More Grit Than Glitz : Neighborhood: Pico area residents endure a hard life in the shadow of affluence. Some say that the community is being ignored by government.

Santa Monica. For most people, the name of the city evokes pictures of beaches, of dining on outdoor patios at fine restaurants, of the good life.

What it does not usually bring to mind is the Pico neighborhood, an area in the heart of the city that is plagued with gang and crime problems. Here you won’t find the pristine homes that show up in magazine photo spreads about Santa Monica. Instead you’ll find some of the worst housing conditions in the city.

While residents in other neighborhoods debate whether the city is losing its soul or becoming too glitzy, Pico residents worry about their children being shot.

And while the city’s liberal, progressive politicians argue about how best to deal with a growing homeless population, some people in the Pico neighborhood wonder why they, as taxpaying residents, can’t get the attention of the same politicians.

“Some people in this town want to be hip by supporting social causes, but they don’t want to acknowledge that there are social problems in this community that are being ignored,” said Peter Tigler, chairman of the Pico Neighborhood Assn., a homeowners and residents group.

“I’m sure that at least 60% of the residents are not aware of the conditions that exist behind the cemetery,” said first-term Councilman Tony Vazquez, referring to the Woodlawn Cemetery at Pico Boulevard and 14th Street. Some people see the 29-acre cemetery, which has been around since before the city was founded in 1875, as a buffer between one of the toughest areas in the Pico neighborhood and the more affluent Sunset Park area south of Pico Boulevard.

“I think people would be shocked if they knew what it was really like in the neighborhood,” Vazquez said.

The city defines the Pico neighborhood as a cluster of neighborhoods bordered by Pico Boulevard on the south, Lincoln Boulevard on the west, Centinela Avenue on the east, and on the north, Santa Monica Boulevard to 20th Street and then along Colorado Avenue. The Santa Monica Freeway divides the neighborhood into northern and southern halves.

But the area that most people know about--because of the gang activity and poor housing conditions--is the one bordered by the Santa Monica Freeway, Cloverfield Boulevard, Pico Boulevard and 14th Street. It includes Virginia Park on the east end and Woodlawn Cemetery on the west.

Here, graffiti covers buildings and streets; apartment buildings are run-down; debris fills the alleys. There are so many cars that finding a space is nearly impossible. Children play in concrete courtyards--but only until dusk, because of the danger of drive-by shootings. In the first five months of this year, there have been a dozen such shootings in the area, according to Police Sgt. Bill Brucker. Last year, there were 10 murders citywide; half of them occurred in the Pico neighborhood.

Arturo Olivas, executive director of the Latino Resources Organization, a Santa Monica-based social service group serving Latinos, said he was surprised at the state of neglect he found in the neighborhood. Olivas joined LRO last September after many years of working with Latino groups in central Los Angeles. “Since Santa Monica does have a reputation of being leaders in liberal causes, I did not expect the situation to be so bad,” he said. “I don’t think anybody has bothered to look at the needs of this community.”

Although residents acknowledge that there are problems in the area, many say it is a good place to live, pointing to longtime residents with close-knit families.

“I could have lived anywhere in the United States, but I choose to live here,” said Alfred T. Quinn, a member of the Santa Monica Community College board of trustees. Quinn, 68, moved to the Pico neighborhood as a 13-year-old in 1936, and has been in his home on 19th Street since 1977.

“These are our homes,” said Frank Juarez, 42, who was reared in the Pico neighborhood and now lives in a triplex he owns on Grant Avenue near 6th Street. “It may be dangerous at night in some areas, but it’s nice during the day. These are working-class people.”

“It is a nice neighborhood,” said Olivas. “It’s just a neglected neighborhood.

Mayor Judy Abdo said she believes that the city had neglected the area in the past. “That is the reason the PNA was formed,” she said. “The PNA has been extremely skilled in bringing forth the issues they identified and have been successful in getting the council to respond to their requests.”

One thing that sets the Pico neighborhood apart from the rest of the city is the high concentration of minority residents. It is the only neighborhood in Santa Monica that has more ethnic minorities than Anglos, 63.5% to 36.5%, and most of the city’s Latino and black residents live there.

