Out There: Echo Park

Jose Sigala, president of the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council, presides over a recent meeting where bickering and name-calling ensued over gentrification and the future of Echo Park.  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Issues of ethnicity are among the tensions in Echo Park. In two election cycles, the Latino community went from a single representative on the neighborhood council to a dozen, the council president said.  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

“People here seem to believe that because they are angry they don’t have to be civil,” said Christine Peters, who runs an animal rescue group at her home. “... From my perspective, we’ve lost a sense of community.”  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Francisco Torrero, a neighborhood council member, stands by a cluster of houses at Santa Ynez and Alvarado streets. Neighbors complain that these vacant houses harbor drugs, prostitution and vagrants.  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Echo Park was one of the first L.A. suburbs and, later, the site of some the city’s first white flight. Now, whites are coming back, and in recent years that has begun to redefine life in the largely Latino enclave that developed in their absence.  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

A colorful mural dominates this street scene in Echo Park, where a neighborhood council election this month pitched an almost entirely Latino slate of candidates against an almost entirely white slate.  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Residents walk along a tree-lined sidewalk in Echo Park, where fewer than 800 people voted in the last Neighborhood Council election. The area serves at least 50,000 people, meaning turnout was, at best, less than 2%.  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)