Right of Way Brings Wrong Elements : Santa Ana Neighborhood Made a Sacrifice for Freeway; It Deserves a Better Fate

It’s easy to understand why residents were upset when a Santa Ana neighborhood went downhill even as preparations were made to widen the Santa Ana Freeway. The residents were asked to sacrifice a stretch of neighborhood turf to the widening project to improve a region’s transportation system, but they ended up having to endure much more. The reward for patience was a steady stream of transients, gang members, prostitutes and drug users who used abandoned buildings as hangouts.

Caltrans, which has purchased houses in once-thriving neighborhoods for rights of way, expressed sympathy as it plodded through the cumbersome steps that lead to the demolition of buildings. But more than a year after Caltrans began purchasing 11 homes in the Stafford Street and Grand Avenue neighborhood, seven are still standing--empty, abandoned and boarded up.

The official explanation for the problem is that it takes time to inspect buildings, put them up for sale and then put out bids for demolition. But Caltrans has had such problems elsewhere in the state before, and it has even come under criticism from a state Senate committee for its slow handling of commercial real estate acquisitions in widening projects. If experience is the best teacher, the state bureaucracy ought to be more facile at cutting through red tape, especially where delay leads to neighborhood blight.

The obvious solution would be to hasten the demolition of buildings that are eyesores, or at least facilitate their sale and removal. If demolition can’t be expedited, then at least make good on the promise to have hired crews maintain a daily presence on the properties to discourage their use by transients or as dumping sites.

Long-suffering residents in Santa Ana near the freeway deserve that much consideration. Most of us have to endure inconvenience on the road during widening projects, but these folks have it in their own back yards.