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LOS ANGELES

Turning Neighborhoods Around

Los Angeles CDCs have a good track record of building properties and maintaining them. In recent years, they have produced nine commercial projects, 11 community facilities (including schools, childcare centers, and health and recreational facilities), and 1,500 units of affordable housing. CDCs have also moved beyond construction, expanding their efforts in health care, job development, commercial and retail improvements, school development, and comprehensive planning.

Some of this is being accomplished under LISC's health sector initiative, Bridges to Wellness, which helps CDCs bring health services and health-sector jobs to their neighborhoods. More recently, LISC and CDCs have become active in education, as a burgeoning young population puts pressure on the city to build schools all over, including in areas where CDCs are building new homes.

Current Challenges

Over the last 20 years an influx of Latin American and Asian immigrants has reshaped the city’s ethnic and economic profiles. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, over 40 percent of current residents were born outside the United States, and Los Angeles is now one of the youngest and most racially diverse cities in the nation. Community development groups have had to evolve in response. In some cases, they have moved beyond the issue of affordable housing and the traditional focus on individual neighborhoods to meet the larger economic needs of immigrant groups throughout the community.

The positive side of recent change in Los Angeles has been the explosive growth in small businesses that are opening doors to self-sufficiency and perhaps future prosperity for ethnic and racial minorities. On the negative side, the weakness in southern California's economy during the early- and mid-1990s seems to have further divided Los Angeles residents by race and income. The 2000 U.S. Census showed that Los Angeles-Long Beach has the fourth-highest level of segregation between whites and Hispanics among America's 100 largest cities.

Census statistics on education and income also suggest that Los Angeles is dividing into two economies— a high-skill, higher-income sector disproportionately represented by whites and Asians, over 40 percent of whom hold college degrees, and a low-wage, low-education sector disproportionately represented by African Americans and Latinos, fewer than 20 percent of whom have graduated from college. In the past decade, median household income in the city fell by nearly 12 percent, while the gap between the races continued to increase. Today, median household income for whites in Los Angeles is nearly double that for the city's blacks and Latinos. Although homeownership increased across the United States during the 1990s, especially for racial and ethnic minorities, it declined in Los Angeles, especially for African American and Asian families. Los Angeles now ranks 92nd among the 100 largest cities in its homeownership rate.