Census Shows Asian, Hispanic Surge : Population: Changes are dramatic in Long Beach, which has large Cambodian community, and several Southeast cities, where eight of 10 people are now Latinos.

Asian and Hispanic populations have surged in Long Beach and the Southeast Los Angeles County area over the last decade, while the Anglo population in almost every community has dropped, according to U.S. Census data released this week.

The Asian population more than doubled in 13 cities, including Cerritos, which has become the community with the largest percentage of Asian residents in the Southeast. And in Long Beach, which took in thousands of Cambodian refugees in the late 1970s, the Asian population jumped 182%.

The Hispanic population more than doubled in six cities, including Long Beach, and rose 86% in Whittier in the last decade. The only decline in Hispanic residents occurred in Cerritos.

Only two Southeast cities--La Habra Heights and Signal Hill--experienced a growth in their Anglo populations.

The census figures also showed that blacks are settling in greater numbers in Long Beach and several other Southeast cities, but their numbers are shrinking in Compton and Lynwood, which have well-established black communities.

The census figures confirm trends that have been evident to area city and school officials as they struggled to accommodate swelling immigrant populations that packed schools in Long Beach, strained the sewer capacity in Bell, forced Compton schools to import teachers from Spain, and helped break up the Anglo majority on the City Council in Huntington Park, which last year elected its first two Hispanic council members.

The newest census data shows that at least eight out of 10 residents in Huntington Park, Bell, Bell Gardens, Commerce, Cudahy, Maywood, Pico Rivera and South Gate are Hispanic.

“Let me put it this way,” Maywood City Manager Leonard Locher said. “I have lived on my block for 28 years. It used to be all Anglo. Today, there are four or five Anglos left.

“A while back, the Anglo woman across the street from us moved. The last time I counted there were six (Hispanic) adults and five children living in that two-bedroom house and in the garage.

“This is what is happening, and it didn’t just happen across the street from me. It happened all over Maywood.”

Many of the city’s Anglos residents, lured here in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s from their Midwestern cities and towns by the Southeast area’s agricultural lifestyle, its balmy climate and cheap land, have since died or moved out, Locher said.

Bell Gardens City Manager Claude Booker said many of the city’s Anglo residents have chosen to move to retirement communities in Arizona and inland communities, such as Lake Elsinore in the Cleveland National Forest. So many Bell Gardens residents have moved to Lake Havasu City on the Arizona side of the Colorado River that they jokingly created a “Bell Gardens Yacht Club” on a floating platform of wood and Astroturf on the lake, he said.

“We had tremendously heavy growth in the city in the 1930s and ‘40s,” Booker said. “Now, those people that settle this community are either dying or pulling up stakes.”

Like Maywood’s Locher, Booker said that the trend in Bell Gardens and surrounding cities has been for a Hispanic family or families to move into a home once occupied by an elderly Anglo.

In Long Beach, the Hispanic population has increased by 50,000--double what it was in 1980. Although the majority of the Hispanic immigrants still come from Mexico, more and more hail from Central American countries where political or economic conditions have forced them to leave their homelands, said Roberto Uranga, state deputy director of the League of United Latin American Citizens and president of the city’s Hispanic Business Assn.

Hispanic immigration has brought more than new cultures, new perspectives and clashing political views. It has also brought sudden jumps in population that are straining municipal services and programs in many communities.

The population of Bell, for example, grew 35% in the decade, the Census data shows. If the growth in Bell and its neighboring cities continues, county sanitation experts say that the three main lines that move sewage from the area south to Long Beach will reach capacity in 10 years, creating the need for a major expansion.

Cudahy, Bell Gardens, and Maywood are also bowing under the weight of thousands of immigrants who need housing, water, police and fire services, and places for their children to play, city officials said. “We just have too many people,” said Booker, the Bell Gardens city manager.

