Hidden Barrio : Latino Community, Its Troubles Get Little Notice in Newhall

Within easy walking distance of San Fernando Road, Newhall’s main commercial street, lies a small, poor Latino neighborhood of which many people are unaware.

The vest-pocket barrio’s cluster of apartments, old houses, dusty yards, peeling paint, vacant lots and abandoned cars is almost invisible from the busy thoroughfare. The only clue to its existence is the Tresierras supermarket on Market Street.

“People tend to think of the Santa Clarita Valley as a fairly affluent, predominantly Anglo community,” said Connie Worden, a community activist and former school board member. “But we do have our pockets of poverty, and we have a minority population of around 8%.”

Officials estimate that 1,500 people live in the barrio, an area starting roughly at Market Street running northeast to Park Street and lying between Race Street and Railroad Avenue; a stretch of San Fernando Road constitutes the southernmost boundary. The area’s modest homes and apartments are isolated from the rest of Newhall by railroad tracks flanked by narrow strips of vacant land.

Many of the better-off residents of Newhall are unaware of the area’s existence, Worden said. That’s particularly true of people living in new housing developments such as the executive estates in the hills west of William S. Hart Park and the neatly landscaped, planned communities of Valencia.

Eclipsed By Other Problems

Government officials have paid little attention to the neighborhood because of other problems created by the Santa Clarita Valley’s rapid growth, Worden and other community leaders say.

The valley’s population has more than doubled, to about 103,000, since 1970 because of new housing developments. Housing has replaced the large onion fields in which the Latinos once worked, and many of the Latino men now have jobs in construction.

Absentee landlords, roach-infested apartments and crowded living conditions are among the growing problems in the barrio, according to Alfredo Vasquez of the county’s Community Services Center in Newhall. The center tries to be a haven for poor people seeking help with everything from filling out job applications to battling their landlords.

“There is a general feeling that rents are too high,” Vasquez said. “Many families are forced to live together so they can afford to pay the rent.”

Some barrio residents have moved from areas like East Los Angeles and consider Newhall a tranquil place where they are not afraid to leave their windows open at night.

One hot day last week, four men stood under a shade tree on the street to escape their two-bedroom apartment. Twelve people live in the apartment, which they rent for $550 a month.

“We have a very limited income,” one of the men said, speaking in Spanish. “Many have been laid off from the onion fields. We don’t find much work.”

“I very much want to find steady work,” said another.

Nearby, four other men, all recent arrivals from Mexico, said they pay $450 a month for their one-bedroom apartment, which is not air-conditioned.

On the next block, three men sat on the bumper of an old car in front of their one-bedroom apartment. All from Mexico, they have been in the barrio three months, they said, and have not found steady work. One said he worked for a few days with a contractor who builds swimming pools.

Behind their apartment, the alley is cluttered with trash, castoff furniture and rusty car parts. In some cases the litter is caused by landlords providing only one trash bin for an apartment building with 20 or 30 units, Vasquez said.

There are no curbs or sidewalks. Most of the apartments and houses are not landscaped. Children play in the streets or in the dirt in the yards.

Many mothers send their small children unaccompanied to William S. Hart Park several blocks away and across busy San Fernando Road.

Graciella Santana, 27, who lives with her husband and three children in a small one-bedroom apartment the family rents for $450 a month, and a neighbor, Carmen Santana, 32, no relation to Graciella, both said they were concerned that their children have nowhere to play.

Carmen Santana, the mother of three children, said four adults and five children live in her small two-bedroom apartment, leaving the children little space. The rent is $625 a month, she said.

She said the apartment was overrun with roaches and rodents before the county health department forced the landlord to exterminate them a few weeks ago.

Barrio residents disagree whether gang rivalry is a problem. Graffiti have begun to appear on the walls. Worden and other community leaders say a fledgling gang in nearby Val Verde, the only other area in the Santa Clarita Valley with a concentration of Latino residents, is starting to challenge Newhall’s Latino youths.

But no gang problem has developed, Vasquez said. “They are just neighborhood guys who hang around together,” he said.

