Tenants Live With Fear, Resignation

For many families, Park Parthenia in the San Fernando Valley is the first stop in the promised land. But the experience can be rough.

Housing in the aging low-rise complex rents for as little as $200 a month, and three families sometimes pile into a two-bedroom apartment.

Because of nearby industrial parks and restaurants, it provides convenient housing for working-class Latinos. Some janitors, cleaning women, homemakers, and construction and restaurant workers have lived here for years, hoping to move out but finding themselves trapped because they can’t afford to move elsewhere.

They call it “Little TJ” or “Tijuanita.” Just about everyone among the 2,500 or so residents is from Mexico or Central America. Most are legal residents, and one-third receive rent subsidies.

Police make an arrest every other day, mostly for drug offenses, assault or public drunkenness.

Gangs and drugs are facts of life--problems residents accept with fear and resignation.

“There’s no tranquillity. You can’t sleep in peace. Cars get damaged,” said Jesus Delgado, a 25-year resident at the gated Northridge complex of 62 buildings at Parthenia Street and Vanalden Avenue.

Delgado, 51, who lives with his wife and two children in a three-bedroom apartment, said he injured his back and is on government disability.

Along Bryant Street, the main thoroughfare that the local gang adopted for its name, teenage boys whistle to attract the attention of drug buyers and to alert gang members about possible undercover police.

One youth approached a visitor, asking, “You got some?”

Small children, often barefoot with smudges on their faces, roam on foot, scooters and bicycles.

Wolfie Calix and his wife, Michelle Garcia, moved to the complex a year ago. Desperate for a place, they had planned to stay only a month.

“Everyone is afraid of this place because of its reputation,” said Calix, 25, a day laborer who pays $300 a month to share a two-bedroom apartment with his wife and five other people. “The bad things have been the shooting, seeing the gangsters, the selling of drugs and a couple of fights.”

On April 1, four men in their 20s were shot, none fatally, near an alley on Bryant within the complex.

Some residents said they don’t go out after dark.

“It’s kind of scary because even if you live here, you got to watch your back because there are a lot of drug addicts,” Calix said.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

The apartments were built between the 1940s and ‘60s for people waiting to move into houses under construction in the post-World War II boom, and for farm workers.

The buildings began deteriorating in the 1970s because owners weren’t maintaining them, said Ellen Michiel, executive director of the nonprofit West Valley Community Development Corp. in Canoga Park.

Los Angeles city officials first considered mass evictions to eradicate slum conditions. But they decided instead to subsidize renovations by issuing $21 million in tax-exempt bonds and making a $5-million loan in 1986 to a private developer who bought and renovated 47 of the 62 buildings on three blocks.

In the late 1980s, renovations were the city’s most expensive rehabilitation project. It was considered a compassionate plan, allowing most tenants to stay while subsidizing improvements to be carried out by the private sector.

Since 1986, a company called Park Parthenia, which later incorporated as a nonprofit, has owned the majority of the buildings and now operates 48. Because of its federally insured mortgage and subsidized renters, Park Parthenia is considered publicly subsidized housing, although it is privately owned.

Despite good intentions, the project was flawed, Michiel said. There is too much asphalt and not enough green spaces or community rooms, a computer lab and stores--amenities now built into low-income housing projects to create a greater sense of neighborhood and keep young people busy, Michiel said.

Although the yellow and green Park Parthenia-owned buildings lack graffiti and are in better condition than those owned by private for-profit companies, they aren’t very inviting. Junk mail litters concrete entrances, and the buildings are mostly void of plants and other personal touches.

Blight is rivaled by another intractable problem: drugs.

Authorities figured that if dealers and customers did not have easy access to the apartments, crime would go down. So in 1986, up went a 6-foot-tall, heavy iron fence, running around the complex to keep out unwanted traffic and reduce shootings.

Street access after 9 p.m. is limited to a single gate, policed by an unarmed guard.

Police say the fence eliminated drive-by shootings, but at night the sounds of gunfire and police helicopters are common, residents said.

The fence hasn’t slowed the drug trade, according to residents. Dealers now sometimes make sales through the bars.

