What they suggest is that the people in these low income areas managed to improve the quality of the housing slightly during the early Sixties. On the other hand, they were faced with having to pay higher gross rents out of very limited increases in family in come. Home Ownership.--In bygone generations when wealth was largely in the form of land and buildings, home ownership had an importance far beyond what it has in contemporary society. For families with assured incomes, the comforts, pleasures and conveniences of modern apartment living are such that many people who could afford to buy a residence nevertheless prefer to rent one. Even in affluent America, however, they constitute so small a fraction of the total population that home ownership remains an important clue to the economic well-being and social and political health of a community. What is often called California-type financing has supported an enormous building boom in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in the postwar period, and has also encouraged proportionally more families to commit themselves to the purchase of a home than at any time since the Depression of the Thirties. The result has been that by 1960, 54.6 percent of all housing units in the Los Angeles SMSA were "owner-occupied," the corresponding figure for the central city being 46.2. While it would easily be possible to compile tables showing in detail how the pattern of home ownership in all of the low income and minority communities compares with that of Los Angeles itself, one can get a clue to what the critical disparities are like from a few simple facts. In Central Los Angeles only 20.1 percent of all housing units were owner occupied in November 1965, and in Watts 30.3. In neighboring Willowbrook, on the other hand, 53.0 percent were lived in by their owners, 85.1 percent of them nonwhite, which in this instance is to say Negro. Here is clear evidence of a desire for ownership and it is doubtless accompanied by some pride of ownership, too. What is no less striking--but on the other hand discouraging--is that home ownership in East Los Angeles, the largest Mexican-American community in the County, appears to have declined during the early Sixties. In 1960 the percentage of owneroccupied homes in that area was 38.8; by 1965 it was down to 35.1. Land-Use Patterns No systematic inquiry into the land-use pattern of Los Angeles County has been made since 1941 and the task is so prodigious that the Regional Planning Commission does not expect to complete another one until 1970. Under the circumstances, the only observations to be made here are that, except for the mountainous terrain and the desert north of the San Gabriel range, much of the open space still available at the close of World War II has been zoned during the past 22 years either for homes, factories or shopping centers or for streets and highways. While there are still enough acres devoted to poultry-raising, dairying, fruit raising and truck gardening to enable the County to hold onto its record of being one of the leading agricultural counties in the country, there can be no doubt that the pattern is changing. Homes, schools, streets, parks, highways, markets, factories and occasional large open spaces, this is the land-use pattern that seems destined to prevail in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area tomorrow--and unfortunately not always with the best proportions or locations either. Some 18.4 percent of the land in the County was still devoted to farming in 1959, but this was 35.6 less than the acreage that had been under cultivation just five years earlier and there is no reason for supposing that the trend has changed. Income Levels According to the 1960 census, median family incomes within the Long Beach-Los Angeles area varied between $3,584 in Watts to $16,728 in San Marino. Most of the other representative communities for which information is available, had median incomes per family in the $6,500 to $8,500 range, $7,073 being the median for the SMSA as a whole. For 1965, figures are available for only three communities: Central Los Angeles, Watts and East Los Angeles. In Central Los Angeles the median had fallen in five years from $4,009 to $3,743, though this may have been because of an increase in its Negro population. During this same five-year span, however, the median rose from $3,584 to $3,803 in Watts, which also acquired a larger number of Negro residents. As for East Los Angeles, it showed a gain, if that is not too strong a term, from $5,304 in 1960 to $5,305 in 1965. Retail Sales That the Los Angeles-Long Beach area shares fully in the prosperity of California becomes evident at once upon examination of the figures for retail sales. In its Community Economic Profile, the Office of Economic Opportunity estimated that they amounted, in toto, to $12,062,516,000 or $1,744 per capita, $300 above the national average. Only 8 percent of all the counties in the United States enjoyed an equal or higher sales volume per capita. These are the proportions in which sales at retail were apparently divided last year: food stores, 21 percent; eating and drinking places, 10 percent; general merchandise, 18 percent; apparel, 5 percent; furniture, 6 percent; automotive, 22 percent; gasoline, 7 percent; lumber, 3 percent; drugstores, 4 percent; miscellaneous, 4 percent. All of these ratios coincide rather closely with those for retail purchases in the country as a whole. Employment and Commuting Patterns Taking Los Angeles County as a whole, those employed represented 94.2 percent of the labor force