Under the leadership of Larry Margolis, director of the Community Services Center, Vasquez has conducted rap sessions between barrio youths and deputies from the Santa Clarita Valley sheriff’s station who police the area.

The sessions, Margolis said, have improved relations between the deputies and barrio youths and have decreased the probability of any serious gang activity.

Still, some barrio mothers said they are concerned about a Val Verde gang invasion of the Newhall neighborhood.

“I’m afraid for my kids,” Carmen Santana said. “There are too many cholos who smoke marijuana and drink in the streets. They fight in front of my home two or three times a week. I’m terrified.” Because none of the deputies speak Spanish, she said, “I don’t report them to the police.”

Santana, who works as a maid at an area motel, speaks little English.

Maria Lara, 44, said Val Verde youths drive by her home at night yelling, “Arriba Val Verde. “

“I wish they’d stay away,” she said. “It frightens me. I want them to leave my boys alone.”

Most Anglos Are Gone

When the Lara family moved into the area from Texas 14 years ago, the neighborhood was populated mainly by poor white families. A few remain, but most gradually moved away as more undocumented workers from Mexico, attracted to the area by jobs in nearby agricultural fields, moved in.

Lara, who works as a custodian at California Institute for the Arts in Valencia, said that, when she first moved into her Race Street home, most of her neighbors were Anglo.

“It was nice and quiet then,” she said. “I liked it better. It’s not quiet now.”

Sylvia Trejo, a young mother of two who said she has lived in the barrio for 14 years after moving there from Fillmore, agreed, saying: “There were no Mexican people then. I liked it better then.”

Trejo was watering the green grass in front of her neat, one-bedroom duplex as her children played in the fenced yard. Trejo’s lawn and that of her next-door neighbor are two of the few green areas in the barrio.

“I wish other people would keep up their houses, too,” she said. “We’re renters, too, and we take care of our house.”

About five years ago, Vasquez said, one of the families started a neighborhood-improvement campaign.

“Things started to look better for a while, then people lost interest,” he said.

Without cars or jobs, there is little to do in the barrio. The nearest Mexican restaurant is a mile away. Many dine out at a “traveling restaurant” called La Aguililla, a converted catering truck that parks in the same spot on Market Street every day. Tacos, tortas and other traditional Mexican dishes are cooked to order by a woman in the truck’s small kitchen.

And Tresierras Market, which is decorated with pinatas, is about the only store nearby that sells Mexican groceries. Many barrio residents buy clothing and food from traveling vendors selling merchandise they have brought from Mexico, peddling their wares from the trunks of their cars.

“Their prices are too high,” one woman complained.

Still, to many barrio residents, life in Newhall is good.

Maria Lara said she is pleased that her children have received a good education in Newhall schools. Two sons have graduated from Hart High School and have steady work, she said.

“I keep close to my kids,” she said. “I have no problems with them.”

Ignacio Morella, who lives with three other men in a two--bedroom duplex shaded by a large California live oak tree, said he has worked at Denny’s restaurant since 1977 and makes $7 an hour.

‘I’ve Been Lucky’

“I’ve been lucky,” he said. “One of my roommates who has been here only three months only makes $3.35 an hour.”

People came over and chatted with the men under the shade of the big oak tree growing between the street and the sidewalk.

“This is a very nice neighborhood,” Morella said. “It’s very tranquil. Nobody bothers us. Sometimes we leave the windows open at night.”

Romuldo and Consuelo Arias have lived in the neighborhood for 10 years. They are one of the few barrio couples who own their two-bedroom home, where a microwave oven stands on a counter in the immaculate kitchen.

Romuldo Arias said that, compared with the Pasadena neighborhood where the couple lived for a year, the east Newhall barrio is a very nice place.

“There was too much drug-dealing in Pasadena, too many people there,” he said. “Here, it is better.”

Arias is on disability from his job as a custodian at the arts institute in Valencia. He and his wife--they have 11 children and 26 grandchildren--often have the entire family over on Sundays.

“I roast a pig or something,” he said. “Those are happy times.”