Demographic Change: Meet the new neighbors, same as the old neighbors
The early years of Downey’s demographic transformation were marked by uneasy race-relations. White residents who remained in the early 1990s were generally poorer than the white residents who left, and therefore felt stuck as the city changed before them. Some white residents overestimated the cultural differences between themselves and the middle-class Mexican Americans; this perceived difference undermined the existing peace.
Part 6 of a 7-part series. Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
But this scarcely discouraged Downey’s middle-class Mexican Americans from expressing the assimilated civic identity. This was because they genuinely believed in several of its component actions. Unlike earlier years where the civic identity secured their place among the white majority, in the 1990s, Mexican Americans perpetuated the civic identity to steward the community through challenges to the middle-class quality of life.
One principal holdover was the emphasis on home-owning customs and practices that maximized property values. Middle-class Mexican Americans in the 1990s headed, created, and participated in “property-values”-minded programs. Ironically, this responded to the economic turmoil caused by the very housing bubble that first facilitated Downey’s white flight in 1988. In this essay, I’ll detail a number of programs Mexican Americans championed as part of their civic identity.
Demographic change in the 1990s coincided with tax problems in Downey. Unsustainable economic growth, the 1986 Tax Reform Act, Federal Reserve policy, and personal debt accumulation caused a national recession in 1990, a counter-boom of sorts to the housing market of 1988. Locally, this recession and the end of the Cold War spelled far fewer aerospace construction contracts at the Boeing plant in Downey. This revenue formed a significant portion of the city’s collected taxes in earlier years, so by 1998, when Boeing shut the Downey plant down entirely, the city’s tax base faced major problems. This, combined with fluctuating property values caused by the housing bubble, concerned homeowners in Downey.
The other threat to property values came in the form of gangs. White and Mexican American residents feared that overwhelming demographic turnover could lead to the infiltration of unwelcomed elements and urban-related vices like gang activity. Surprisingly, Mexican Americans and whites alike held these fears and responded in similar ways.
In the 1980s, some gangs trafficked in a lucrative illicit drug trade, while others formed in response to inter-ethnic tensions. Rhetoric like Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs” initiative found support in communities like Downey where gang activity threatened residents’ middle-class standard of living. The gang problem in Downey existed more in imagination than in reality. (More on this later.) Some gangs, though, sprouted from Downey and named themselves after the neighborhoods in which they formed; the Dog Patch Criminals, Brock Avenue Locos, and Margaret Street Locos are three such examples. Many Downey gangs grew from the central Downey working-class barrio, resulting from the lower levels of economic and social capital allocated to these streets.
High school teachers recalled certain students in the 1990s being involved with organized gangs and posing trouble for the administrators on campus. But many gang groups or members came from outside the city.
Community groups like Gangs out of Downey (GOOD) provided grassroots solutions to these threats. Phil Presicci and former school board member Betty Ferraro founded GOOD in 1989 to steer Downey youth from gang involvement. GOOD tapped Downey resident (and former Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder) Darrell Jackson to helm the program.
A grassroots organization, GOOD was a youth-group alternative to gangs. Through its early years, GOOD enjoyed moderate success steering dozens of youth—mostly low-income Mexican Americans from central and south Downey—from gang influences.
Photo by Eric Pierce
Widely publicized testimonies like that of Francine Perez stoked the community’s support. Once an at-risk youth from south Downey, Perez nearly dropped out of school and joined gangs before Darrell Jackson invited her to GOOD. Through the programming of GOOD, especially the mentorship of Jackson, Perez remained in school, maintained a 3.0 grade point average, and joined the cross country team.
By 1993, the organization had attracted a large following. GOOD hosted a “Youth Program Day,” with a food court, entertainment, youth sports registration, and a walk-a-thon to raise money for the group’s functions. Turnout at the event helped attract corporate sponsorship from Downey-based organizations like Keep Downey Beautiful, the Police Department, and Downey City Services. Kaiser Permanente Hospital topped them all with a $5,000 check; in later years, more companies donated larger sums to GOOD.
As the city demographics changed, Mexican Americans transitioned to leadership positions—with much of the same success. This stemmed from Mexican American desires as business owners, parents, and residents to keep streets safe. Safety was as good for business as it was for raising children. Latino/a/x-owned businesses like Lopez Insurance Co. publicized their financial contributions to GOOD to signal their literal investment in safety. Raul Lopez then became the first Cuban American to join GOOD leadership when he assumed the office of vice president in 1996. The next year, Lopez became president and continued the same levels of programming, fundraising, and success.
When asked about his intimate involvement with GOOD, Lopez cited concern for “a decent place for his wife, Arlene, and his five children to live.” Lopez and others genuinely cared for the program. Their support was but one way to uphold the quality of life that first attracted them to Downey and separated the middle-class suburb from nearby minority-majority cities. Their efforts worked, too: in 1996, Lieutenant Wheatly of the Downey Police Department announced that programs like GOOD caused a five-year hiatus in gang-related homicides.
