TENANTS LIVE WITH FEAR, RESIGNATION

Housing: The Aging Park Parthenia Offers Low Rent, But Gangs And Drugs
Continue To Plague The Complex Despite Attention By City Officials And Police.

For many families, Park Parthenia in the San Fernando Valley is the first
stop in the promised land. But the experience can be rough.

Housing in the aging low-rise complex rents for as little as $200 a month,
and three families sometimes pile into a two-bedroom apartment.

Because of nearby industrial parks and restaurants, it provides convenient
housing for working-class Latinos. Some janitors, cleaning women,
homemakers, and construction and restaurant workers have lived here for
years, hoping to move out but finding themselves trapped because they can't
afford to move elsewhere.

They call it "Little TJ" or "Tijuanita." Just about everyone among the
2,500 or so residents is from Mexico or Central America. Most are legal
residents, and one-third receive rent subsidies.

Police make an arrest every other day, mostly for drug offenses, assault or
public drunkenness.

Gangs and drugs are facts of life--problems residents accept with fear and
resignation.

"There's no tranquillity. You can't sleep in peace. Cars get damaged," said
Jesus Delgado, a 25-year resident at the gated Northridge complex of 62
buildings at Parthenia Street and Vanalden Avenue.

Delgado, 51, who lives with his wife and two children in a three-bedroom
apartment, said he injured his back and is on government disability.

Along Bryant Street, the main thoroughfare that the local gang adopted for
its name, teenage boys whistle to attract the attention of drug buyers and
to alert gang members about possible undercover police.

One youth approached a visitor, asking, "You got some."

Small children, often barefoot with smudges on their faces, roam on foot,
scooters and bicycles.

Wolfie Calix and his wife, Michelle Garcia, moved to the complex a year
ago. Desperate for a place, they had planned to stay only a month.

"Everyone is afraid of this place because of its reputation," said Calix,
25, a day laborer who pays $300 a month to share a two-bedroom apartment
with his wife and five other people. "The bad things have been the
shooting, seeing the gangsters, the selling of drugs and a couple of fights."

On April 1, four men in their 20s were shot, none fatally, near an alley on
Bryant within the complex.

Some residents said they don't go out after dark.

"It's kind of scary because even if you live here, you got to watch your
back because there are a lot of drug addicts," Calix said.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

The apartments were built between the 1940s and '60s for people waiting to
move into houses under construction in the post-World War II boom, and for
farm workers.

The buildings began deteriorating in the 1970s because owners weren't
maintaining them, said Ellen Michiel, executive director of the nonprofit
West Valley Community Development Corp. in Canoga Park.

Los Angeles city officials first considered mass evictions to eradicate
slum conditions. But they decided instead to subsidize renovations by
issuing $21 million in tax-exempt bonds and making a $5-million loan in
1986 to a private developer who bought and renovated 47 of the 62 buildings
on three blocks.

In the late 1980s, renovations were the city's most expensive
rehabilitation project. It was considered a compassionate plan, allowing
most tenants to stay while subsidizing improvements to be carried out by
the private sector.

Since 1986, a company called Park Parthenia, which later incorporated as a
nonprofit, has owned the majority of the buildings and now operates 48.
Because of its federally insured mortgage and subsidized renters, Park
Parthenia is considered publicly subsidized housing, although it is
privately owned.

Despite good intentions, the project was flawed, Michiel said. There is too
much asphalt and not enough green spaces or community rooms, a computer lab
and stores--amenities now built into low-income housing projects to create
a greater sense of neighborhood and keep young people busy, Michiel said.

Although the yellow and green Park Parthenia-owned buildings lack graffiti
and are in better condition than those owned by private for-profit
companies, they aren't very inviting. Junk mail litters concrete entrances,
and the buildings are mostly void of plants and other personal touches.

Blight is rivaled by another intractable problem: drugs.

Authorities figured that if dealers and customers did not have easy access
to the apartments, crime would go down. So in 1986, up went a 6-foot-tall,
heavy iron fence, running around the complex to keep out unwanted traffic
and reduce shootings.

Street access after 9 p.m. is limited to a single gate, policed by an
unarmed guard.

Police say the fence eliminated drive-by shootings, but at night the sounds
of gunfire and police helicopters are common, residents said.

