Improving Neighborhoods

* East L.A. Community Corp. is disappointed by “A Troubled Street, Even if It’s Tree-Lined” (April 7), which depicts the Fickett corridor as a doomed community where the only alternative is to walk away. While the area has severe social and economic problems, we disagree with the tone of the article that there is no hope to turn the community around. As a society we cannot simply write off communities.

While tree planting, bricklaying and community cleanups do not remove violence and drugs, these events are vehicles to engage previously disconnected residents and slowly eradicate the fears that prevent them being neighbors. Only when disengaged residents become a proactive collective of neighbors can neighborhoods overcome the systemic conditions that allow the proliferation of gangs, violence and drugs.

ELACC recognized at the inception of the Targeted Neighborhood Initiative program that $3 million is not going to solve the gang and drug problems. However, used wisely, TNI can be a tool to reclaim communities by facilitating a process where neighbors build neighborhoods. The challenge for ELACC, as a community organizing agency, is to engage residents who are largely stifled by a very real sense of fear.

MANUEL BERNAL

ELSA CASILLAS

MARTHA CISNEROS

ELACC, Los Angeles

* After reading the article, I drove through Fickett Street and saw that the city has done very little to address the street’s aesthetic problems. The article says, “Apartments are freshly painted . . . dirt strips . . . have been filled with brick.” Actually, there are very few freshly painted apartments and I only saw one dirt strip filled with brick. The newly planted trees are saplings, which make them practically imperceptible. The sidewalks and intersecting streets still look like war zones, where potholes and cracks abound.

It is no wonder that residents are still pessimistic about the street’s future, considering its condition. The real issue here is the city’s role in neglecting streets such as Fickett. The city should have already been planting trees, performing street repairs and providing home-improvement loans.

ALBERTO RODRIGUEZ

Boyle Heights