Anaheim Street Problems Bad for Business : Deterioration: Residents, merchants say prostitutes, gangs, taggers and panhandlers are hurting their west Anaheim neighborhoods.

David (Cody) Gosselin packed up his custom shirts shop on the city’s westside Sunday and headed to Tennessee, but he was not moving to Nashville to get closer to Garth Brooks and the other country music stars who wear his clothes.

It was to get away from the gangs, prostitutes, taggers and panhandlers that he and others say are taking over the downtown and parts of the city west of the Orange Freeway.

For the past several weeks, it has become common during the public comments portion of the Anaheim City Council meetings for someone to stand up, give an address west of the freeway and then launch into an angry oration about the rundown condition of his or her neighborhood.

The panhandlers and prostitutes “are scaring away my walk-up business,” Gosselin, 39, said during a recent interview inside his small shop in a Lincoln Avenue strip mall.

The carpet inside his front door was scarred with numerous cigarette burns. Gosselin said the transients he hassled--and sometimes fought with--for drinking in front of his store would come back at night and throw lighted cigarettes through the mail slot.

“They are trying to burn me out,” Gosselin, a 30-year Anaheim resident, said. “When I moved into my shop two years ago, I was all gung-ho, a ‘let’s take back the neighborhood’ type. But I’ve realized I can’t do it all by myself. The cops have their hands tied because they’re afraid that if they touch these guys they’ll get sued. The city doesn’t seem to want to do anything. So I’m leaving. The day I move out I’m sure the bums are going to have a party because I’m one of the few who confronts them.”

While Gosselin may be one of the few who are moving, he’s not alone in his frustration.

A woman’s petition drive asking the city to license panhandlers got 2,000 signatures. A local group got national media attention by dumping almost a ton of steer manure in a city park to drive away some drug dealers. There have been protests against two striptease clubs that have opened. A neighborhood has begun nightly patrols against the gangs inhabiting its streets. A police sting on Beach Boulevard this month resulted in the arrests of 87 alleged prostitutes and customers.

So what’s going on? Are things that bad in the older sections of Anaheim?

“Clearly, West Anaheim needs some special attention,” Mayor Tom Daly said, adding that he is trying to organize neighborhood associations in that part of the city. There are also city plans to redevelop the area and build youth clubs.

But, Daly said, it is ultimately up to residents and the business owners to clean up their neighborhoods, with city help.

“Some of the people who complain the loudest don’t want to get involved in communitywide solutions,” Daly said.

Councilman Irv Pickler, who has lived on the far west side of the city for more than 30 years, agrees that some sections have deteriorated. But he says that those residents and business owners who ask the city for help get it.

“I tell people to call me, write letters to City Hall,” Pickler said. “I get the police or code enforcement to follow up. What I don’t like is people who just sit out there and cry.”

But some residents and business owners don’t seem to be convinced the city is doing enough.

Susan Kocis said that last spring she tried to sell her downtown Anaheim home, where she has lived for 12 years, but couldn’t find a buyer. She also says she tried to refinance her home, but the bank refused her loan when the mortgage insurance company would not issue a policy for her property after an inspector visited her neighborhood.

She blames the city for her problems because it allows street vendors to sell in front of her house and allowed apartments to be built in what was a single-family-home neighborhood.

“Why can’t our elected officials, our leaders, help our city to regain some degree of respectability it once had?” Kocis said. “I can remember when Anaheim was a place where people actually wanted to live.”

Dave Coombs, who has owned a Lincoln Avenue bicycle shop for eight years, said he hasn’t had the confrontations with the transients and prostitutes that Gosselin has, but he is sure they are costing him some business.

One game Coombs’ employees play when business is slow is to watch the prostitutes out the front window. The object is to observe when a customer picks the woman up in his car and to then guess how many minutes later she will be dropped back off. It’s usually 15 or 20 minutes. The record is six minutes.

“If you had a choice of having your wife go to a bike store where she is going to be hassled by panhandlers and prostitutes and one where she won’t be hassled, which would you choose?” Coombs said.

He agrees with Daly that a committee of local business owners needs to be formed to look at the area’s problems. He has sent letters to the mayor, volunteering to lead the group.

“This country’s business leaders have been among the most innovative in the world, so it just seems we could tackle the social problems if given the chance,” Coombs said.

Mary Quaranta, who for 21 years has owned a pizza parlor on Orangewood Avenue just south of Disneyland, has been circulating a petition accusing the council of paying more attention to the Rams, Angels and Mighty Ducks sports teams than to keeping the city free of criminals.

She said about a year ago, drug dealers began making sales in her parking lot, almost devastating her business. She said she has called the police and three arrests have been made, but the activity still drives away her customers.

“I’ve seen people drive up to my door, look at what’s going on around them and pull out and drive away,” she said. “People staying at the hotels will walk over here, take a look and turn right around.”

Charles Albano, for five years the property manager for several strip malls on Lincoln Avenue, said he’s not sure if the area’s problems are getting worse or people are just getting fed up.

“I know the prostitution is a lot worse, but some of the other stuff--the robberies, the panhandling--may or may not be pretty constant,” Albano said. “But the problems are there. I have shops where the windows are scratched over with graffiti. Some have had bricks thrown through the windows. One liquor store owner was showing a bullet hole in his wall where someone took a shot at him. Some of the stuff is unbelievable.”

He has also had a run-in with the city’s code enforcement office. He says he called to complain about the residents of an apartment complex next to one of his properties who were throwing trash over the wall into his parking lot. But when an investigator came out, he cited Albano for failure to keep his lot clean.

Albano said he is not giving up.

“I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m willing to work with others to find one,” he said.

Gosselin, however, is now gone. Before he left, he tacked up a photo of his new store in Nashville on the wall of his Anaheim store.

“I’m leaving, but for the sake of these other people around here I hope they find a solution, because Anaheim isn’t the happiest place on Earth anymore,” he said.

Mayor Daly said Anaheim is not alone in having problems with panhandlers, prostitutes and drug dealers.

“The whole country is suffering from the worst economy since the Great Depression,” Daly said. “Unemployment in Orange County is at an all-time high. There is high frustration level among all of us. City budgets are being cut, although I think Anaheim’s services still match up well with any other city. . . . But even Beverly Hills is having some of the problems Anaheim is having.”