That's the blunt, dispassionate assessment of one woman quoted in La Opinion's front-page article today on the changing face of MacArthur Park-Westlake, by reporter Roger Lido. Here's the link. The piece points out that the crime has been greatly reduced after the installation of hidden LAPD videocameras around the park, and more new businesses are moving in, to everyone's satisfaction. But it also notes that rents are rising dramatically, forcing long-time residents to move out-of-state, and student population figures at local schools are dropping, byproducts of what City Councilman Ed Reyes calls the "double-edged sword" of the dense district's inevitable gentrification. My translation:
"There are people who say that it's good that there are changes; the other side of the coin is that they're displacing low-income people and minorities who have lived there for years," [said housing advocate Evelin Montes].
In a short period, she said, the cost of renting a studio went from $450 to almost $900, and it's no longer possible to rent a one-bedroom apartment for less than $1,200. Although a municipal order prohibits raising rents on older residents (who are 80% of the residents in ZIP Code 90057) more than 6% a year, rents rise slowly and inexorably.
MacArthur Park-Westlake, of course, already has a Home Depot and a Starbucks, but it remains the social and cultural center for the wave of Central American migration that swept into Los Angeles during the civil wars of the 1980s: a dense, teeming, thoroughly Third World-feeling neighborhood where illegal street vendors operate openly, and where you can still get a fake ID while simply driving through. * Photo from Wikipedia. See previous related posts in Hoods.
