Family Fearful of Crime, Spread of Trouble

Morton Green, a dentist, and his wife, Susan, have two young sons, a boat, two cars and a neat $104,000 house on Schoenborn Street in Northridge where the family has lived for five years.

The Greens also have double locks on every door and window and a sophisticated home alarm system on order. Susan and the boys sleep in the living room when Morton, who does emergency dental work, is called away so they can have “an easy out” in case a prowler breaks in.

Though they’ve never been burglarized, the family has had four tires on their cars flattened in a month, which has unnerved them.

When they turn off Schoenborn and head north, they say, they lock their car doors and roll up the windows because they are afraid of what lies ahead.

The Greens live four blocks from the intersection of Bryant Street and Vanalden Avenue, the center of a run-down and crime-ridden cluster of apartment buildings and the focus of a controversial proposed city renewal.

‘People in the Middle’

“We are the people in the middle,” said Morton Green, 41. “We aren’t leading petition drives or writing letters. We are just fighting to keep our street clean and safe.”

In many ways the Greens and other families who live on Schoenborn Street feel they are victims of the blighted conditions in the Bryant-Vanalden neighborhood. They say they have been forced to make adjustments in their lives that they would not make if they lived a mile away.

“What I fear most is that the blight, the malignancy, that street is coming this way,” Green said. “Just look at the other streets. People are beginning to park their cars on the lawn. Houses aren’t being kept up as nice. It’s a matter of time when it hits here.”

Green said the value of his home is stagnating or dropping. He spends $400 a month to send his children to a private elementary school because, he said, he believes they would be virtual outsiders at the nearby public school, largely attended by Latino children who live in the Bryant-Vanalden area.

The Greens said they also fear for their safety.

‘There Are Killings There’

“I have fear of those people,” Green said. “There are killings there. I know drugs are being dealt and where there are drugs there are problems--prostitution, robbery.”

For Susan Green, 34, even watering the front lawn can be frightening.

“Sometimes I go out there and see some guy walking down the street and it scares me to death. I go right back inside,” she said. “I don’t know what he is doing on our street and I don’t want to take any chances.”

Morton Green said that, while the problems persist, he is unsure of the solution.

“There’s got to be a way to bring the moderate families in both neighborhoods together. The question is, how do we go about it?” he said. “I’m not going to go down to the ghetto and say ‘Hi, I’m Dr. Green. Why don’t you come to my house and solve the problem?’ ”