Chick Gives Up on Day-Laborer Site in District : Canoga Park: ‘Quick and vocal opposition’ from businesses and homeowners shoots down plan for a city-run hiring location.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick, faced with noisy opposition from local businesses and homeowners, said she will not continue to explore establishing a city-run gathering place for day laborers in Canoga Park.

Chick also said she will not independently consider any other city-sanctioned day-laborer sites in her western San Fernando Valley district. Advocacy groups will have to bring such proposals to her from now on, she said.

“For the time being, I give up on finding an appropriate site in the 3rd District,” Chick said in an interview. “I’m frustrated and don’t know what to do to improve the situation.

“Now, if the community wants to bring forward sites, I will explore them, but we’re not going to look for or seek to create a day-laborer site,” Chick continued. She admitted it was unlikely that 3rd District communities would volunteer sites in their neighborhoods.

“My focus now,” Chick said, “will be to get the LAPD to crack down on unlawful behavior” by day laborers.

Two weeks ago, Chick told Reseda homeowner and Neighborhood Watch groups she was “interested in having a city-run day-laborer site” in her district and believed such programs in North Hollywood and San Pedro had reduced the street-corner loitering, public litter and confusion of the informal sites.

Canoga Park and Woodland Hills have several areas where day laborers, mostly recent Latino immigrants or undocumented aliens, informally congregate to find jobs. Such gatherings have frequently created friction between the job-seekers and neighbors in the surrounding communities.

The city has operated day-laborer sites in North Hollywood and San Pedro for several years, using social and educational programs and other amenities to make the sites an attractive alternative to standing on the street corners.

“I am interested in having a day-laborer site in my district,” Chick said at an Oct. 6 town hall meeting with her constituents, noting that the city’s other hiring-site programs had “been effective in clearing up a lot of problems.”

At the same meeting, Chick warned an audience that appeared mostly hostile to day laborers that raids by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service were unlikely to curb the problem because the large majority of the workers are, contrary to popular belief, in the United States legally.

Chick’s best candidate for a city-run day-laborer site was a vacant lot in Canoga Park owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The lot was located on Canoga Avenue between Sherman Way and Saticoy Street, an area where day laborers currently congregate informally to look for work.

Chick’s office had planned to hold a meeting later this year to solicit views from the community about the MTA site.

But after news of her interest in the site was broadcast, Chick said this week that she had received enough input to reach a decision. “On MTA, I got such quick and vocal opposition that I’m back to square one,” she said.

Robert Bartels, a leader of Deering Business Watch, a group that represents businesses near the MTA site, said Chick’s decision to drop the MTA site was welcomed by the 65 business members of his group.

Still, Bartels said he had no easy solution. “It’s an enormous problem,” said Bartels, who owns an auto-repair shop. “I really don’t know the full answer.”

One possibility, he suggested, would be to make it illegal to solicit work from public property, as Redondo Beach did in 1989 to counteract its day-laborer problem. “But I don’t see the Los Angeles City Council agreeing to that very easily,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chick also has expressed strong concerns about a proposal being reviewed by Councilman Joel Wachs to create a city-run day-laborer site in his district in Van Nuys, on the east side of Balboa Avenue at Roscoe Boulevard.

Balboa at that point is the dividing line between Chick’s district to the west and Wachs’ to the east. At this location, there is a residential area on the west side of Balboa and an industrial area on the east side.

Chick said the day-laborer problem at Balboa, where job-seekers gather informally, “spills over” into residential areas in her district.