(In truth, the community overestimated GOOD’s role. Contemporary crime statistics by the FBI showed falling rates of serious crime throughout metropolitan Los Angeles and across the nation as a whole. When compared to cities like Long Beach or Los Angeles, both of which had much larger populations, Downey actually had slower rates of declining crime.)
During this period, middle-class Mexican Americans also participated in neighborhood improvement programs. One such program was the Neighborhood Preservation Program. Started in January 1997, the Preservation Program grew from the city’s commitment to maintaining high property values through demographic change; resident participation ensured the program’s success. Orange County cities introduced similar initiatives in prior years.
The program created a city-paid position for a Community Outreach Officer (later Neighborhood Preservation Officer), who liaised relations between neighborhood residents and various city departments like Code Enforcement. The first budget provided $71,000 for three neighborhoods—mostly in the apartment-dense fringes of south Downey—with the goal to peruse streets looking for signs of blight: “buildings in need of repair, litter-cluttered yards, cars that don’t run parked on lawns, and other signs of gangs and crime.”
On paper, the position resembled the usual powers assigned to code enforcement officers. In practice, the Neighborhood Preservation Officer became integral to the program’s success.
The inaugural Preservation Officer, Cristina Garcia, epitomized the incoming middle-class Mexican American. (This Cristina Garcia is not the same as our current State Assemblymember.) Garcia was 24 years old at the time of appointment, but she had impressive credentials. In her few years after graduating from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in political science, Garcia interned at a public policy institute, worked as an administrative aide for the City of Beverly Hills, and participated in the federal AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America, the War-on-Poverty-era domestic version of Peace Corps. Garcia had also begun a graduate degree in public administration at the University of Southern California.
Her father, Ernie Garcia, was the city manager of neighboring Norwalk, but she omitted this from her application so she could earn the job by her own merit. The city lauded Garcia’s qualifications and hired her over forty-one other candidates, including police officers and university professors. Her hire signaled the city council’s recognition of the new demographic landscape.
Garcia represented the new Downeyite: an American-born college-educated Latino/a/x who, having tasted the middle-class life in some way, upheld a civic identity that promoted high property values through a culture of code enforcement and neighborhood improvement. The city banked on Garcia’s ability to resemble and relate to the incoming middle-class Mexican Americans. The high property values would not come from forcible code enforcement by white homeowners and policymakers, but rather from the middle-class Mexican Americans themselves.
Residents from all neighborhoods enthusiastically participated in and ensured the program’s success. In the first Neighborhood Preservation meeting, seventy residents from one neighborhood aired their concerns over issues like crime, traffic, and property maintenance. The most common complaints, though, came from Downey residents concerned by juveniles from Paramount.
Residents blamed Paramount youths for generating most threats to their property values, from litter in the park to graffiti on walls to a general family-unfriendly atmosphere. Garcia and other city officials promised to address all concerns from that meeting, and scheduled follow-up events, litter cleanups, and family-friendly programming to reclaim the spaces. City councilmembers were thrilled with the success and enthusiastic community reception of the Neighborhood Preservation Program.
The program also coincided with the maintenance of higher property values: throughout the 1990s, the median value of owner-occupied homes in Downey remained higher than the county median—and $60,000 higher than in nearby suburbs. The newspaper lauded the program, Police Chief Caldwell praised Garcia, and councilmember Gary McCaughan’s only concern was that the program deserved more funding.
After just seventeen months, the fiscal conservatives of city council offered the Neighborhood Preservation Program a blank check to ensure its growth. The next year, the program expanded to include another salaried officer. Such was the allure of programs that stabilized property values.
Mexican Americans also participated in private programs that privileged home upkeep as a civic duty. Independent programs like Keep Downey Beautiful (KDB) incentivized home improvement by awarding recognition to homes from all parts of Downey. KDB grew out of Keep America Beautiful, Inc., a national program started in 1953 to prevent littering in urban and suburban streets. The association created several initiatives, from hazardous waste disposal to littler clean-up grants. In Downey, KDB hosted recycling drives and litter cleanups, but was known to most residents as the trustee of the Home Beautiful awards. Residents submitted pictures of their homes for yearly award consideration in a number of categories. Judges assessed homes on maintenance, overall appearance, use of landscaping, and “neighborhood impact.” Though principally for immaculate single-family homes, KDB also recognized Most Improved and Rental Housing categories to encourage improvement even among those who were not middle-class homeowners. As if to lend implicit support for the property improvement competition, the city allowed KDB to host the awards show every year at city hall, which was itself a model for tasteful midcentury modern buildings.
