A Place to Call Home Again

There had not been a new house built on Marbrisa Avenue in Walnut Park for almost half a century.

So when Alta Gonzalez looked Saturday at a row of brand new residences recently built on a dilapidated parking lot on the street, she had to smile.

“The neighborhood has people who feel like it is their own again. It is alive,” she said in Spanish.

Zoning restrictions had made it difficult and expensive to build or even add on to existing homes in certain sections of Walnut Park, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in southeast Los Angeles County. Businesses replaced residences, especially in this part of the community.

But in 1998 the area’s zoning code was changed from commercial to residential after complaints by residents, paving the way for the new homes.

County officials hope that MarBrisa Walk, a 50-home development that already has some occupants but won’t be completed until early summer, will revitalize the community. Twenty-six of the homes, which are being sold for between $170,000 and $200,000, have been set aside for low-income families.

“This is going to be a model for how communities in the inner city change every day,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina said at a grand opening celebration Saturday.

In the 1920s, Marbrisa Avenue was like many fast-growing residential streets in Los Angeles.

But the area changed from residential to commercial, and businesses such as a glass-making company began moving in.

The company tore down homes in a six-acre area along Marbrisa in the 1950s to make room for a parking lot. Residents complain that the lot served as an illicit garbage dump and gang meeting place.

“That’s where stuff like this came from,” said Orlando Mejia, gesturing to a dense clump of multicolored graffiti on a wall next to his home by the former parking lot.

Enticed by the zoning laws, other businesses began to move into the neighborhood. Residents recall that a recycling center could not contain its crushed glass, and a fine dust would blow into the neighborhood during windy periods.

“It was everywhere. It would glisten on the street just like ice,” Mejia said. “You could hear it rattle in the vacuum as you were cleaning.”

In 1998, residents formally complained and Molina pushed to get the zoning changed and the recycling center closed. The glass company moved out of its building, which now houses a fabric company.

Molina also secured $1.8 million in county funds to buy back the parking lot.

In the early planning stages, there was some thought of building apartments, but residents pushed for homes.

“People feel like they own something with a home, that they are a part of a community,” Gonzalez said. “That’s the best way to change a community.”

MarBrisa Walk homeowners will be offered incentives to stay, officials said. The county is making low-interest loans available, and the longer homeowners remain, the less they will have to pay back on the loan, said Syed Rushey, director of housing and development for the county.

“Our job is to make sure the neighborhood is stable,” he said.

Molina said there is more work to be done in the area. Increasing opportunities for businesses and controlling gang activity are key concerns, she said.

Even on Saturday morning, workers were scrubbing graffiti off a brick wall that surrounds the development.

But this seemed to matter very little to Ruben Juarez after he walked through his new house with his wife and two young daughters.

“We’re going to put our roots down here. This is home forever,” he said.

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Times staff writer Hugo Martin contributed to this story.