Ascot Ave, Southeast Los Angeles

Located just to the south of Downtown LA, Central Alameda is low income majority Latino neighborhood. The neighborhood is named after the north-south arteries that function as its borders.

This is a densely packed neighborhood, one of the most densely packed of all the neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Most adults here are married. This is mostly a family area, with households averaging 4. More than half of the residents are foreign born, and 4/5 of these come from Mexico. The neighborhood skews young with the median resident being in his or her early twenties.

On the eastern side of the neighborhood there is the edge of a vast commercial area filled with non-descript factory buildings—many of the classic redbrick variety, though the majority in pastel creams.

Homes in the area are mostly of the circa WWII era bungalow and Ranch home variety with tiny square yards (often bordered by metal fencing) and old style squarish apartment buildings.

Unfortunately this neighborhood has most of the problems that we associate with densely packed, low income neighborhoods. Crime is, first of all, a huge problem here. Since 2007 there have been 42 murders in the area. The crime rate for the area is among the cities worst in terms of violent crime. Assaults are high and murders also. If you take it in terms of overall population, you find that your chances of being murdered in this neighborhood on any given year are one in 4,000. Given however that a quarter of the population is under 10, and that few such victims are in this age group, you chances increase precipitously.

Schools offer little hope as well. Schools here are, as you would expect given the density, overcrowded with your typical middle-school having 2,000 students. High schools are just as bad by all objective standards. Take Santee Education Complex (technically in South Central, though it gets many of the students on the northern end of the neighborhood). Santee’s Academic Performance Index scores (a general rating of the overall school’s performance) show that it is among LA’s worst lagging a good 200 points behind the state average. STAR test scores are even worse with only 15% testing proficient in English and barely 1.5% doing so in math. Santee, not surprisingly, has failed on 18 of 22 No Child Left Behind standards and students here average about 1000 on their SATs—500 points behind the state average. Truly dismal.

Despite this, there are some mild reasons for hope. One is the fact that these families are largely intact. Another is that there does seem to be a growing sense of community in the neighborhood (despite the fact that 70% or residents are renters). Recently for example, when a local representative decided to sell public lands that had been planned for a large urban garden, locals organized protests and raised objections. The plan went through any way, I think, but the fact that people cared enough to make a stink is a good sign for the future.