Home Beautiful award winners, at the very minimum, complied with a strict municipal code. The municipal code of the 1990s shared most of the structures of the original 1956 code required by state law for incorporated cities. That municipal code reflected an apparently-timeless obsession with property values. The municipal code required meticulous attention, lest a homeowner deviate from the prescribed homogeneity. Landscaping requirements provide one such example. The city code forbade reasonably offensive appearances like broken windows or vegetation that promoted fire hazards. Some requirements, however, were more subjective. Technical charts filled the “Landscaping Requirements” section that mandated
Except in the R-1 and R-2 zones, the total number of trees required shall be as follows: One (1) tree for every five (5) parking spaces; and One (1) tree for every twenty (20) linear feet of street (include street side) frontage…Except in the R-1 and R-2 zones, the size of trees, at time of planting, shall be required in Table 9.5.4.
Or, that homeowners must provide:
[a] colorful landscape edge [that] should be established at the base of buildings. Avoid asphalt edges at the base of structures as much as possible. Plant materials located in containers are appropriate…Planting masses on-site should assume a simple, non-uniform arrangement. The diversity of massing types should be great enough to provide interest, but kept to a level that evokes a relaxed natural feeling.
Compliance ensured the continuation of the manicured single-family ranch-style aesthetic. Conformity, not flexibility, was required. But these requirements were prohibitive on two levels: initial cost and cost of maintenance. For new developers, compliance with ordinances, especially fanciful tree and sightly vegetation requirements, could add significant costs.
By design, the middle-class Mexican Americans who moved to Downey needed to have the means to afford these costly requirements. The cost of maintenance similarly prohibited certain property owners. For front lawns, prohibitions included vegetation “out of conformity with neighboring community standards to such an extent as to result in, or contribute to, a diminution of property values,” such as “[l]awns with grass in excess of six inches (6”) in height.”
Maintenance was required almost weekly, lest a lawn grow more than a disorderly six inches. Thus, a family moving into Downey needed to allocate, on a weekly basis, either hours of their day or monetary pay to maintain their vegetation. Such costs added up to a significant yearly investment, and restricted homeowners to those of middle-class means.
Home Beautiful competitions thus embodied two key aspects of the civic identity. For one, compliance with the municipal code preserved the ranch-style aesthetic popular in middle-class white suburbs and prevented Mexican Americans from introducing architectural styles like the Spanish mission style that are associated with Mexican culture. Second, Home Beautiful incentivized Mexican Americans to publicly privilege a “high-property-values” framework during the years of demographic transformation. Home Beautiful therefore not only helped to stabilize property values but also tied the new demographic to the civic identity.
Latino/a/x families like Irma and Marco Barrios enthusiastically participated in KDB competitions. By 2000, the Barrios family, like many other Mexican American families, were perennial winners. Even families from south Downey showed up on Most Improved lists, suggesting earnest efforts by working-to-lower-middle-class families to uphold the higher property values.
Photo via Sean Ashton.
These programs were but some of the ways the incoming middle-class Mexican Americans perpetuated a “high-property-values” framework in the 1990s. To them, this component of the assimilated civic identity offered the proper remedy for fluctuating property values. But by perpetuating this framework, middle-class Mexican Americans unknowingly calcified a very specific definition of “Downey living,” one epitomized by programs like GOOD, the Neighborhood Preservation Program, and KDB, to name a few.
This was not inevitable. Home-owning practices and customs of minority-majority cities like Paramount or South Gate did not independently threaten property values (and therefore the quality of life). To be sure, some attitudes like intolerance of gangs did, on their own, protect against damage to property and life. But “intolerance of gangs” as a proxy for “intolerance of Paramount,” as residents at Neighborhood Preservation meetings suggested, was altogether different. Similarly, Spanish-style mission homes did not independently pose threats to property values. (Consider how the opposition to such styles is along the lines of “it’s an ugly style” or “it’s not like classic Downey homes,” which are subjective assessments of valuation, as opposed to “it promotes a fire hazard.”)
But Spanish-style mission homes as metonyms for the home-owning practices and preferences in, say, Huntington Park (where the style is more common), were what posed the threat to Downey property values. This has less to do with the buildings themselves, and more to do with how ideas about the built environment suggested what constituted “good” suburban living. It was about “keeping South Gate” (or any southeast Los Angeles suburb) out of Downey.
Which is to say that by perpetuating many components of the “high-property-values” framework of white-majority Downey, middle-class Mexican Americans were perpetuating the racial ideology that first informed ideas of “good” and “bad” home-owning practices. This was not a conscious association, but it had far-reaching implications, some of which are still a part of the way Downeyites think about their homes today.
There is a more immediate example of this. In the 1990s, undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America fled economic and natural disasters and trekked north. Some made their homes in Downey. Their presence ignited very public clashes between Mexican Americans’ ethnic and class identities. I look forward to concluding the series with that story next week.