Parking Ban Is the Ticket : Restriction Has Curbed Crime in Anaheim’s Ponderosa Neighborhood

Not long ago, it wasn’t uncommon for 100 different dealers to be selling crack cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana on the streets of the city’s Ponderosa neighborhood in a single day.

Drug stings and intensified police patrols brought temporary relief, but the dealers would inevitably reclaim the troubled five-street area, making it dangerous for residents to go out after dark and for children to play freely.

But a street parking ban imposed in the neighborhood last spring--an unprecedented step for this city--is being credited for dramatic changes in the area, which residents and police say is now much safer.

“It’s helped the neighborhood so much,” said Beverly Chareef, who has lived in an apartment on Wakefield Avenue for eight years. “Right now, the kids are out here having fun again, and we don’t have guys fighting on the street corner over drugs.”

The ban--which went into full effect in August--prohibits parking along any of the neighborhood’s five streets, 24 hours a day. Residents must park in assigned garages and spaces or face a $47 parking ticket.

But the ban also has caused its share of headaches. Some residents say it is difficult to have visitors because they have no place to park.

“Nobody from my family came here to visit during Christmas because there’s nowhere to park,” 19-year-old resident William Hamilton complained.

When the ban was approved by the City Council, it resulted in the loss of 380 public parking spaces. But about 280 spaces were regained by pouring concrete in some grassy courtyard areas to create more parking areas. Officials also have encouraged residents to clean out their garages, many of which were being used for storage or to run illegal car repair businesses.

Despite the inconvenience for some people, the ban has been successful in reducing crime in the neighborhood by about half, said Anaheim Police Officer Ed Cook, who is assigned to the Ponderosa neighborhood as part of the department’s community policing program.

“Before, drug dealers and gang members would be using the cars for a base of operation,” Cook said. “They could see us before we could see them. Now, that’s not the case. Our field of vision has been significantly expanded. We can turn down the street and see everything that’s going on.”

In 1994, police were called to the Ponderosa neighborhood 1,790 times. Statistics for 1995 are not yet available. But there were 142 fewer calls for service during August, September, October and November than during the same months in 1994, police said.

For years, the Ponderosa neighborhood--north of Orangewood Avenue and east of Haster Street--had been plagued by rampant drug dealing and gang activity.

Over the years, the city had tried to reduce crime in the low-income area by blocking off streets, saturating the neighborhood with police officers and cracking down on code violations.

“It was a constant drain on resources,” said John Poole, the city’s code enforcement officer. “We tried many, many things, and this has brought more success than anything we’ve tried in the past.”

Although Anaheim had never imposed a street parking ban before, Garden Grove instituted one eight years ago in its once-notorious Buena-Clinton neighborhood. The area showed immediate improvement and eventually went from being the city’s top crime district to the 24th of 90 districts.

In Westminster, street parking was banned last year in two neighborhoods. Officials there say crime has since been reduced about 70%.

The Anaheim ban was approved by the council last May as a one-year pilot program. Cook said he plans to recommend that it be made permanent and possibly be imposed in other troubled neighborhoods of the city.

Still, some Ponderosa residents aren’t convinced the ban has made much of a difference.

“All it did was move the drug dealers into the alleys,” said Hamilton, who has lived in the area for more than a year. “They aren’t stopping nothing; they are creating a new set of problems.”

Cook acknowledges there is still “sporadic drug dealing” in the neighborhood, but he said much of it has been eliminated.

“We never believed for a second that we could address 100% of the problems, but they have been significantly reduced,” he said.

Hamilton and other residents also say the ban has caused them more than their share of headaches.

In addition to a lack of visitor parking, other problems include people parking in the wrong assigned spaces, in alleys or in front of other residents’ garages. Some tenants have even resorted to parking in the street with their hazard lights blinking, hoping to avoid a parking ticket.

“It’s a nightmare,” said one 33-year-old tenant who has received several parking tickets since the ban. “I know they did it to get rid of the drugs, but it’s not fair to the people who weren’t involved. We have no parking. We need our street back.”

Said resident Mike Stacey: “It’s pretty rough, especially when you get company. It gets pretty bad during the weekends, and there is major traffic in the alleys.”

Some building owners said they have lost tenants because they had no place to park their cars.

“There were a lot of apartments rented to more than one family,” said Cole Dahl, who owns two buildings in the neighborhood. “You would have three families in a two-bedroom apartment, and they all had cars. Some had to move out because there was no place to park.”

Police and city officials said they are continuing to work with apartment owners to create more parking spaces.

“We hear the concerns from the folks in the apartments and know that some don’t like the parking ban,” Poole said. “If we continue working on parking solutions, I think this will end up being a positive program for everyone.”

Despite the ban, the number of vacant apartments has declined over the past several months. Of the area’s 704 units, 107 were vacant in April 1995. Six months later, there were 75 vacancies, police said.

“As the neighborhood looks better, it becomes more attractive for good tenants,” Cook said. “The owners win by not having their apartments overcrowded.”

Eugenia Imandt, who has owned two buildings on Wakefield Avenue since 1974, said recently that for the first time in many years, she feels hopeful her neighborhood is returning to the way it was before it was overrun by crime.

“It’s been an amazing turnaround,” she said. “All you have to do is drive through and see that this is no longer an area for drug dealers. It’s beautiful there now.”