Urban Blight Produces Public and Private Sources for Removal

Looking to bring in a little bit of extra income and keep busy in his retirement, 76-year-old Leo Foley built a cozy, three-unit apartment house in San Pedro last year. It turned out just as he pictured it, the tan exterior complemented by “beautiful Kelly green” garage doors.

The tenants had barely moved in when it happened.

As if invited by the fresh paint, graffiti vandals struck in the night, scrawling indecipherable loops and slashes across Foley’s new green doors.

“It makes you mad!” Foley sputtered. “Here you are, putting up a nice little place, and before you know it, here’s graffiti all over the garage. . . .”

Foley is not alone. Like cars, trees, freeway signs, gravestones and churches, houses also are fair game in the unwritten code graffiti vandals live by. Homeowners who once encountered graffiti only while driving on the freeway are now trying to melt, scrape or peel it off their own fences and walls. It can be a frustrating and repetitive process. But there is help out there, especially from the growing number of sources, both public and private, who have become experts on the problem of urban scrawl.

The City of Los Angeles now has a million-dollar-a-year anti-graffiti office called Operation Clean Sweep. Its coordinator, Marie O’Kelly, has become familiar with the problem and its solutions, from the simplest advice (“plant ivy”) to the most complex methods of graffiti removal. Calls from homeowners, condominium associations and apartment owners are on the rise, said O’Kelly, and representatives of private graffiti removal firms concurred.

“It used to be that they didn’t write on houses,” said O’Kelly. “The major difference now is that most of the graffiti is being done by taggers, a group of young people whose main objective is to write on as much property as possible. They’re very prolific, and they will write on anything and everything.”

Gang members do still stake out their territory with graffiti, but they account for far less of the problem than taggers, O’Kelly said. Some graffiti experts say taggers like to do it because it is taboo, or because it’s a way to while away the time--a modern version of cruising.

Others, including Elizabeth Flynn, vice president of marketing for the private, Los Angeles-based Graffiti Prevention Systems company, see it more bluntly. “To me, it’s like dogs using urine to mark a trail,” Flynn said. “It makes me sick.”

For Paul Ganberg, president of the Upper Rampart Heights Neighborhood Assn., graffito and what it symbolizes threatens the very soul of the city. Ganberg organizes neighborhood graffiti paint-outs, arranges graffiti experts to speak at meetings, and independently blots out the graffiti deposited on the houses, fences, light posts and sidewalks of some of his elderly or apathetic neighbors.

When his own fence gets tagged, three or four times a year, “I get a feeling of being violated,” he said. “My wife and I have put a lot of caring into our own little environment. You plant things, you restore the wood on your house, you make pottery, and then you come out and see more graffiti. It’s really jarring, even when you understand all the underlying causes of frustration that make kids do it in the first place.”

Graffito is no small problem in Los Angeles County. Collectively, its municipalities will spend $150 million to clean it up this year, and, as anyone can see who drives down a main thoroughfare, their efforts have not come close to solving the problem. The City of Los Angeles last year painted over 754,000 square feet of graffiti, and contracted with 12 community-based organizations (CBOs) to paint over 4,342,566 square feet more. That doesn’t even include how many square feet of tags and gang names they sandblasted off walls, which no one bothers to measure.

When an individual home or condominium complex gets hit, the best advice is to get rid of it. And fast.

“I tell people, ‘Don’t let it linger!’ ” said City Councilman Nate Holden. “The longer it stays up there, the more there’ll be.” If enough property and business owners ignore the graffiti in their block, it spreads like a virus, eventually impacting the entire character of the neighborhood. Housing prices will drop, crime will rise and businesses will move out, Holden said.

It’s known in the graffiti trade as the “Graffiti Attracts More Graffiti” credo, and it almost always holds true. The primary objective of the tagger who uses the neighborhood as his canvas is to see his own name or symbol prominently displayed, said Tim Sullivan, president of the privately owned Graffiti Removal Inc.

