Lennox

Surrounding the tiny Lennox Park is the little known working class neighborhood of Lennox. This is a densely packed neighborhood filled with squat stores with storefronts written in Spanish, and two level 1970’s style apartments with stained rundown looking facades. Nine of ten residents of Lennox are Latino. It is a very young neighborhood with over a third of the residents being under the age of 20. Of those who are adults, less than 400 have college degrees of any kind. The majority of the population was born south of the border in Mexico.

Those who don’t live in the crowded boxy apartment complexes, live in small Ranch Style homes dating from the fifties. The lots are small, but the homes are well kept, often incorporating touches that remind one of the Latino heritage of those that live within (e.g., squat cactus or palm trees in the front yard and metal fencing painted white along the edges of the front yard.)

The park that bears the neighborhood’s name is not only at the physical heart of the community but its emotional center as well. Lennox Park has both a very popular after school program that helps local working families juggle their busy lives, but also a senior center, a swimming pool for summer heat waves and the usual sports to boot.

Unfortunately, like many poor communities in the LA area, Lennox is plagued by violent crime. The 22, 000+ residents of this neighborhood have experienced 9 murders since 2007, with 2008 being a particularly bloody year (5 murders). Perhaps because of the limited resources or because of the fear of law enforcement among the undocumented workers that make up a large portion of this community, Lennox has a very low incidence of property crime, being in the bottom 20 of all neighborhoods in that category.

Most of the high schools that serve this neighborhood are not promising routes to escaping the cycle of poverty that is inherent in such areas, with school like Hillcrest ranking among the very worst schools in the LA area. There are two notable exceptions to this however, Middle College High and Lennox Academy. Both are smaller enrollment (about 300 students) charter schools catering to those lucky enough to gain admission. Even at these schools, however, the SAT scores and other objective measures are below the State average and in some cases abysmally low (like in Middle College’s math scores where less than 10% passed the test).

Overall, I would not want to live in this neighborhood and try to raise a family, although as a second generation immigrant from South America myself, I fully sympathize with the struggles of those who live in this neighborhood—those that feed us, care for our children, clean our homes, maintain our lawns and gardens, for little pay and no respect, and whose perseverance in the face of adversity is what is at the heart of what makes California the 5th largest economy in the world all by itself.