according to the most recent complete count available, namely the 1960 decennial census of population. This meant that the rate of unemployment in the area, 5.8 percent, was slightly higher than that for the nation as a whole, 5.6 percent. Relatively, however, the situation had improved markedly over that prevailing in 1950. Ten years earlier Los Angeles County had 7.3 percent of its labor force unemployed while the rate for the United States as a whole was only 5.3. No up-to-date report is available showing how the labor force in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area is divided according to industrial classifications, government service, and the professions. The best that can be done is to indicate with respect to business and industry how their employees were allocated during the first quarter of 1964. Here are the summary figures: agriculture, forestry and fisheries, less than 1 percent; mining, less than 1 percent; contract construction, 6 percent; manufacturing, 36 percent; transportation, utilities and sanitary services, 6 percent; wholesale trade, 8 percent; retail trade, 17 percent; finance, insurance and real estate, 7 percent; services, 19 percent. What is doubtless of far greater significance, however, from the standpoint of serious fiscal disparities among the various communities within the area is the pattern of employment--and commuting--in places like Watts, Willowbrook and East Los Angeles. Here are some of the important findings of the special census taken in the South and East Los Angeles areas in November 1965. TABLE 10.--EMPLOYMENT AND COMMUTING PATTERNS IN SOUTH AND EAST From the standpoint of the men in the labor force being able to get some kind of a job, the data in Table 10 indicate that conditions in both of these depressed areas had improved slightly between 1960 and 1965. Whether they really had improved, however, depends not so much on what happened to the unemployment of Negroes and MexicanAmericans as to their underemployment. For this is where they have suffered the greatest discrimination--or at least think they have. More than anything else, the policy that needs to be emphasized is one of making sure that every person has a fair chance to get the best job he is prepared to handle. Educational Achievement Levels As of 1960, the U.S. Bureau of the Census reported these basic facts regarding levels of formal education among people 25 years of age or older in the Los AngelesLong Beach area. Comparative data are available for only three communities in 1965--Central Los Angeles, Watts and East Los Angeles. It goes without saying that the occurrence of crime within a metropolitan area depends upon a whole series of factors--the rational and emotional makeup of the criminal, the temptations or pressures he may be under, his impulse or calculation regarding time and place (which in turn often depend to some extent upon his means of transportation and communication), whether he acts alone or is teamed up with others, and, finally, the size and vigilance of the local police force. Every community represents some combination of conditions and circumstances conducive to anti-social behavior and the various municipalities in the Greater Los Angeles area are no exception. The nature and frequency of criminal activity may change from place to place-and this can make a big difference in its tone or social climate--but no community will be free from worry on this score. All that can be done within the limits of this report is to give a general picture of the kinds and numbers of felonies committed in Los Angeles County as a whole and in some of its representative communities in 1965, supplemented by raw figures on juvenile arrests for major and minor offenses. Table 11 presents this statistical picture in summary form. One of its limitations is that separate figures are not available for the "contract cities." The reason for this is that they buy their police service from Los Angeles County and, in the reports issued by the State Department of Justice, their statistics are included in the data reported by the sheriff's office for the county generally. (Separate figures could, of course, be obtained from the contract cities themselves but not without inconvenience.) Table 12 supplements Table 11 by indicating the incidences of crime within the central city of the SMSA, the data again pertaining to the year 1965. Perhaps the main comment that needs to be made about it is that Police Division No. 1, Central, covers roughly the area which has been referred to above as Central Los Angeles and that Division 12, the 77th Street Division, includes Watts. Division 3, University, like No. 12 includes some of the poorer sections of the city. So does Division 4, Hollenbeck, which borders on the unincorporated Mexican-American community known as East Los Angeles. Division 13, Newton Street, includes a sizable manufacturing district bordering on Vernon, the factory enclave. Altogether there are 15 divisions within the central city but since there is no longer a No. 2, their numbers run to 16. AFDC and OAS Caseloads Success begets success and failure begets failure. The fiscal disparities analyzed in the first section of this study reflect by and large the hard social realities underlying the political-governmental organization of the different parts of the area as a whole. One of those hard realities consists of the number of elderly people in a community who must depend on charity, either in whole or in part, to meet their daily needs. In California the needy aged who are unable to satisfy the residence |