COVER STORY : Caught in the Middle : Service-Poor Unincorporated Areas Can Seem Worlds Apart From Neighboring Cities

In most ways, the residents of affluent Hacienda Heights have little in common with the largely working-class community of South Whittier or struggling East Compton. But in one important way, they’re connected by more than a maze of surface streets.

Those three communities, and many other enclaves throughout vast Los Angeles County, lie in a bureaucratic no-man’s-land.

Unincorporated Los Angeles County, they call it. Areas, some only a few blocks long, that are not part of any city. Areas that are the wards of Los Angeles County, administered--often badly--by a jurisdiction that has a larger population and budget than many states. Areas that are sometimes rich, more often poor. Areas that have been shrinking in number.

What is it like to live in an unincorporated area?

Some will tell you they get along just fine. “I like it,” Vicky Quintero, 23, said of the neighborhood sandwiched between Cerritos and Norwalk where she, her husband and three children live. Their block of older tract homes has no street lights, she acknowledged. But she and neighbors say that is of no concern in the tiny enclave, just south of Cerritos College, where residents know each other’s comings and goings. The area receives all the services--from reliable law enforcement to regular street sweeping--of other neighborhoods, she said.

Others, however, are anything but pleased.

In an area straddling East Compton now known as Rancho Dominguez, Vaughn Holiday and other residents insist they’re not getting services they deserve. For example, “the trash people do not make the pickups they’re supposed to,” he said outside his family’s home on White Avenue.

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And don’t get Butch Redman started on the topic. “You are missing out on representation completely,” said Redman, who has lived 46 of his 51 years in a gritty area south of Whittier known as Sunshine Acres, in the house his father built. “When a problem arises, there is no one to turn to except in downtown Los Angeles. And you just play phone tag there.”

Regardless of how residents feel, unincorporated areas are likely to retain that status for the foreseeable future. One reason is that lawmakers have made it more difficult for communities to incorporate as cities. And any unincorporated area worth annexing probably would have been snatched up long ago by an adjoining city.

Over the past 20 years, the number of residents living in unincorporated areas has declined. In 1974, the number was 1,046,500 or nearly 15% of the county’s population of 7.1 million. Today, while the county population has swollen an additional 2 million, the number of residents in unincorporated areas has declined to 962,000--just over 10% of the total.

The drop might not be so significant if it were not for the fact that the remaining unincorporated areas--left behind by happenstance or their own choosing--are generally low- to moderate-income neighborhoods. That can mean some of the neediest of areas receive the least attention, officials admit.

“All areas of the county can have a lack of social services because of the economy and needs of a changing population. But the unincorporated areas usually have the greatest need,” said Lorraine Barber, executive director of the Federation of Community Coordinating Councils of Los Angeles County.

“Generally speaking, (unincorporated areas) have been ignored,” said Rose Ibanez, field deputy to County Supervisor Gloria Molina.

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The problems have been exacerbated by years of neglect and other factors, said Robert Alaniz, Molina’s press deputy. “There was the (cut in funding) and for all intents and purposes, there was no local organization to push for areas . . . and quite frankly, there were areas that were overlooked.”

One obvious area of neglect, he said, involved inspection of substandard buildings in East Los Angeles, which is in Molina’s district and is the county’s most populous unincorporated area with a population of at least 130,000 residents.

“Some properties were being used as gang hangouts. Some were abandoned homes. Some were (neglected by) absentee landlords. And nothing was ever done about it,” Alaniz said. “One thing we did was put together a task force of (county agencies) to look at unincorporated areas.” The agencies began to clean up dangerous buildings, or demolish them in some cases, he said.

Rose said Molina has made service requests in unincorporated areas a priority “because they are the ones who have no other representation.” Residents in unincorporated areas make up much of Molina’s constituency.

Still, the road for services in unincorporated areas can often be bumpy.

Just ask Victor Ledesma.

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For years, he said, he and other residents of a vast unincorporated area near Whittier pleaded for services from a county bureaucracy that was big enough to help but too large to navigate. So in an area with almost 110,000 residents--about the population of Inglewood--basic services were inadequate and even emergency services were lacking.

“No one was doing anything,” Ledesma said. “At the time, there were (neighborhoods with) no street gutters, no paved sidewalks; lots of streets had no street lights. Oh God, it was horrible,” Ledesma said.

The community also lacked protection, he said. “For many years, we only had one patrol car for the whole area,” he recalled.

The complaints mounted about crime, traffic and lack of response to requests for service.

The Whittier County Community Coordinating Council was founded in 1986, Ledesma said, but community participation was sporadic until late 1990, when a schoolgirl was struck and killed in a crosswalk on a busy street. Her death galvanized residents.

“That little girl was killed and that got the county to (speed) up the process” of installing a traffic signal, Ledesma said.

Residents began pressing for better services. Eventually, they formed an unusual partnership with the county and the city of Santa Fe Springs--a small, industry-rich community with a sizable tax base that can support plenty of government services.

The group set up a law enforcement/building team to tackle concerns ranging from drug dealing to slum housing. The so-called COPS team (Community-Oriented Problem Solving) has cleaned up more than 100 houses that had major violations of building codes, health and safety regulations, and other laws.

