages 20 and 17--in a small, two-bedroom bungalow with peeling paint, no yard and no garage.

Castillo works the second shift--3 p.m. to midnight--and sometimes walks the seven blocks from her job to her home. She has lived this way for six years, hoping to save enough money to rent a place of her own.

“When you are poor, you take what you can get,” Castillo said.

Overcrowding hits children hard. They play in the streets or in driveways because many backyards in tightly packed communities are small and most apartment buildings provide no open space.

Public Facilities Are Overtaxed Too

Libraries, churches and other public facilities are also crammed.

In Cudahy, the city’s 4,500-square-foot library often becomes so crowded and noisy that reading in peace can be a challenge, said library manager Gerard Billard.

“It’s like a one-room schoolhouse where there is no silent area,” he said.

Children also struggle for privacy at home.

Margarita de Dios, her husband, Armando, and their four children--ages 4 to 14--were recently forced to move out of a one-bedroom apartment in Maywood because the landlord said there were too many children packed into their small apartment.

Unable to find another apartment that they can afford on Armando’s salary as a mechanic, the family temporarily moved in with friends, a couple with three children in a one-bedroom apartment in Cudahy. Margarita and three of her children sleep on blankets on the living room floor, while 4-year-old Elizabeth, the youngest, dozes on the couch.

Margarita walks her children to and from their schools in Maywood--an hour each way. Oscar, the 5-year-old, complains that he is too tired from the walk to attend school. Edwin, 14, says that he cannot find a quiet spot in the cramped apartment to study.

“Sometimes I go into the kitchen and tell everyone to get out,” the high school freshman said.

Maywood has two parks that together total only 5.5 acres. Cudahy has three parks that total 11.5 acres.

Pete Parra, Maywood’s assistant director of community services, said park space is so limited that the city’s recreation staff has to mediate disputes over the use of soccer fields and baseball diamonds.

“A lot of people get unhappy when you can’t give them a place to play,” he said.

Schools in the southeast county are no exception to the crowding. But educators must also contend with a high transiency rate because poor families tend to move often to find better jobs and housing.

Loma Vista Elementary School in Maywood is on a three-track, year-round schedule. School officials still had to convert a resources center, a parents conference room and a technology center into classrooms to accommodate all of its students.

Maywood Police Cmdr. Bruce Leflar believes overcrowding is partly to blame for local crime, especially domestic violence.

“We don’t have any studies. It just makes common sense,” he said.

Maywood is made up of a diverse assortment of neighborhoods, including some well-maintained areas with roomy, single-family homes and plush, green lawns. Its business district, at Slauson Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard, is small but lively.

But other neighborhoods are a hodgepodge of single-family homes and apartment buildings crammed behind 1920s-era bungalows.

Between 1990 and 1999, the population of Maywood increased at least 8%--or 2,200 people--while the number of available housing units decreased by nearly 1%--or 44 units, according to the Department of Finance.

The situation is not much better in Cudahy, where the population increased by 11.2%--or 2,553 people--over the past nine years while the number of housing units increased a scant 1.5%--or 79 units, according to the Department of Finance.

Because of the high demand for cheap housing, illegally subdivided homes and converted garages are a common problem.

Several cities have mandated pre-sale inspections of homes to root out illegal conversions and garage dwellings. But the problem continues.

David Mango, Maywood’s building inspector, said he investigates up to three reports of illegally converted garages and subdivided homes per week. In a recent case, a single-family house and its garage were converted into four units, sheltering 30 people.

The owners of such homes are first given a warning. If the illegal conversions are not eliminated, city officials declare the property substandard and send crews in to make the changes, in most cases prompting tenants to search for other accommodations.

The high density is also due in part to planning decisions made years ago before many of these cities were incorporated.

For example, Cudahy was divided into long, narrow lots, for small farms. But now those narrow lots are packed with rows of homes and apartments stretching back from the streets.

“It’s more of a problem that we are stuck with that we cannot readily address,” said Cudahy City Manager Jack Joseph.

City officials in Cudahy and Maywood also say they lack large business districts to generate the taxes needed to fund housing projects and park expansions.

“Maywood lends itself to overpopulation,” said Mayor Sam Pena. “At this point, it is something we have to live with.”

Pena said the city’s meager budget also makes it difficult to fund such basic city needs as street paving, let alone housing.

City officials say that vacant land is scarce and that developers are not willing to build affordable housing without large public subsidies.

Some critics say that officials in these cities have failed over the years to combine their resources to build affordable housing. But that appears to be changing.

Bell Gardens and Commerce are working together to construct a 103-unit, low-income apartment building on the site of an old freight terminal on Gage Avenue on the border of the two cities.

In July, seven cities in the area formed the Southeast Community Housing Development Corp., a nonprofit group dedicated to affordable housing, which is already planning two single-family homes in Bell.

Housing experts say that highly packed communities need to replace deteriorating and underused properties--such as rundown motels and single-family homes on large lots--with multistory apartment buildings with amenities and open space.

“When you can’t go horizontally, you have to go up,” said Syed Rushdy, director of the county’s Housing Development and Preservation Division.

One example in Cudahy is Elizabeth Street Court, which was once a rundown, 27-unit apartment building near the Los Angeles River. Two years ago, a nonprofit group called the Corporation for Better Housing spent about $2 million to buy and refurbish the building.

Before the nonprofit took over, Paco Zepeda, a construction worker with a wife and three children, paid $650 for a three-bedroom apartment. He said the driveway routinely flooded and children played in the streets.

Zepeda’s rent is now $600 per month and the apartments have new carpeting. The nonprofit group also added a playground and a computer center for children, a barbecue pit, improved security and roof-top solar panels to reduce electricity bills.

“This place has gotten a lot better,” he said.

Rushdy said overcrowded cities must work with each other to increase the pace of construction of such projects.

“It’s an expensive proposition, and it’s not going to happen overnight,” he said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Packing Them In

Most densely populated cities in the state:

People per square mile

Maywood: 25,083

Cudahy: 23,045

Huntington Park: 20,290

West Hollywood: 20,289

Bell Gardens: 18,120