In Bell Gardens, political discontent is growing among Hispanics, many of whom are wondering whether the all-Anglo City Council can understand their needs. The frustration felt by some Hispanics reached a boiling point after the council passed a controversial plan to control population density through new zoning laws. Many Hispanics said they believed the plan is designed to drive them from the city.

Political unrest also has surfaced in Compton, where the Hispanic population nearly doubled and now makes up 44% of the overall population in the city, where the ranks of elected and appointed city officials are predominantly black. Hispanics reached majority status in the schools last year. The school board has one Hispanic member, but no Hispanic has been elected to the City Council.

In Compton, Hispanic leaders have expressed anger over the failure of both the city and the school district to develop affirmative-action hiring plans. About 3.5% of the school teachers and less than 10% of the work force in City Hall is Hispanic, though the city did hire more Spanish-speaking police dispatchers, under pressure from the Hispanic community. The black population in Compton dropped 37% in the last decade, with blacks now making up 53% of the city’s total.

“We have experienced a move out of the urban areas to the suburbs,” Compton City Councilwoman Patricia A. Moore acknowledged. “It’s very evident even among our city employees. Many of them who used to live here have moved to the suburbs. They are looking for better schools, less crime and new housing at a low cost.”

In direct contrast to other major California cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, Long Beach has had a significant rise in its black population--42%.

“A lot of (black) people have decided to move out of the metropolitan areas because of gangs and other things and move into bedroom communities,” said Larry Rodgers, executive director of the Long Beach Community Improvement League, a social service agency that primarily serves the blacks.

Many of the newly arrived black residents, Rodgers said, are professionals from Los Angeles. However, many others are less affluent blacks fleeing hard-core urban areas, and they need child care, jobs, health care, and educational support programs, Rodgers said. “We are approaching a crisis situation,” he said. “The system is bursting at the seams.”

In Long Beach, city planners say immigration can help revitalize a city. They credit the influx of Asian immigrants--many of them Cambodians--with helping to revive a stretch known as the Anaheim corridor, which was a depressed commercial area in the central city.

“Their overall influence has been very positive,” said Bud Crow, a city planning officer. Where boarded, abandoned buildings once stood, he said, there are now thriving mom-and-pop stores sporting Cambodian-language signs. “It’s sort of a private revitalization project,” Crow added.

There is another noteworthy shift in Long Beach documented by the 1990 Census: a 32% increase in the number of children living in the city compared to only a 15% increase in the number of adults.

Crow attributes the shift to two factors: the influx of immigrants, many of them families with children, and the economic revitalization of the city’s downtown area, which he says is attracting younger families to move there.

The change has been evident, he said, in the increasing shortage of recreational facilities for children, particularly on the city’s west side. “The facilities haven’t gone away,” Crow said, “the number of people using them has increased.”

It has also been evident in the school district, which for several years has been trying to alleviate overcrowding by building new schools, installing portable classrooms and shifting to year-round schedules.

“It’s no surprise to anyone in the schools,” said Dick Van der Laan, a spokesman for the Long Beach Unified School District. “This has been a steady trend during the past decade.”

The census data also showed a marked decline in the number of young people in Lakewood and Cerritos. The total population in Lakewood declined slightly during the decade, but the number of residents under 18 dropped by 11%

The number of young people fell 24% in Cerritos, where total population remained unchanged in the 1980s, representing a significant change from the previous decade. When Cerritos was built in the early 1970s, 24 lavish parks were created for the youngsters who filled the tract houses that sprung up by the thousands on former dairy fields.

Now, there is increasing pressure for senior facilities and services. Last week, the City Council chose Pat Nixon Park as its site for its first senior center.

Times staff writer David Haldane contributed to this story.

HEAVIEST LATINO CONCENTRATIONS

Southeast cities where Hispanics make up more than 80% of population.

