In the Shadow of Affluence

“All signs point to a wonderful future for the new town of Owensmouth.”--From a 1912 tract on what is now Canoga Park.

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Like the dusty pages of a family photo album, Canoga Park reveals itself slowly to those who venture along its streets; each block has a story to tell, each house holds secrets of yesterday’s lives.

Here is a ranch house built in 1918 when sugar beets and other crops grew for acres on land touted as the “richest in the state.” Here, in the 1950s, Rocketdyne workers produced engines that put men on the moon and helped fuel a nation’s pride. And here, in these houses, Anglo residents lived out the substance of suburban dreams in an era when such promises were more readily fulfilled, and somehow life seemed more secure.

But here too, along forgotten side streets and avenues, is a quietly emerging presence no less a part of the Canoga Park story than its hallowed past.

“There’s a tremendous amount of poverty in this community,” said Ellen Michiel, a community activist. “You have a very low rate of homeownership, a high degree of transiency and a large and growing percent of low-income minorities.”

When people think of the poor in the San Fernando Valley--if they even think of the poor--it is areas of the northeast historically viewed as home of the neediest of residents.

But the divide separating the affluence of the west from the need in the east has been blurred by momentous changes of race and economics, and today the West Valley is dotted with areas of poverty.

“In a sense, this community has been invisible because generally the West Valley is seen as a wealthy area,” said Tomas Martinez, director of mental health at El Centro De Amistad, a local social service agency.

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Poverty in Canoga Park is not always loud, the kind that makes itself readily known in the numbers of homeless walking the streets or the sprawl of a housing project. It is the face of Carina, 7, Filoberto, 5, and Gladys, 3, who sometimes cry when there is no food. And Martha, their 32-year-old mother, who hears but knows she can turn no miracles.

“When there is no food,” she tells them, “there is no food.”

Health care for the children is a patchwork of trips to the county clinic nearby and visits from a public health nurse--visits that have all but ceased because of county budget cuts.

The nurse, Marlene Naumann, does more than tend to their health. There are hugs she gives the children and the dollar bills she leaves behind, as well as the help she offers in finding food.

“It hurts me,” Martha says. “Sometimes I am ashamed.”

Unemployed, unmarried, and living on public assistance, she does not turn it down.

Martha named her baby girl--the youngest of her six children--Cindy Marlene, after Naumann.

Along these streets, looks are deceiving: Worn single-family homes often hold more than a single family, and the garages come equipped with windows for those who live inside.

“Bootleg units,” Michiel calls them, standing on the sidewalk, pointing to the signs of overcrowding.

Apartments that rent for $600 can only be afforded when two or three families combine their income, squeezing themselves into a space built for far fewer.

Inside one tiny apartment, which is home to six people, a woman rattles off a litany of problems and creatures that live with her: silverfish, mice, water bugs.

“And roaches,” Michiel says, slapping a bug climbing up a living room wall.

Until recently, one bathroom wall was so ragged she could see through it into the next apartment.

Even census data cannot begin to explain the lives of these residents: They live so near to wealth that their pain is averaged out.

“We are two minutes and across the street from affluence,” Michiel said, driving along Vanowen Street.

Faced with these changes, some in the West Valley have turned to a method of community renewal never before used by local residents. They have formed the West Valley Community Development Corp. and are working to bring affordable housing to the area.

“If the neighborhood can be restored, it has tremendous potential,” said Michiel, an executive director of the Community Development Corp. and a member of Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church. “For poor people, the way out of poverty is homeownership. It was true for my parents’ generation, it’s true for mine.”

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In other areas of the city, such groups are standard fare, but here they have been met with resistance. With no local precedent, the West Valley organization has received mentoring from a group that recently created 100 units of affordable housing and employment assistance for the residents of Pico Union.

“We’re helping them not only by helping them to understand what economic development is all about, but giving them a guiding hand in terms of how to start their organization,” said Beatriz Stotzer, of New Economics for Women, which launched the Pico Union work.

By purchasing and rehabilitating buildings, and by helping residents become homeowners, the development group hopes to prevent the further decline of Canoga Park, a concept Councilwoman Laura Chick supports.

“I understand why some West Valley residents are skittish about affordable housing,” Chick said. “The [Community Development Corp.] and I see eye to eye on what affordable housing is about.”

The effort is especially welcomed in “areas where property values have radically declined and where we’re in danger of losing on-site homeownership and possibly in danger of losing single-family home areas.”