The fence hasn't slowed the drug trade, according to residents. Dealers now
sometimes make sales through the bars.

Five years ago, banners proclaiming "Buy Drugs, Go to Jail" and "LAPD Video
Zone" were hung along the streets. At first, those tactics worked, said
Sally Barnes, a former LAPD senior lead officer who worked in the area
before retiring last year.

"For a whole year, it took everyone off the street because they knew they
were being photographed," Barnes said.

But the warnings were a short-term solution, Barnes said.

Now a small sign on a power post near the entrance warns drug buyers that
their license plate numbers are being reported to police.

In 1997, Park Parthenia security chief Pedro Banegas made a reputation
trying to get tough on drug dealers. He was shot to death in a crime that
was never solved.

Differences in Ownership

When the city began the renovation project, several building owners refused
to sell, said Ralph Esparza, assistant general manager at the Los Angeles
city Housing Department.

Serious problems have remained, particularly around the privately owned
buildings inside the fence, where tenants involved in crime and booted from
buildings owned by Park Parthenia often move, Park Parthenia officials and
residents said.

Several have deteriorating paint, torn window screens, graffiti and trash.
Gang members and drug addicts mostly gather at the private buildings,
residents said.

Their owners are usually absentee, and several are not strict about whom
they rent to, police said.

"That's the absolute nightmare that creates an image problem," Lorraine
New, director of operations at Park Parthenia, said about the private
building owners. "They don't want to be bothered. They designate residents
as managers, and they're totally intimidated. We've offered to manage the
buildings. No one wants to participate."

New said Park Parthenia is willing to buy some of the private buildings,
tear them down and build parks in their place--but owners have asked for
too much.

Private owners contended that it is unfair to blame them because they lack
the resources to improve their buildings or to hire extra security. Park
Parthenia security guards patrol only Park Parthenia buildings.

Hamlet Zadourian, who owns a building on Bryant, blames gang members and
destructive tenants for the problems.

Zadourian said he chopped down a tree on his property because drugs were
being sold from a treehouse. "I thought it would get better," said
Zadourian, 39, of Agoura. "I don't know what else I could do to change that."

City records show the sharp differences between buildings run privately and
those held by the nonprofit.

In 1999, city inspectors found about 1,150 deficiencies--such as missing or
broken smoke detectors and roach infestations--in 32 area private buildings
inside and outside the fence, officials said.

Last year, federal officials inspected buildings owned by Park Parthenia
and found only minor deficiencies.

When Claudia Navarro returns home from school, she usually locks herself in
her bedroom to do homework or watch TV. For privacy, she pretends she's
going to clean--the ruse guarantees none of her three siblings will bug her
in her family's two-bedroom apartment.

When Claudia, 14, goes out to play, she is alert for the security guards.

"If you want to play soccer, security guards will take the ball away
because they don't want you to mess up the grass," she said.

Life for the 1,000 young people who live at Park Parthenia seems to hold
little promise. A majority of students at nearby Napa Elementary live at
the complex, and all of the school's students receive free or reduced
lunches, said Principal Keith Lord.

The nearest green space and basketball courts are at the school, but the
field is locked up at 6 p.m. and on weekends. "Children have nowhere to
play," said resident Delgado. "That's why so many kids here have gone to
waste."

Parents and their young children get help at Park Parthenia's community
center, but there are no programs geared toward teenagers.

Many residents said young residents without enough to do gravitate to
"kicking it on the corner" with the Bryant Street gang.

At Napa Elementary, Lord said he occasionally must roust gang recruiters
from classrooms.

The gang has about 100 members, and 30 or so live in the Park Parthenia
area, police said. The gang's initials -- BST -- are scrawled throughout
the complex, on the sidewalk, on several buildings, even on palm trees. The
gang mostly deals drugs--on corners, through the fence or by using kids to
sell, police said.

Some say the fence, designed to keep out unwanted traffic and reduce
shootings, aids the gang by making it hard for police to enter without
being noticed, authorities said.

The city has secured funding to build a new park, and the LAPD Devonshire
Division's Police Activity League is trying to raise $700,000 for a new
youth center--both near Park Parthenia. Calix said he welcomes the projects.

"It's depressing to live here sometimes," he said.

Calix said he is saving money to move; his wife is expecting.

"This is not a place where I want my kid to grow up -- this is a ghetto."