Degree in Devastation
Is L.A. Unified’s ruin of an Echo Park neighborhood really necessary?
James Villanueva and his father reclined on their lawn chairs, taking in the view from the front porch of their Echo Park home. They chatted idly over the newspaper spread out over Antonio Villanueva’s lap. Muted traffic noise from nearby Alvarado Street could barely be heard above the sounds of life in the four homes behind them, where they lived with 10 other family members. For nearly three decades, this modest property near Dodger Stadium had been home for various members of the immigrant family.
Two men showed up that day bearing news that would shake up the lives of the Villanuevas and dozens of others in their neighborhood. They were officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District, and they had come to talk money. On the spot, they offered Antonio Villanueva $700,000 for his property. Other folks on the block heard similar offers. This was to be the site of L.A.’s newest elementary school.
Word of a new school had filled the rumor mill along these hilly streets for months. The latest rumblings that Antonio Villaneuva had heard suggested the campus would be built a few blocks down, near Clinton Street. Talk filtering out of community meetings said nothing about it moving to their block, or that it might gobble up the property that the Villanuevas shared with their 10 cousins. But now James and his father wondered if they had missed a crucial update. After all, the school district officials had scheduled the two-hour meetings at the inconvenient time of 4 p.m., when James, his brother Jesus, and his father were all at work.
On this day nearly four years ago, Antonio chose not to believe that these men posed any threat to him and his family. Leaning over to his son, Antonio said, “They’re stupid. Let’s just wait and see what happens.”
A year later, the family was served an eminent domain notice that they would be evicted from the house in which they had lived for 26 years. They ended up moving around the block, and have now joined other Echo Park community members engaged in a legal battle entering its third year over the massive swath of 49 mostly modest stucco homes that the school district has swallowed up in this once tight-knit neighborhood.
Declining elementary school enrollment and fierce local opposition raise questions not only about the district’s tactics in the name of its aggressive building program, but whether the upheaval in the neighborhood was even necessary. It’s hard to imagine that voters – if they could have known about the ruin it would mean for dozens of families here – would have generously approved three bond measures, totaling nearly $10 billion.
The seized homes have now stood empty for two years, falling into disrepair and acting as a magnet for homeless vagrants and drug users. In an attempt to keep out unwanted visitors, the windows and doors of every home have been shuttered, but ineffectively so. Holes in the wood and glass show where intruders have breached the flimsy defenses in search of copper wire and other building materials, or just a place to sleep.
The area is cordoned off by a chain-link fence covered in black plastic, that taggers have covered in spray paint, giving it the flavor of a third world city. The area is full of the ghosts of happier times, when extended families lived together and worked to build the neighborhood into a safe and vibrant place for their children and grandchildren. Today, there is only desolation, with the neighborhood serving as a battlefield on which L.A. Unified is fighting residents who are insisting that might does not equal right.
The battle’s already claimed serious casualties. Many of the older ex-residents, some struggling with diabetes and other illnesses, could not physically or financially persist in the defense against the school district’s onslaught. Many families abandoned ship early in the conflict, leaving carefully maintained homes to be overrun with weeds and rot, shingles falling and drainage pipes hanging askew.
Published: 03/12/2008
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