Former ‘Ghost Town’ Celebrates Changes
To celebrate efforts to rid a Northridge community of crime and blight, Los Angeles housing officials and schoolchildren are expected Thursday to plant 35 trees in the neighborhood.
The neighborhood along Roscoe Boulevard and Schoenborn Street was hard hit by the Northridge earthquake and was designated as a city “ghost town,” which gave the neighborhood priority in getting federal disaster funding.
The city provided $1.4 million in loans to rebuild eight badly damaged buildings in the neighborhood.
But even before the quake, the city Housing Department had made the neighborhood the target of a special housing program aimed at eliminating chronic crime problems and deteriorating housing conditions.
The program, called the Neighborhood Recovery Program, coordinates police and residents to fight crime and uses city resources to upgrade housing in the area.
On Thursday, 160 students from the Northridge Middle School will be assisted by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps in planting the trees along Schoenborn Street between Lindley and Zelzah avenues.
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