Total % City Pop. Hispanic MAYWOOD 27,850 93% HUNTINGTON PARK 56,065 92% COMMERCE 12,135 91% CUDAHY 22,817 89% BELL GARDENS 42,355 88% BELL 34,365 86% PICO RIVERA 59,177 83% SOUTH GATE 86,284 83%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau ETHNIC GROUPS AS % OF 1990 POPULATION

Name Anglo Black Asian Am. Ind. Other Hispanic ARTESIA 41.5% 2.5% 15.4% 0.3% 0.3% 40.1% BELL 11.6% 0.6% 1.0% 0.4% 0.4% 86.1% BELLFLOWER 59.7% 6.1% 9.6% 0.6% 0.2% 23.9% BELL GARDENS 10.1% 0.4% 1.0% 0.7% 0.3% 87.5% CERRITOS 35.8% 7.2% 44.0% 0.3% 0.2% 12.5% COMMERCE 6.8% 0.7% 1.0% 0.5% 0.4% 90.7% COMPTON 1.5% 52.7% 1.7% 0.1% 0.3% 43.7% CUDAHY 7.8% 0.9% 1.4% 0.6% 0.3% 88.9% DOWNEY 55.4% 3.1% 8.4% 0.5% 0.2% 32.3% HACIENDA HEIGHTS 39.1% 1.9% 26.4% 0.4% 0.1% 32.0% HAWAIIAN GARDENS 19.8% 4.2% 8.9% 0.5% 0.1% 66.6% HUNTINGTON PARK 5.4% 0.8% 1.4% 0.2% 0.4% 91.9% LA HABRA HEIGHTS 81.8% 0.3% 6.7% 0.3% 0.1% 10.9% LAKEWOOD 72.3% 3.5% 8.9% 0.5% 0.1% 14.6% LA MIRADA 64.4% 1.3% 7.9% 0.4% 0.2% 25.9% LONG BEACH 49.5% 13.2% 12.9% 0.5% 0.2% 23.6% LYNWOOD 6.4% 21.0% 1.7% 0.2% 0.4% 70.3% MAYWOOD 5.6% 0.2% 0.5% 0.2% 0.3% 93.1% MONTEBELLO 16.8% 0.8% 14.4% 0.2% 0.3% 67.6% NORWALK 36.7% 3.0% 11.6% 0.5% 0.3% 47.9% PARAMOUNT 22.9% 10.2% 5.4% 0.5% 0.3% 60.8% PICO RIVERA 13.1% 0.5% 2.7% 0.2% 0.3% 83.2% SANTA FE SPRINGS 26.1% 1.7% 4.1% 0.4% 0.3% 67.4% SIGNAL HILL 56.3% 10.3% 10.7% 0.7% 0.2% 21.8% SOUTH GATE 13.7% 1.3% 1.3% 0.2% 0.4% 83.1% VERNON 19.1% 0.7% 2.0% 0.0% 0.0% 78.3% WALNUT PARK 6.3% 0.2% 0.8% 0.2% 0.4% 92.1% WHITTIER 56.3% 1.2% 3.1% 0.3% 0.1% 39.0% WILLOWBROOK 1.3% 53.1% 0.4% 0.1% 0.4% 44.6%

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census Note: Anglos are non-Hispanic whites. ETHNIC BREAKDOWN

Following are the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures on the racial/ethnic population breakdown in southeast Los Angeles County communities compared to 1980 totals. In the data, the U.S. Census makes a distinction between racial groups and ethnic groups. All categories except “Hispanic” are considered racial groups. The “Hispanic” category is considered an ethnic group and includes Hispanics of all races. Anglos are non-Hispanic whites. All of the groups together represent the total population picture.