The West Valley organization is focusing on an area--bounded by Roscoe Boulevard on the north, De Soto Avenue on the east, Vanowen Street on the south and Topanga Canyon Boulevard on the west--where Latinos have maintained a presence for generations, said Tomas Martinez, who heads the group and is a professor at Pepperdine University.

“There is a view that this is an impoverished area of only recently arrived immigrants,” he said. “That’s not true. Families have grown up here.”

In the days of orange groves and beet farms the area was settled by Mexican farm workers. They came again under the Bracero program and have flowed in and out of the community in response to the push and pull of economic conditions on both sides of the border.

The Bracero program, a joint U.S.-Mexican initiative begun in the 1940s, allowed Mexican farm workers to temporarily live and work in America. It was halted in 1964.

Mrs. William Orcutt, a landowner, thanked her workers by donating the property on which now sits the Guadalupe Center, the oldest social service center in Canoga Park. The presence of the center and Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church earned Canoga Park a reputation as a friendly community for Latinos, and immigrants continued to make their way there.

When Father John Murray came to the parish in 1983, the church held one Mass in Spanish each weekend. Today there are four--each well-attended.

“Our 11 a.m. [Sunday] Mass is jammed to the doors,” Murray said.

At the same time the Latino population was skyrocketing--along with a small but significant Filipino population--the numbers of Anglos has continued to decline, pushed out by the recession, the loss of aerospace jobs and pulled by the possibility of jobs in other parts of the country.

“When the bottom fell out of the aerospace industry, we lost a lot of good people and a lot of income,” Murray said.

Overwhelmed by the ethnic changes, some church members have gone “to some of our neighboring parishes where they felt more comfortable,” he said. Of those who remain, many are older people.

Perhaps no place has experienced a greater change than the schools.

In 1976, Canoga Park High School was 82% white and 11.9% Latino. Now Latinos make up 67.4% of the population, while Anglos comprise 18.4%.

And at Canoga Park Elementary School, the white population, which was 66.5% in 1976, is now 7.2%. The population of Latinos has increased from 27.5% to 84.7%. Asians make up 2.5% of the population, African Americans 3.9% and Filipinos 1.5%.

At both schools, the majority of students qualify for a federally funded free or reduced-cost meal program.

Their parents make about $5,000 to $7,000 a year if they are new to the country, Martinez said. And some of that may be sent to support families at home.

“But it’s better than Mexico or another country,” said Maria Delgado, a member of the Community Development Corp., who interviewed local residents about their needs. Here “the school pays for the food, so they don’t have to worry there.”

When the kids are not in school there are other worries. A man was killed nearby not too long ago, so Martha keeps the children close to her.

A visitor asks Carina, “Who do you play with in the neighborhood?”

“Nobody,” the second-grader says, sitting quietly on the couch, her legs hugged to her chest.

Members of the development organization say quality affordable housing will begin to change the lives of these residents, but housing is only part of it. Through El Centro De Amistad, the residents will receive a number of human services such as job training and parent education that “strengthen the family” and stabilize new residents.

“We’re talking about services that provide self-sufficiency,” Martinez said. “We’re not here just to give a handout.”

While some residents have greeted the plans with skepticism, others like Delgado are hopeful.

“If we work together, we can do something,” Delgado said.

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Some projects are already underway.

The Community Redevelopment Agency recently approved a loan to the West Valley development group to acquire and rehabilitate bungalows at Alabama Avenue and Valerio Street, Michiel said. The West Valley group is entering into a partnership with Lutheran Social Services to develop new single-family homes on property at Cohasset Street and Owensmouth Avenue.

The neighborhood is teeming with kids who need things to do, said Margaret Pontius, director of the Guadelupe Center, so the center is building a playground. Pontius is excited about the plans, showing the brochures of brightly colored playground equipment.

There will be a soccer field, bright swings and slides and Abuelita y Yo (grandmother and I) classes.

Right over there, Pontius says, pointing to what is now an empty field.

Related Story: A1

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About this series

The Times Valley Edition today presents the second of a four- part series exploring poverty in the San Fernando Valley.

* Sunday: New figures reveal that 16.3% of Valley residents fall below the poverty line, a higher poverty rate than the United States as a whole.

* Today: Today’s immigrants are finding it harder than earlier generations of newcomers to move up the economic ladder.

* Tuesday: More and more children are working to help their families pay the rent and buy groceries.

* Wednesday: The Valley’s social service agencies are struggling to cope with growing needs as federal budget cuts reduce their funding.