Blight Can Have Many Meanings

Blight.

An ugly word, it conjures images of run-down tenements with peeling paint; broken windows, some boarded up, some not; junkies loitering in the hallways. Or vacant lots, knee-deep in brown, spiky weeds, strewn with rusting-out mattress springs, hulks of old cars, beer bottles, trash.

Blight has another face: a modest, attractive, 30-year-old neighborhood with neatly trimmed lawns, fruit trees, well-tended flower beds, new roofs; a proud new condominium project with wide-open spaces of gently rolling, soft green grass, shaded by carefully preserved tall, old trees.

There is a third kind of blight: the ambition and avarice of politicians and developers who redefine as “blighted” neighborhoods as nice as yours and mine in order to facilitate the acquisition of people’s homes at bargain prices, under laws of eminent domain, for the enrichment of private businessmen.

The Huntington Beach City Council had the integrity to stamp out the third kind of blight by voting against the redevelopment project of Beach Boulevard, following hard work by residents of the “blighted” neighborhood.

Residents of the neighborhoods surrounding Disneyland have a similar imposing task. However, the 1,600 residents who protested the Katella Redevelopment Project in Anaheim will have a more difficult time defending their stable, attractive neighborhoods because they have bigger guns against them, including Anaheim Hilton and Towers, Anaheim Marriott, the Wrather Corp. and the Disney Development Co.

I wish them luck. “Blight” in Southern California seems to have less to do with broken windows and peeling paint than with the desirability of your neighborhood to developers with the power to influence decisions.

The Anaheim City Council has the opportunity to follow the example of Huntington Beach and send blight back to the crumbling tenements. Otherwise, as cheap, open land runs out in our area, no one’s home is safe from the ravages of eminent domain.

TAMAR GOLDMANN

Costa Mesa