“If the guy and his buddies went out and tagged on Sunday night, and it’s gone Monday when he walks by after school, and that happens a half-dozen times, the guy’s going to move on to another house,” Sullivan said.

The “act fast” strategy is a good one, by all accounts. But it is easier said than done.

If the victimized homeowner lives in the city of Los Angeles, the first call might be to Operation Clean Sweep (213) 253-2687. Roughly 20 calls a day come into the office, said Sonia Bond, who says the callers are often “hot, to say the least,” about stumbling out the front door to get the morning paper to find their property defaced with giant painted letters.

The city assigns the job to one of 12 CBOs, many of which use as laborers various lawbreakers ordered by the courts to spend a certain number of hours painting over graffiti. The groups don’t promise to match your paint exactly, but they do their best.

Once they receive an assignment to get rid of the graffiti at a certain address, the CBOs have two weeks to complete the task if it involves private property, one week if it is on city property, said coordinator O’Kelly.

Either way, the graffiti get pretty stale waiting for the paint truck. And therein lies the problem. Graffiti that are allowed to stay up for two weeks will encourage more graffiti, O’Kelly admits.

“That’s true,” she said. “Our goal is a 24-hour turnaround, but that takes money.” So pervasive is the problem, in fact, that a comprehensive plan aimed at cleaning up the entire city, servicing all areas regularly, aiding private property owners, and educating young children that graffiti are socially unacceptable, would initially cost upward of $11 million a year.

The budget currently under review would give the office $1 million, unchanged from its present budget. However, a ballot measure narrowly approved by voters will provide an influx of anti-graffiti money from a retail sales tax of 10-cents on each aerosol paint can and 5-cents on each indelible ink marking pen. The new tax is expected to generate $12 million to $13 million annually.

In the meantime, O’Kelly confesses that if her own house was tagged, she would paint it herself. “I’d want to get rid of it faster than any municipality or company could promise, and I’d want to keep my own paint color. I also am my own quality control.”

Many homeowners do choose to take care of their graffiti problem themselves, an approach that may or may not be a good idea, depending on the persistence of the graffiti vandals tagging the neighborhood.

“Many times, a tagger will go through a neighborhood one night, tagging everything, and never come back again,” O’Kelly said. “But if you live near a school, or a public place like the Coliseum, or an active gang area, they’re going to come back again and again and again.”

When people come into a hardware store or paint store, angry and anxious to get rid of their graffiti, they almost always want a product that will remove it. A few products exist designed to remove spray paint, but most paint specialists don’t recommend them on most surfaces.

“The best one I ever saw made graffiti bubble right out of a wall, but one drop would kill you,” said Bob Schwartz of the private firm Graffiti Melt. “The material the vandals use is strong stuff: indelible ink, paint made to last. Any chemical powerful enough to remove it is bound to be on the hit list as a hazardous material.”

Some safe paint removers work to lift graffiti off marble and certain other polished-stone surfaces. Some stains will cover it on natural wood. But on the surfaces most often sprayed--concrete, stucco, painted wood, painted brick--it is usually better to cover it than try to get it off.

“A paint remover will get some of it, but it’s really, really hard,” said Felipe Calvillo of Virgil’s Hardware in Glendale. “Spray paint penetrates into the surface. It’s really best to paint over it.”

Products exist, especially for commercial businesses, that will seal the surface of the paint with special wax-like coatings. Then, the next time the vandals hit, extremely hot water or a special remover is used to destroy the coating, pulling with it the graffiti. The coating is then reapplied. So far, though, some of the products are expensive and hard to get for homeowners.

Textured Coatings of America Inc. offers one such coating that is permanent, and one called “sacrificial,” meaning it is reapplied each time it must be sacrificed to get rid of new graffiti. The new Sacrificial Graffiti Guard costs $17.95 a gallon, along with $10.25-a-gallon graffiti stripper.