Of the 12,210 Latinos citywide, 5,685, or 46.5%, live in the Pico neighborhood, according to the 1990 census. Of the 3,732 black residents citywide, 2,207, or nearly 60%, live in the area. Citywide, Latinos make up 14% of the city’s population, a 1% increase from 1980, and blacks make up 4.3% of the population, less than half a percent increase from 1980. Asians constitute 6.2% of the population, up from 4% in 1980. About 16.5% of the city’s 5,385 Asian residents live in the Pico neighborhood.

Dividing the area, both literally and figuratively, is the Santa Monica Freeway, which opened in 1966 and changed the face of the neighborhood.

“Santa Monica was very Hispanic until the freeway went through,” said Beulah Juarez, 80, who has lived in Pico for nearly 60 years. “It divided the town in half.”

Nearly 600 families, mostly Latino and black, were displaced to make room for the freeway’s path. At that time, each made up 20% to 25% of the city’s population.

The area also has a higher child-to-adult ratio than the rest of the city. Citywide, there are nearly 12,000 children and about 75,000 adults, representing a ratio of about 1 to 6. In the Pico neighborhood, there are about 3,000 children (one-fourth of all the children citywide) and 10,800 adults, for a ratio of about 1 to 3.5.

Perhaps because of the number of children, the Pico neighborhood has an average of 2.26 persons in each dwelling, compared to the citywide average of 1.8 per dwelling.

Some residents think the neighborhood has received short shrift because of its large ethnic population.

“When we file with the IRS, no one asks our ethnic background,” said Clyde Smith, another longtime resident who heads a nonprofit agency that rehabilitates houses and apartments of low-income residents in the Pico neighborhood. “The biggest crime in my neighborhood is the loss of authority. There is an assumption of guilt because of color. We tolerate police presence because we want to be good citizens.”

Police presence is a hotly debated issue. In response to complaints about poor policing of the area, the Police Department three years ago established a Police Community Center in Virginia Park, the only such facility citywide.

Smith is among a number of residents who oppose the facility, saying it has done little to deter crime in the neighborhood. It is “inherent arrogance that says ‘you need role models like me,’ ” Smith said.

Tigler, the neighborhood association chairman, who said the police center has made a difference only in the “immediate shadow of the park,” favors foot patrols for the entire neighborhood.

But Police Officer Duke Torres, one of two officers who man the center six days a week, said the police center provides area residents, particularly Spanish-speaking people, a place to file complaints or seek city services without having to go to City Hall.

He said the center is also establishing preventive programs such as the Police Activities League to try to keep youths from joining gangs.

“People can come here knowing that we are here, that there is always a place where they can go,” Torres said.

The Pico neighborhood has remained generally stable since the opening of the freeway, not always by residents’ choice.

Many homeowners, even with equity in their homes reaching more than $200,000, would be unable to afford to buy in other areas where houses cost even more. A new house would also mean paying higher property taxes.

“Most people are just hanging around because they can’t afford to move,” said Takashi Sumi, 67, who has lived in his home on Warwick Avenue near Centinela Avenue since 1954. “But it’s also nice here. This is still the west side of town, and it’s still cooler. It’s hard to beat.”

For Westside renters, the low monthly rents--even in crowded, poorly maintained buildings--also are hard to beat.

A recent survey of rents by the Santa Monica Rent Control Board found that the Pico neighborhood had the lowest rents in the city.

The survey showed that the median monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Pico neighborhood, for example, is $410, which is $75 less than the median rent in the next least expensive area. For a three-bedroom apartment, the median rent is $485, nearly $130 less than the next cheapest area in Santa Monica.

But like other parts of the city, the Pico neighborhood faces gentrification. Some apartments are being converted to condominiums through a city program that allows tenants to purchase the buildings. Some tenants are able to afford to buy into the conversions, but many more cannot and are forced to look for housing elsewhere, usually outside the city.

There has also been the demolition of single-family houses making way for the construction of new condominiums and townhouses, most in the mid-$200,000 range and above.

Housing advocates fear that new commercial developments such as the Water Garden and The Arboretum along Colorado Avenue will create demand for more expensive housing for business executives who will be working there.

