A FORUM FOR COMMUNITY ISSUES : Today’s Agenda

Much has been made of the decade-long shift that has brought Latinos into numerical parity with Anglos in Los Angeles, with both groups at about 40% of population. But sheer numbers aren’t enough to achieve proportional representation--something strikingly illustrated by the Orange County city of Santa Ana.

The 1990 census showed that 65% of the residents of Santa Ana were Latino, a percentage that’s growing every year. But in today’s In the Neighborhood, people in Santa Ana tell us their frustrations with a political culture that is seen by some as out of touch with them. It’s a temporary issue, though. Tens of thousands of Santa Anans, most of them Latino, are expected to become citizens in the next few years, and thousands more who were born in this country will be old enough to vote. Maybe by 1996, and almost surely by 1998, the promise of better representation in the city will be realized.

One of the key issues in Santa Ana has been a housing shortage, especially for low-income people. That’s a problem everywhere in Southern California, and an issue that we take up in In Dispute. As the government tries to ease out of the housing development business, private developers have few incentives to take up the slack. The result is that families doubled and tripled up in apartments or garages or, worst, on the street.

There aren’t any sweeping, single solutions, writes architect Judith Sheine, but small-scale projects being built by nonprofit corporations with lots of community participation show great promise.

True enough. But these projects are too new to know their long-run success, or how well they’ll continue to attract government funding once the newness rubs off.

Cheri Miller, director of client programs for Harbor Interfaith Shelter in San Pedro, tells us in Testimony that the ragged, ranting people we see as “homeless” are just the tip of the iceberg. Most homeless people, she says, “are regular folks who blend into our society” and hate to ask for help. Miller says she once believed that people on welfare chose to be there, but now she’s buoyed to find more people agreeing with her that homelessness has nothing to do with choice.

Most of us, even if we don’t dread jury duty, put it close to a visit to the dentist. But once we’re actually there, the sense of civic pride kicks in. In Platform, people who’ve recently been jurors let us know whether they think justice was done. Even those with doubts about the system thought their own juries did the right thing.

Sermon speaks to another sort of civic duty as Rabbi Gary Greenebaum reminds the city’s leaders that they must be above reproach if the rest of us are to follow them. That’s a timely comment, in the wake of the Webster Commission report.

And finally, in Youth opinion, a senior at West High School in Torrance notes that the voting record for 18-to-21-year-olds has gotten continually worse since 1972, the year 18-year-olds got the vote. Nikhil Chanani reminds his peers of what John Adams said: “When annual elections end, slavery begins.”