Winds of Change Felt in Tract That Exemplified 1950s

Bill and Bettie Stevenson see their neighbors occasionally and, not knowing their names, usually limit their greetings to a wave and a quick hello.

It was not always like that in the Stevensons’ west side neighborhood of well-tended yards and three-bedroom tract homes.

The Sunshine tract, one of the first groups of homes built in Costa Mesa, was what the media used to portray as a quintessential neighborhood in the 1950s and ‘60s. The television families of “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” could have moved in there.

Dads went to work, moms stayed home and kids played in each others’ yards. There were kaffeeklatsches, Christmas gift exchanges, neighborhood barbecues, shared secrets. And almost everyone was white.

Today, the Sunshine tract exemplifies Orange County neighborhoods in metamorphosis. While neighbors can still share the comforts of a friendly, suburban lifestyle, the demographics are changing. Latinos are on the verge of becoming the majority. Often the houses are empty during the day because both parents are working. Sometimes neighbors can’t exchange pleasantries because they don’t speak the same language.

Bettie Stevenson, 69, breaks into a smile when she talks about “those other days,” 30 and 40 years ago, when wives visited each other’s homes in the morning to discuss the latest developments in their lives over cups of coffee.

In 1956, when the Stevensons and others moved into their new homes--84 houses boxed in by Pomona Avenue, Victoria and Wilson streets and Harbor Boulevard--there were very few cultural differences between the residents.

Many of the new residents speak limited English, and the prices of homes usually require both husband and wife to work in order to make the mortgage payments, said Bill Stevenson, 70, a retired boat mechanic.

Houses that originally cost $10,000 have recently sold for as much as $235,000.

“Take our next-door neighbors. I believe they’re from Ecuador. They’re fine people with good kids, one of whom is in college. But they work all the time, and we hardly see them,” Bill Stevenson said.

“Really, all you can do is wave and say, ‘Hi,’ ” Bettie Stevenson said. “That’s it. We don’t really know our neighbors, and I think that’s sad.”

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Many of the Latinos are drawn to the neighborhood for the same reasons their white neighbors moved in 40 years ago--they are seeking a quiet, affordable place to raise their children.

Javier and Marta Ortega, who paid $190,000 for their house on Congress Street three years ago, said they have never felt unwelcome in the neighborhood. The couple both work and they have three sons, ages 3 to 10.

“It’s a pretty and peaceful neighborhood, where everyone pretty much keeps to themselves,” Marta Ortega said. “It’s the type of area where we always wanted to raise our sons. Our neighbors on both sides are lovely people. They’ve told us how they appreciate all of the improvements we’ve done to our house.”

Although the Ortegas said they get along well with their neighbors, they also acknowledged that “we pretty much keep to ourselves.”

In the 1950s and ‘60s, neighbors talked to each other and often knew about each other’s business, said the Stevensons. In 1962, Bill Stevenson and three other men, all living within a block of each other, drove to Los Angeles together to get vasectomies, he said.

“That’s just the way we lived in those days,” he said.

“We’re never going to go back to Donna Reed and the 1950s,” Bettie Stevenson said. “To some people those days seem like a dream world. But it was real then. We lived it.”

Nevertheless, the Stevensons and neighbor Bev Sankey, 64, said they do not feel isolated.

Sankey has lived in Costa Mesa all her life. Her late husband, Bob, was a mail carrier who used to deliver the tract’s mail on a bicycle.

Though she could have made a profit by selling her home, Sankey chose to stay in the neighborhood when her husband died six years ago.

She feels “very comfortable in my house and with all of my neighbors,” she said. “Both of my neighbors are Hispanic, and when they moved in they fixed up their houses like they hadn’t been fixed in years.”

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The Sankeys and the Stevensons, who have also paid off their home, raised two sons and a daughter each in their homes. The Stevensons’ daughter recently bought a house down the street from her parents, where she lives with her husband and family.

The Sunshine tract is ringed by apartment buildings and duplexes that which are home to mostly Latino blue collar workers. About a mile north is Mesa Verde, a neighborhood where home prices are as much as $1 million.

Audrey Savopolos, a Coldwell Banker Realtor who has sold homes in the Sunshine neighborhood for 10 years, said that “there is a good amount of Latinos buying in the tract.” But she said there is a common thread that binds almost all new home buyers in the area.

“It’s probably the most affordable residential area in Costa Mesa. But it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re probably going to need two or more incomes to buy a home there,” she said.

According to Costa Mesa officials, Latinos make up about one-fifth of the city’s population of 103,823. Many are recently arrived immigrants whose children require bilingual instruction.

Perhaps the changing demographics in the neighborhood are best illustrated at nearby Wilson Elementary School. The Stevensons’ and Sankeys’ children all attended Wilson at a time when the majority of students was white.

Today, “very close to 90%” of the 635 students are Latino, Principal Sandra Bundy said.

The Stevensons’ grandson enrolled at Wilson last year but attended for only six months before transferring to another school, Bill Stevenson said.

“Most of the kids in class were Hispanic, and the class was bilingual,” he said. “My grandson couldn’t understand what the teacher was saying most of the time, and he couldn’t understand what the other kids were talking about. It got to be a problem for him. After six months it became apparent that this was holding him back. So, my daughter took him out and put him in another school.”

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Bundy, who has been the Wilson principal for seven years and has taught in Costa Mesa schools since 1969, acknowledged that many of her students require bilingual instruction.

“It is the same curriculum for everyone, but many of our students come in speaking a different language,” she said. “We have to change our teaching techniques to meet the students’ needs. Our primary objective is to move them into English-only instruction as quickly as possible.”

Bundy said that parents of students have the same concerns that parents had 30 years ago: “They want their children to do well in school. The bottom line is that kids are kids and parents always have the same concerns. For example, we have a PTA that’s just as active today as it was 30 years ago.”

The Stevensons and Sankey agree they still like their neighborhood, changed as it is.

If they ever move, groused Bill Stevenson, it will be because of “the taxes we have to pay and the cost of living and not the neighborhood.”

Also contributing to this report was Times correspondent Hope Hamashige.