“There are real estate speculators on the PNA board who are trying to squelch the idea of affordable housing,” said one city official who asked not to be identified. “There is a decrease in the number of mom-and-pop-owned apartments, and we are seeing condos go up where single-family homes were once located.”

Steve Sawai, an agent with Prudential Realty, said property values in the Pico neighborhood are lower than in other areas in the city because of its mixed zoning, which allows apartment buildings next to single-family houses and commercial and industrial uses along major thoroughfares.

Still, he said, single-family homes range from the high $200,000s to the mid-$300,000s. Condominiums are in the mid-$200,000 range.

“The Pico neighborhood is still the starting point for many people who want to live in Santa Monica,” he said.

Some longtime residents, like Smith, favor a move toward newer buildings because they will improve the area. He suggests that city officials use public funds to help tenants buy their apartments rather than for the construction of new low-income housing. Smith says home ownership will give more people pride in their neighborhood and build self-esteem.

The larger neighborhood as defined by the city is a patchwork of industrial, commercial and residential uses, both new and old.

At the far southeastern corner on Pico Boulevard is the tony Valentino Italian Restaurant, considered among the finest restaurants in the region, and probably not frequented by most residents of the Pico neighborhood. A few blocks down is Rae’s restaurant, a very untrendy ‘50s-type coffee shop where many locals eat.

The northern end of the neighborhood is primarily commercial and industrial, including the city’s maintenance yard on Michigan Avenue and GTE California’s storage and maintenance facility on Olympic Boulevard, which has been there since shortly after World War II.

New commercial uses include the first stage of the 1.26-million-square-foot Water Garden office complex, and filmmaker George Lucas’ recently opened 30,000-square-foot post-production studio, Skywalker Sound, South Studio, along Olympic Boulevard.

Earlier this month, Sony Corp. announced that it plans to moves its West Coast music entertainment division into 97,500 square feet of office space to be built in The Arboretum office complex on the corner of Colorado Avenue and Cloverfield Boulevard.

Santa Monica College and its sprawling campus on Pico Boulevard lies just south of the neighborhood across the Woodlawn Cemetery. The college is outside the neighborhood, but many of the school’s 23,000 commuters park on residential streets in the Pico neighborhood. Unlike in the Sunset Park neighborhood surrounding the college, only a few of the streets in the Pico neighborhood have permit parking.

The neighborhood is home to many social service centers, including the Clare Foundation on Pico Boulevard and 9th Street, the Salvation Army on Olympic Boulevard and 14th Street and the Sunlight Mission on 14th Street near Michigan Avenue.

“All of it is in the Pico neighborhood,” said Tigler, 37, an artist who has lived on 21st Street for 10 years. “It gives all these people pushing for social services a clear conscience, meanwhile they shove all the facilities down our throats.”

But there is optimism that the neighborhood will change for the better.

Oscar de la Torre, 19, grew up in the Pico neighborhood’s toughest corner, 16th Street and Delaware Avenue. He and his seven siblings lived with his parents in a two-bedroom apartment.

He said that as a teen-ager he was a gang member who committed some crimes, including the sale of drugs. He was arrested three times, he said, although never convicted.

At one time, De La Torre thought the best solution to the neighborhood’s problems would be to burn the place down and start over. But he has changed his mind.

After graduating from Santa Monica High School last year as student body president--the first Latino elected to that post--De La Torre is completing his first year at Chico State University as a political science major on a full scholarship.

He calls his neighborhood a “neglected (toilet).”

“The people in my neighborhood don’t look like the people in the north part of the city, and they don’t look like the people in the south part of the city,” he said angrily. “When I tell people I’m from Santa Monica, they think I grew up on the beach. I tell them I grew up in the ghetto.”

“I look at the neighborhood differently now, and the neighborhood looks at me differently,” De La Torre said from his dorm room in Chico. “People look up to me and give me more status just because I’m in college.”

De La Torre said he believes the neighborhood can change through political advocacy, and by getting more parents involved in their children’s education.

“I grew up hating kids from other gangs just because they were from another neighborhood, even though I never met anybody from those areas,” he said. “My only experience with local government was with law enforcement.

“But this year away has shown me that it doesn’t have to be that way. That people like me can make a difference. That we can change our future.”