% change % change % change from from from City Total 1980 Anglo 1980 Black 1980 ARTESIA 15,464 8 6,415 -21 379 93 BELL 34,365 35 3,981 -53 199 158 BELLFLOWER 61,815 16 36,884 -11 3,742 325 BELL GARDENS 42,355 24 4,273 -61 157 10 CERRITOS 53,240 0 19,035 -34 3,849 -7 COMMERCE 12,135 15 823 -41 79 132 COMPTON 90,454 11 1,321 -37 47,680 -21 CUDAHY 22,817 27 1,790 -61 195 6 DOWNEY 91,444 11 50,682 -21 2,876 272 HACIENDA HEIGHTS 52,354 6 20,461 -31 1,018 55 HAWAIIAN GARDENS 13,639 29 2,695 -34 579 412 HUNTINGTON PARK 56,065 21 3,046 -62 429 192 LA HABRA HEIGHTS 6,226 30 5,090 16 19 280 LAKEWOOD 73,557 -1 53,176 -13 2,586 73 LA MIRADA 40,452 -1 26,035 -17 535 176 LONG BEACH 429,433 19 212,755 -13 56,805 42 LYNWOOD 61,945 28 3,959 -58 13,009 -22 MAYWOOD 27,850 28 1,568 -58 46 15 MONTEBELLO 59,564 13 9,981 -25 486 84 NORWALK 94,279 11 34,633 -23 2,846 142 PARAMOUNT 47,669 31 10,898 -35 4,861 297 PICO RIVERA 59,177 11 7,731 -33 303 222 SANTA FE SPRINGS 15,520 7 4,054 -24 262 394 SIGNAL HILL 8,371 46 4,711 20 865 26 SOUTH GATE 86,284 29 11,803 -53 1,139 -3 VERNON 152 na 29 na 1 na WALNUT PARK 14,722 25 932 -64 35 -19 WHITTIER 77,671 11 43,713 -14 916 137 WILLOWBROOK 32,772 6 440 -12 17,416 -20

ETHNIC BREAKDOWN (cont’d)

% change % change % change from American from from City Asian 1980 Indian 1980 Other 1980 ARTESIA 2,382 309 49 -22 45 -87 BELL 328 15 149 -14 125 -14 BELLFLOWER 5,909 192 392 43 112 -83 BELL GARDENS 419 121 303 -33 128 4 CERRITOS 23,441 106 151 -24 98 -90 COMMERCE 127 140 56 8 44 83 COMPTON 1,525 24 116 15 302 -20 CUDAHY 319 17 146 -43 79 -40 DOWNEY 7,653 177 446 5 218 -72 HACIENDA HEIGHTS 13,824 157 219 24 69 -85 HAWAIIAN GARDENS 1,214 109 62 -30 11 -91 HUNTINGTON PARK 775 83 99 -25 220 56 LA HABRA HEIGHTS 415 317 19 5 5 -85 LAKEWOOD 6,562 181 380 -12 90 -87 LA MIRADA 3,182 174 180 -28 61 -76 LONG BEACH 55,234 197 2,231 -7 989 -81 LYNWOOD 1,066 61 112 -22 234 -64 MAYWOOD 148 -9 68 -36 89 10 MONTEBELLO 8,566 25 100 7 168 -80 NORWALK 10,931 238 510 -16 241 -73 PARAMOUNT 2,558 209 225 -8 129 -73 PICO RIVERA 1,607 124 144 6 155 -18 SANTA FE SPRINGS 642 164 63 -7 43 -46 SIGNAL HILL 897 197 60 35 16 -78 SOUTH GATE 1,105 46 170 -13 340 -2 VERNON 3 na 0 na 0 na WALNUT PARK 112 15 25 -23 52 -28 WHITTIER 2,378 99 271 13 115 -78 WILLOWBROOK 140 46 39 -31 119 -7

% change from City Hispanic 1980 ARTESIA 6,194 25 BELL 29,583 85 BELLFLOWER 14,776 86 BELL GARDENS 37,075 69 CERRITOS 6,666 -11 COMMERCE 11,006 23 COMPTON 39,510 131 CUDAHY 20,288 62 DOWNEY 29,569 113 HACIENDA HEIGHTS 16,763 28 HAWAIIAN GARDENS 9,078 65 HUNTINGTON PARK 51,496 38 LA HABRA HEIGHTS 678 168 LAKEWOOD 10,763 25 LA MIRADA 10,459 36 LONG BEACH 101,419 100 LYNWOOD 43,565 108 MAYWOOD 25,931 48 MONTEBELLO 40,263 28 NORWALK 45,118 32 PARAMOUNT 28,998 73 PICO RIVERA 49,237 21 SANTA FE SPRINGS 10,456 20 SIGNAL HILL 1,822 163 SOUTH GATE 71,727 84 VERNON 119 na WALNUT PARK 13,566 51 WHITTIER 30,278 86 WILLOWBROOK 14,618 74