Graffiti Prevention Systems applies and reapplies a sacrificial wax coat themselves, and the property owner contracts with them to perform the service whenever needed. (Residential contracts start at $200 a year, with the promise that they will remove graffiti in five days. They average 36 hours.)

Graffiti Melt, yet another Los Angeles-based company, offers a rival product, Graf-Cot, for $30 a gallon. Plans are under way to market a Graf-Cot kit for homeowners that would include the coating, brushes and remover in small quantities.

Dunn Edwards Paints already offers a wax coating product called Ultra Shield for $75 a gallon. Remover for the product costs $15 a gallon. It’s a system rarely recommended for residential use, unless the graffiti problem is so perpetual that the expense is worth it, said salesman Fernando Rangel of the Maywood store.

“It all depends on how many times you’re getting hit, and how much paint you go through,” Rangel said.

Those in the sacrificial coating business say it sometimes becomes a matter of appearance, as well as expense.

“Our company doesn’t feel that painting it out is a good long-term solution,” said Flynn of Graffiti Prevention Systems. “How many coats of paint can you put on a wall before it starts cracking and peeling?”

Similarly, sandblasting has its drawbacks, although it will work in the short-term to remove graffiti from brick, concrete and other rough surfaces.

“Our motto is, ‘Sandblast once, and you’ll never do it again,’ ” said Schwartz of Graffiti Melt, with a chuckle.

The problem, and it is a serious one, is that sandblasting takes part of the wall along with the graffiti it removes. Done repeatedly, it will undermine the integrity of the wall, and can even trigger a collapse.

“We only sandblast twice, and don’t recommend doing it any more than that, because it eats away at the mortar,” said the city’s O’Kelly. “Besides, sandblasting is expensive. It would never be cost-effective for a homeowner to take care of a repeating problem by sandblasting.”

Hector Chacon, an assistant supervisor for Community Youth Gang Services, offers some advice for do-it-yourselfers: “Don’t do a patch job. If you’re going to paint it, paint the whole area.” Otherwise, he said, your careful square of a slightly different color will look like a billboard waiting for a tag.

Chacon suggests using a spray painting system if you are covering a rough wall, such as one made of concrete. Chemical cleaners work fine on metal, he says. For the toughest surface of all--trees--Chacon uses a high-pressure water system. But, as all graffiti experts will attest, no system is really good for trees.

“We’re all kind of at a loss about what to do about the poor trees,” O’Kelly said. “Waterblasting severely damages the bark. Painting won’t work because the tree can’t breathe. We’re still testing a baking soda solution, but we don’t know if the trees will survive it.”

Al Patton, an apartment owner/manager who runs a small complex on La Brea, isn’t interested in any of the nuances of graffiti removal. Patton’s apartment house happens to be a regular stop for graffiti vandals, and he estimates he’s been hit at least twice a month for the last 10 years.

“I can’t read what it says, and I don’t give a damn anyway,” said Patton. “The city used to come around, but I don’t know where they’ve been lately. Now I just hire the handymen around here to come and paint it over, but it costs me $25 or $50 every time.

“I’m sick to death of the whole thing.”

Where to Look for Help in Removal of Graffiti

If you’re being plagued by graffiti, help is available.

Many municipalities provide graffiti removal services at little or no cost to homeowners, and private companies can be hired for one-time graffiti removal or long-term contracts. Do-it-yourselfers are finding that more products and options are available than there once were.

Here are a few places to call for help:

Operation Clean Sweep (City of L.A. residents) (213) 253-2687 or (818) 772-7553.

Tree People (Advice about graffiti on trees) (818) 769-2663

PRIVATE COMPANIES/PRODUCTS

Dunn Edwards Paintstores

Graffiti Melt (213) 207-3191

Graffiti Prevention Systems 1-800-247-3395

Graffiti Removal (213) 723-2901

Textured Coatings of America (213) 233-3111