Degree in Devastation

Others, like Ana Baragan, weren’t so lucky. She and her family moved into the neighborhood in the late ’80s when it faced another set o f urban ills. She would find broken syringes in the alley behind her house, left by the gangs that prowled there in the night.

She and her neighbors took action. They petitioned and got signatures to close down the alleyway, and organized a neighborhood watch to keep the area safe. “We bought the house thinking it was the house we were going live in for all our lives,” she says.

So the Baragans joined the 15 other families to fight the encroaching school district. They had all heard similar pitches from the district’s men offering them money. And it wasn’t only financial advice they shared.

Recalls James Villanueva: “They said, ‘[Your neighbors are] not going to get far because you can’t win against the state. Whoever’s doing that is just going to take your money, you’re better off just settling.’” They were told that their wages would be garnished and that they might get less for their property if they fought the takeover. Many residents caved under the pressure.

They just didn’t see it coming, Peters says. “They were never part of the notification because they were never in the search area. We community volunteers had to go door-to-door and tell people they had just been selected as this preferred site and they had never been involved in the community process.”

Residents of site 9A felt cut out of the decision-making process, says Mitch O’Farrell, district director of constituent services for Councilmember Eric Garcetti’s office.

“This exact site was decided upon at a fifth public meeting and it was presented for the first time as an option at that meeting. It was a hybrid location as part of a previously considered location along with additional blocks,” O’Farrell says. “The people who actually lived at the selected location were not part of the meeting because they felt that the option had already been disqualified.”

By the time the community was informed, what became known dispassionately as site 9A had already been given the dubious honor of “preferred site” status, Peters says. Their only hope was to rally the community and go to one of the school district meetings and speak out against what they considered an unnecessary seizure of their homes.

Unfortunately for them, the speakers’ roster had already been filled by proponents of the school. Not one dissenting voice was heard at the meeting.

“The day of the school board meeting, we started getting calls from people saying we don’t get to speak publicly,” O’Farrell says. “The district organized the speakers that day for the hearing and they were all in favor.”

The school began to appear to be a juggernaut that the community couldn’t stop; they could only get out of the way.

“People got scared,” Jesus Villanueva said. “The tactics they were using, you can’t say they’re illegal, but they were bad business practices.”

As the school board prepared to approve the request for eminent domain, the community was kept in the dark. All notices sent to the primarily Spanish and Tagalog-speaking neighborhood were in English. The documents were posted in other languages at the local library. Meetings were held during or immediately after many residents got off from work, so attendance was poor.

Even when they could get to the meetings, the Villanuevas say, their complaints went unheard.

“They have to go through the motions so they can say they’re letting us speak. But they’re not hearing us,” James Villanueva says. “Even when you can show up, they don’t make it easy. We were told that they weren’t there to answer our questions, just to let us say how we feel.”

Even that wasn’t easy much of the time. James showed up promptly for what was supposed to be a school board meeting, only to find that it had been postponed for Superintendent Ray Romer’s retirement party. He was asked to come back later that evening.

In the face of opposition, the school district points out that even people in Echo Park voted for Measure K, the bond that is funding this project. James Villanueva certainly did.

“I voted for them to get more money, but I didn’t think it was going to be like that. You would think it’s for education, but it doesn’t actually work out that way,” James says. “It was supposed to go for the kids to get better equipment and Internet and stuff, and they’re not going to get it.”

The move wasn’t easy on anyone. To stay in the area and make payments on the second mortgage they had to take out on their single house, the Villanueva sons had to take second jobs. James works as a graphic designer full-time and a carpenter on the weekends, and Jesse repairs cars on the side after he finishes his work as a diesel mechanic. The third brother, Gasper, is an accountant. Their father, Antonio, was on the verge of retirement before the costs associated with the house forced him to return part-time as a jeweler.

“We are all busy, and hardly have anytime right now for ourselves and family,” James writes in an e-mail.