The team includes sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, safety inspectors, urban planners and health officials. They operate out of trailers supplied by Santa Fe Springs, which also provides a small support staff. Funding comes from county departments and Supervisors Molina and Deane Dana, whose districts encompass the unincorporated area.

“The only thing we want to do is improve the quality of life” in the area, said Sgt. Mike Pippin, a Santa Fe Springs native who directs the deputies.

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The partnership was suggested by Marina Sueiro, director of governmental affairs for Santa Fe Springs. “It’s really to the advantage of cities to help out (bordering) unincorporated areas,” she said.

“If you look at in a selfish way, you could say it is not profitable--financially or politically. But that is short vision,” Sueiro said. “If we allow county areas to deteriorate, it will have a negative effect on your community.”

The unincorporated area surrounding Whittier is still wanting for better services, officials and community activists say.

“To a large degree it is still a forgotten neighborhood,” said activist Ledesma. “We are still lacking direct services. We have a few but need others like . . . health services.”

Along White Avenue in East Compton, it doesn’t take much to get residents to talk about the lack of services in their community.

Resident Vaughn Holiday, for example, complains that garbage can go uncollected if residents leave more than two trash cans outside their home. “They take only two bags and leave the rest . . . and for two weeks they just leave it like that.”

The county’s Michael Mohajer expressed doubt that the county is not collecting garbage. “If it does happen and they let us know, we will take care of it, the same day,” said Mohajer, assistant division engineer of the Department of Public Works.

East Compton residents have plenty of other complaints.

“This (graffiti) writing has been on the walls for so long, I can’t even tell you,” Holiday said, as he and friend Brian Hall ticked off a list of how the neglect affects their neighborhood between Compton and the Long Beach Freeway.

Dirty streets. Overgrown trees. Above all, unsafe neighborhoods.

Because parking tickets are not issued even on days scheduled for street sweeping, the streets are often left strewn with trash, said Romiro Contreras. “No one tickets, so my wife has to go sweep up,” said Contreras, 42.

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Some local communities seem satisfied with their services, however.

In Hacienda Heights, for example, less than half that area’s residents voted for cityhood two years ago--making the community the first in a decade to reject incorporation in the county.

Proponents of cityhood blamed the outcome on anti-government sentiment, but some opponents had a simpler explanation: Hacienda Heights was doing just fine as part of the county.

Similar opposition to annexation has been voiced over the years in a small, unincorporated area straddling Long Beach and Lakewood.

“We have no problem with (staying unincorporated) at all,” said longtime resident Harriet Sherman, 65. “In fact, we fought like the devil to keep it unincorporated,” she said, recalling how she and others beat back an annexation effort by Long Beach some 20 years ago.

“We never felt we were connected with what was going on in Long Beach,” Sherman said. “Police and fire departments and things like that would be further away than now. We felt we were in just as good if not better position (for services) staying put.”

For the foreseeable future, a lot of unincorporated areas may have no choice but to stay put, according to city and county officials.

Historically, they note, unincorporated areas have been largely working-class communities that did not have a big enough tax base to support their own cities. And now that the Southern California economy has been pummeled, the fortunes of many would-be cities remain in doubt.

Officials also note that a recent change in state law makes it harder for those areas to make the case for cityhood.

The 1993 change, designed to stem the exodus of communities and tax dollars from California counties, says unincorporated areas achieving cityhood can only transfer over the tax dollars equal to the costs incurred by a new city. As such, backers of cityhood could have a hard time arguing that their area--as a city--would have much more money to work with if it left the county. Without such an argument, it could be tough persuading voters they have anything to gain from incorporation.

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Even if the sentiment is there for cityhood, it still must face a vote. And just getting residents to put something before the electorate is a challenge. In South Whittier, for example, those talking about cityhood may find it tough to muster the thousands of dollars needed to place an incorporation drive before voters.

Unincorporated areas would also probably find it difficult to become part of existing cities.

“The unincorporated areas tend to be older and if they haven’t been annexed by now, there is usually . . . some compelling reason,” said Jim Colangelo, executive officer of Los Angeles County’s Local Agency Formation Commission, which oversees annexations and incorporations.

So where does that leave unincorporated county areas?

Without much, according to Sunshine Acres’ Redman.

“You are missing out on representation completely. All we get is generic lip service,” he said. “If you had a city council, you could at least go to someone and get something done.” Indeed, many county officials will admit privately that they would prefer to reside in a city rather than unincorporated areas.

But not everyone can--or wants to--live in cities, and officials say there is little doubt that unincorporated Los Angeles County will exist for some time to come.

In addition to the other reasons that communities reject cityhood or cities reject annexations, there is the issue of money. As the county’s Colangelo notes, communities may not be excited about it, but they may be content to remain unincorporated unless counties dramatically cut services or impose fees.

As long as that doesn’t happen, communities will probably settle for the status quo when offered a chance at cityhood or annexation.

“They will say, ‘Nah, let it stay the way it is,’ ” Colangelo said.

Unincorporated Territory

Some areas rival cities in population. Some are only a few blocks long. Some are rich. Many are poor. But they have one thing in common. They’re unincorporated areas, served by the goernment of Los Angeles County. Below, the map shows unincorporated areas in white.