City to Join Private Street Light Project

The Los Angeles City Council agreed Friday to chip in $20,000 for a project that will use mostly private funds to install street lights in a Pacoima neighborhood.

The Los Angeles Neighborhood Housing Services Corp., a nonprofit organization that provides home loans to low-income residents, proposed the project for an unlit residential area near the intersection of the Foothill and Ronald Reagan freeways. The group will contribute about $122,000 toward the street lights.

“We have been waiting for these lights for a long time,” said Richard Gallegos, a father of four who lives in the neighborhood. “In this whole area, there’s maybe about two lights and they’re so far apart that when you come into the area, it’s very dark.”

He said residents are counting on the new lights to deter crime in a neighborhood troubled by drug dealers loitering on dark corners, vandals breaking into cars and other problems.

The area spans about 93 homes in an area bounded by the Foothill Freeway to the northeast, Vaughn Street to the northwest, Dronfield Avenue to the southwest and the Ronald Reagan Freeway to the southeast.

Neighborhood Housing Services is funded in part by dozens of corporate sponsors, including Washington Mutual, IBM, Eastman Kodak and the Times Mirror Foundation, part of the parent company of the Los Angeles Times.

The organization suggested the lighting project after hearing complaints about dark, unsafe streets from residents at local Neighborhood Watch meetings, resource coordinator Jorge Valle said.

“I’m absolutely ecstatic about it,” said Councilman Alex Padilla, who has made improving the infrastructure of his northeast San Fernando Valley district a top priority. “Ideally, the city would be putting up the funds for these basic city services . . . but I think it’s a great example of what [public-private partnerships] can do if we work together.”