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census Note: Percent of change for Asian and American Indian includes Hispanic and non-Hispanic population. (Southeast Section) 1990 SOUTHEAST/LONG BEACH POPULATION & HOUSING DATA

Persons/ Name Adult %80 Child %80 Dwellings %80 Dwelling ARTESIA 11,131 12 4,333 0 4,534 5 3.4 BELL 22,596 32 11,769 42 9,401 6 3.7 BELLFLOWER 45,719 13 16,096 25 24,117 12 2.6 BELL GARDENS 25,324 28 17,031 18 9,546 2 4.4 CERRITOS 38,479 14 14,761 -24 15,364 4 3.5 COMMERCE 8,131 23 4,004 3 3,330 15 3.6 COMPTON 57,259 17 33,195 2 23,239 8 3.9 CUDAHY 14,109 38 8,708 12 5,416 7 4.2 DOWNEY 69,139 8 22,305 20 34,302 5 2.7 HACIENDA HEIGHTS 38,522 17 13,832 -17 16,091 13 3.3 HAWAIIAN GARDENS 8,803 38 4,836 16 3,518 18 3.9 HUNTINGTON PARK 36,739 20 19,326 23 14,515 -3 3.9 LA HABRA HEIGHTS 4,833 39 1,393 7 2,161 45 2.9 - LAKEWOOD 55,410 2 18,147 -11 26,795 4 2.7 LA MIRADA 30,708 5 9,744 -17 13,354 11 3.0 - LONG BEACH 319,966 15 109,467 32 170,388 12 2.5 LYNWOOD 38,706 30 23,239 24 14,525 3 4.3 MAYWOOD 17,649 31 10,201 23 6,680 2 4.2 MONTEBELLO 43,397 13 16,167 11 19,193 7 3.1 NORWALK 66,162 15 28,117 1 27,247 8 3.5 PARAMOUNT 30,975 32 16,694 29 13,726 22 3.5 PICO RIVERA 41,389 17 17,788 -1 16,316 6 3.6 SANTA FE SPRINGS 11,058 14 4,462 -7 4,817 13 3.2 SIGNAL HILL 6,567 44 1,804 52 3,670 48 2.3 SOUTH GATE 56,480 25 29,804 37 22,946 0 3.8 VERNON 110 na 42 na 52 na 2.9 WALNUT PARK 9,924 27 4,798 19 3,544 -3 4.2 WHITTIER 57,722 8 19,949 22 28,758 7 2.7 WILLOWBROOK 21,263 11 11,509 -1 8,538 4 3.8

Name %80 ARTESIA 3 BELL 27 BELLFLOWER 4 BELL GARDENS 21 CERRITOS -4 COMMERCE 1 COMPTON 3 CUDAHY 19 DOWNEY 5 HACIENDA HEIGHTS -6 HAWAIIAN GARDENS 10 HUNTINGTON PARK 25 LA HABRA HEIGHTS 10 LAKEWOOD -5 LA MIRADA 11 LONG BEACH 6 LYNWOOD 23 MAYWOOD 25 MONTEBELLO 5 NORWALK 2 PARAMOUNT 8 PICO RIVERA 4 SANTA FE SPRINGS -5 SIGNAL HILL -2 SOUTH GATE 29 VERNON na WALNUT PARK 28 WHITTIER 4 WILLOWBROOK 3

NOTE: “%80” means % change since 1980.

Tables compiled by Richard O’Reilly, director of computer analysis, and Maureen Lyons, statistical analyst