Making LA’s worst neighborhoods great again isn’t hard — just look at thriving ‘Latino Beverly Hills’

Many residents of LA feel that the city is in danger of falling into a downward spiral. But there are bright spots, too, in neighborhoods that are enjoying a boom in economic opportunity, public services, and quality of life.

It’s worth learning from their example, and applying the lessons elsewhere.

LA is really a sprawling metropolis of neighborhoods, with as many as 88 cities in LA County alone. The city of Los Angeles itself consists of distinct neighborhoods as diverse as San Pedro and Granada Hills.

Over time, LA City Hall, the state Legislature in Sacramento, and an armada of nonprofits have tried to expand their control over what cities and neighborhoods do. Their effect is seen in neighborhoods like Fairfax, Hollywood and South LA, which are in a state of decline. Melrose, a hot spot I used to show off to visitors from out of town, seems a shadow of its former self.

The problem is not the people of the neighborhoods, but rather the incompetence of our large governments.

The proof: Look at neighborhoods and cities that are flourishing. These include a host of smaller cities south of LA — places like Downey, Cerritos, Lakewood, South Gate and Paramount — which have recovered from earlier bad times.

This is not largely the product of gentrification by white hipsters. Indeed, most of these cities remain overwhelmingly Hispanic or Asian. Yet by paying attention to the basics, as I discovered in a study with my Chapman colleague, economist Bheki Mahlobo, these cities have achieved lower crime rates, higher retail occupancy, and more jobs than adjacent parts of the city of LA. 

“People come here because they feel safe,” said Mario Trujillo, a prominent Democrat who is Downey’s former mayor and serves on the current City Council. “People migrated from East LA, Boyle Heights, and Chavez Ravine. It’s a ‘move up’ place that we have made for ourselves.”  

Rather than depend on Washington or Sacramento, the new urban reformers follow the old gospel of self-reliance: They “cure themselves.”

Downey, a city that is sometimes jokingly called “the Latino Beverly Hills,” recovered in part because Republicans and Democrats set aside partisan labels and focused on what local residents want.   

“We had to reinvent ourselves,” Mario Guerra, a veteran of the City Council, told me in his office in Downey’s lively downtown. “But we don’t let partisan politics get in the way. People here back each other up. We all want the streets clean, and the graffiti gone.”

Downey residents, he adds, share a common pride in being the home of the world’s oldest McDonald’s, and a place that manufactured key parts of the Space Shuttle.

Focusing on basics, and on developing a sense of community, is far more effective than emphasizing partisan politics. In most of these smaller cities, for example, there is an app to report graffiti. And officials respond. You can report graffiti in LA, too, but you will wait weeks or an eternity for it to be addressed. 

It’s harder to shirk public duties when local politicians live among the people who elect them. As one local council member explained: “We’d better do it, or I won’t be able to get a peaceful cup of coffee.”

Responding to the needs of citizens means paying attention to little things that locals care about – like parks, urban space, and landscaping, even subsidizing flower beds and white picket fences.  

Cities like LA, of course, used to tend urban gardens, but today they lack the focus, will and resources.

“In places like Paramount, people get things done because that’s where they live,” says former Paramount city manager Pat West, a mentor to a generation of younger city managers. “In LA they have meetings.”  

This shorter distance between leaders and residents changes the very nature of government. People generally look out for the well-being of their own families, children and neighbors. They are less concerned about the abstract “people” or “community” often cited by activists from NGOs, whose rich, progressive funders usually live far away. 

It is largely in the big, bureaucratic, and “progressive” cities that abominations like LA’s 50-square-block “Skid Row” are nurtured with soft-headed policies. That kind of poverty may be a perverse draw for visitors who want to experience dystopia firsthand. Bring that kind of governance to Downey, and you’d better brush up on your Spanish curse words. 

Residents of the city of LA are like the black sheriff in the Mel Brooks comedy “Blazing Saddles”: Each knows “you are on your own.” I saw this firsthand when my family lived in Valley Village, and could not find any help from our city council member when, for example, people were illegally cutting the lovely big trees that kept the neighborhood cool.

But frustration does not mean nothing can be done in LA. Progress is possible when business is engaged, as is happening in fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades, where citizens and stakeholders like Rick Caruso are working on their own to bring back the lovely neighborhood.

Maybe Pacific Palisades can show that you don’t have to wait around for the city, Karen Bass or Nithya Raman to turn things around. Instead, invest, haggle and fight back in any way you can, including in court.

It’s time for neighbors to say no to the “professional” political class, the oligarch-funded NGOs, and the muddled university “experts” — and do things for ourselves.

Let communities determine the future they want — rather than accepting what is now being imposed from above.

Joel Kotkin is presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin.

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