Los Angeles should not redraw District 9
Posted February 21, 2012 at 8:31 pm in Featured, Opinion
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Loading ...Last week, I ventured into South Central for the first time in my two years at USC. Prompted by glowing Yelp reviews and a hefty amount of dry-cleaning, I drove to Bowers and Sons Cleaners, located on South Central Avenue.
Rita Yeung | Daily Trojan
After overhearing snippets of a conversation between another patron and the owner of the store — “marching” and “helping out wherever we’re needed” — I asked the owner, Vivian Bowers, what they were talking about.
It turned out that Bowers, the president of the new Central Avenue Business Association, has been at the heart of a years-long struggle to reinvent a community long defined by drugs, crime, gangs, violence and poverty.
And she has been successful. Bowers and Sons has a new awning and a repainted exterior, paid for in part by city redevelopment funds as a result of the business association’s committed lobbying. A Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market opened on the corner of South Central Avenue and East Adams Boulevard in 2010. Thousands of affordable-income housing units have been built throughout the area. The neighborhood is becoming cleaner and more business-friendly.
Change is happening in District 9, Bowers’ home. The district includes USC, part of Downtown and the communities of South L.A. and Little Tokyo.
Yet every 10 years, the Los Angeles City Council redraws district lines to account for population changes. The purpose: Equal populations supposedly translate into equal access to local political representation.
Unfortunately for District 9, redistricting would reverse much of the positive progress the community has made.
The city plans to redraw District 9 to include three of the poorest low-income housing complexes in the area. This would make it the poorest L.A. district in the history of the city, according to Southern California Public Radio.
Redrawing translates into less funding.
“The new Ninth [District] would consist largely of densely populated low-income housing and small mom-and-pop business translating to a small tax base,” Bowers said in an email. “At the end of the day, the councilperson Downtown would be hard-pressed to share their tax dollars or encourage private developers or non-profits to invest or collaborate with/in a neighboring district.”
By contrast, a councilperson representing a more affluent district is able to leverage tax dollars and private funding for much-needed projects, housing and services — things District 9 and the area surrounding USC desperately need.
Bowers and Sons is one of the many largely ignored reminders of the deep divides between USC and the surrounding community.
Students often complain about the general absence of amenities in the surrounding area: lack of healthy food options, nice restaurants, cafes, grocery stores and retail outlets. Though Central Avenue isn’t right here, it’s less than 10 minutes away from where many USC students live.
If District 9 continues moving forward with the kind of work that Bowers has propelled — even returning to its glory days in the 1940s, when the area boasted great sit-down restaurants, theaters, law firms and rich nightlife — USC students would have easy access to all these services.
But if the district is redrawn, progress will halt. The improvements are made possible with tax money, which has generated decades-long missing investor interest. Without tax dollars or investors, District 9 would have to switch gears and seek out other funding sources; this process would slow down development.
Bowers and the residents of South Central are not the only ones who would lose out if we continue to ignore the pressing issues of the area that many of us call home for four years.
There are many differences between USC and the surrounding area, but that does not mean we are separate from the issues that shape this community.
It’s time that students think about the community as a whole and of USC as a part of that whole.
Just as Bowers and her community are fighting to invest in and improve their futures, we should as well.
Elena Kadvany is a senior majoring in Spanish.
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This article is tagged: central avenue business association, district 9, Los Angeles
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Redistrictiing is a concern for all of us and for the future of our community. This article helps point out the relevenace of the 9th District for those who think the 9th District is irrelevant. Thank you Ms. Kadvany for the call to attention.