Five years ago, banners proclaiming “Buy Drugs, Go to Jail” and “LAPD Video Zone” were hung along the streets. At first, those tactics worked, said Sally Barnes, a former LAPD senior lead officer who worked in the area before retiring last year.

“For a whole year, it took everyone off the street because they knew they were being photographed,” Barnes said.

But the warnings were a short-term solution, Barnes said.

Now a small sign on a power post near the entrance warns drug buyers that their license plate numbers are being reported to police.

In 1997, Park Parthenia security chief Pedro Banegas made a reputation trying to get tough on drug dealers. He was shot to death in a crime that was never solved.

Differences in Ownership

When the city began the renovation project, several building owners refused to sell, said Ralph Esparza, assistant general manager at the Los Angeles city Housing Department.

Serious problems have remained, particularly around the privately owned buildings inside the fence, where tenants involved in crime and booted from buildings owned by Park Parthenia often move, Park Parthenia officials and residents said.

Several have deteriorating paint, torn window screens, graffiti and trash. Gang members and drug addicts mostly gather at the private buildings, residents said.

Their owners are usually absentee, and several are not strict about whom they rent to, police said.

“That’s the absolute nightmare that creates an image problem,” Lorraine New, director of operations at Park Parthenia, said about the private building owners. “They don’t want to be bothered. They designate residents as managers, and they’re totally intimidated. We’ve offered to manage the buildings. No one wants to participate.”

New said Park Parthenia is willing to buy some of the private buildings, tear them down and build parks in their place--but owners have asked for too much.

Private owners contended that it is unfair to blame them because they lack the resources to improve their buildings or to hire extra security. Park Parthenia security guards patrol only Park Parthenia buildings.

Hamlet Zadourian, who owns a building on Bryant, blames gang members and destructive tenants for the problems.

Zadourian said he chopped down a tree on his property because drugs were being sold from a treehouse. “I thought it would get better,” said Zadourian, 39, of Agoura. “I don’t know what else I could do to change that.”

City records show the sharp differences between buildings run privately and those held by the nonprofit.

In 1999, city inspectors found about 1,150 deficiencies--such as missing or broken smoke detectors and roach infestations--in 32 area private buildings inside and outside the fence, officials said.

Last year, federal officials inspected buildings owned by Park Parthenia and found only minor deficiencies.

When Claudia Navarro returns home from school, she usually locks herself in her bedroom to do homework or watch TV. For privacy, she pretends she’s going to clean--the ruse guarantees none of her three siblings will bug her in her family’s two-bedroom apartment.

When Claudia, 14, goes out to play, she is alert for the security guards.

“If you want to play soccer, security guards will take the ball away because they don’t want you to mess up the grass,” she said.

Life for the 1,000 young people who live at Park Parthenia seems to hold little promise. A majority of students at nearby Napa Elementary live at the complex, and all of the school’s students receive free or reduced lunches, said Principal Keith Lord.

The nearest green space and basketball courts are at the school, but the field is locked up at 6 p.m. and on weekends. “Children have nowhere to play,” said resident Delgado. “That’s why so many kids here have gone to waste.”

Parents and their young children get help at Park Parthenia’s community center, but there are no programs geared toward teenagers.

Many residents said young residents without enough to do gravitate to “kicking it on the corner” with the Bryant Street gang.

At Napa Elementary, Lord said he occasionally must roust gang recruiters from classrooms.

The gang has about 100 members, and 30 or so live in the Park Parthenia area, police said. The gang’s initials--BST--are scrawled throughout the complex, on the sidewalk, on several buildings, even on palm trees. The gang mostly deals drugs--on corners, through the fence or by using kids to sell, police said.

Some say the fence, designed to keep out unwanted traffic and reduce shootings, aids the gang by making it hard for police to enter without being noticed, authorities said.

The city has secured funding to build a new park, and the LAPD Devonshire Division’s Police Activity League is trying to raise $700,000 for a new youth center--both near Park Parthenia. Calix said he welcomes the projects.

“It’s depressing to live here sometimes,” he said.

Calix said he is saving money to move; his wife is expecting.

“This is not a place where I want my kid to grow up--this is a ghetto.”