Ana moved into her new home in Sylmar two years ago when the school district forced her out of her place in site 9A. The Baragans were among the last families to leave after a long fight that ended with an eviction notice. Despite the time that’s passed, she is still feeling the loss of her life in Echo Park.

“I looked through the window of my new home and I felt like crying,” she says.

Dreams of Moving Home Again

Looking back on that first meeting of 15 families at La Fonda, a restaurant that would also be demolished in less than a year, Jesus Villanueva remembers how terrified they felt. Fighting L.A. Unified in court would take money and time, which could be used to rebuild their lives elsewhere.

“We don’t even know how things work, but we weren’t easily scared, and that was our thing,” he said. “They can’t do this.”

The Right Site Coalition’s first lawsuit against the school district was not filed to challenge the eminent domain – that is an impossible suit. Instead, their lawyer, Robert Silverstein, decided that he would insist that the district follow the letter of the law on the construction, whatever that may mean in terms of delays for the opening.

The first point of contention was the California Environmental Quality Act. By California law, all major construction projects are required to go through the Environmental Impact Report process, an intensive look at the effects of the project on the environment, economy, and resident quality of life. The school district had not prepared an EIR for the site, so Silverstein sued to force them to do so in 2005.

That round lasted through December 2006 when the court decided in favor of the Right Site Coalition, stripping the school district of its rights to build until they filed an environmental report. The second lawsuit was filed in reaction to that EIR.

“That report was so shoddy and done with such bad faith that we sued again,” Silverstein said. That suit began in July 2007 and is yet to be resolved.

However, as this second lawsuit began to wind its way through the courts, the school district decided to take action on the site that it now legally owned. In July 2007, bulldozers began knocking down the two commercial properties, La Fonda Restaurant and a tire store.

It was the Villanuevas who first saw the bulldozers and ran to call Peters and Silverstein. By then, the two commercial properties were gone and the bulldozers had turned toward the houses.

Silverstein immediately sought an emergency injunction to force L.A. Unified to wait out the contested EIR lawsuit before knocking down any more homes. The first court refused, but last month, an appellate court handed down the emergency order Silverstein had been looking for.

“The Court of Appeals stepped in, agreed with us, and stopped the demolition. It came down with the decision that the trial judge had made a mistake, and the homes are protected for now,” Silverstein says.

Tom Calhoun, L.A. Unified’s development manager for the central region, sees the lawsuits as unnecessary and ultimately fruitless delays. “We own the land, we’re going to build the school,” he says.

One of the main points of contention over the EIR is that the school district is a self-certifying agency that has the power to approve its own decisions. The EIR that was prepared for the school district was approved by the school board.

As the district waits for the lawsuits to end, the clock ticks closer to 2010, the projected opening of the school. The clock is also ticking on the school district’s budget.

Already, with the rising costs of construction materials, the district has been forced to cut funds to 18 other schools it plans to build in other areas. To finish all the schools as planned, the district would need another $1.2 to $1.8 billion, Calhoun says.

It doesn’t help that the Echo Park School acts as a constant drain on the district’s cash pool. “We’re suffering damages to the tune of $110,000 a week because it’s been languishing in this state for about a year,” Calhoun says.

Even if the Right Site Coalition wins in court, there is no guarantee that the families could get their properties back, even if they wanted to. The homes appear mostly unsound after standing empty for over two years.

“It would be an amazing thing if we could get the school district to admit that times have changed and the need has changed and that this isn’t the time to be building a school there. We would have to acknowledge that because of their intentional neglect of the properties, a lot of them will not be salvageable at this point,” Peters says.

The Villanueva family now lives around the block and, as much as Antonio Villanueva dreams about it, moving home again isn’t likely. After all of the court cases and time and money spent on winning against the district, they were never actually fighting to win back the rights to their property.

Unless, of course, they wage yet another fight and prove wrong the school district lawyer who paid them a visit a year or so ago. “We asked him if we could buy our property back if they don’t build a school there. He said no,” James says. “My dad was fighting to stay.”