LA's Dying Neighborhood

This is the fifth house Omar Gonzalez has looked at so far, and it's definitely not one of his favorites. He is house hunting in South Los Angeles County because he is about to be kicked out of his current home.

“A lot of maintenance needs to be done,” he says, critiquing the backyard. The situation inside isn't much better to him.

“Closet needs to be cleaned,” he says in one of the bedrooms, adding, “That's weird,” referring to an attic entrance in the ceiling in a non-walk in closet.

When he encounters light fixtures in the other bedroom he finds them, “really odd,” and “awkward.”

And checking out one of the bathrooms, Gonzalez acknowledges that it's been updated, but adds, “Yeah, it's still dirty. You can tell all the grime.”

This is just one small step in the process that Gonzalez is going through to find a new home. He is one of the last holdouts in the dying West Los Angeles neighborhood of Manchester Square next to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), one of the busiest and fastest growing airports in the world.

He is highly critical of what he comes across and notices each imperfection that he would have to fix if the house became his. Gonzalez, 26, has also only ever lived in one house, so the tour is also tinged with the anxiety of potentially moving for the first time.

Once a thriving working class neighborhood, Manchester Square has slowly been bought out by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) over the past 20 years. LAWA is the agency in the city of Los Angeles that overseas LAX and Van Nuys Airport.

Initially the airport didn't know what it would do with the properties, but now has plans to make way for a rental car facility, a people mover and a transportation hub. Once LAX began buying and wrecking homes, the neighborhood slowly became less desirable, and more people moved, selling their homes to the airport.

The situation snowballed. The neighborhood has become blighted where abandoned homes are boarded up with no trespassing signs, a significant homeless population lives in tents on the streets and fences surround empty lots.

Manchester Square, which is right under the airport's flight path, is now under eminent domain imposed by the Los Angeles City Council in an August 2017 vote. Everyone who is still living in the neighborhood now must leave. In a city that's been known for skyrocketing property value, Manchester Square succumbed to an airport that is confined by its location and desperate to expand its operations due to continued growth.

For as long as Manchester Square has been a neighborhood, it's always had to contend with airplane noise. That would become be the initial reason for the neighborhoods demise.

In 1995, residents of Manchester Square were offered a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to help soundproof their homes from airplane noise. As LAX got busier through the years, noise from planes flying directly overhead became progressively more frequent. Rather than take the grant money, some residents just decided to sell their homes to the airport.

Because residents started moving out because of the noise, in 1998 LAWA implemented a program called the Voluntary Acquisition and Relocation Program. This program allowed LAWA to buy property from people who didn't want to soundproof their homes and the agency also offered relocation assistance.

LAWA didn't have a plan for what they wanted to do with the properties, but bought them nonetheless. The airport razed the properties they bought. People began losing neighbors. The area became less desirable. More people sold, more houses were razed and the situation snowballed into what is now a blighted neighborhood.

Manchester Square is part of a larger overall community in Los Angeles called Westchester, which includes LAX along with neighborhoods to the north and east of the airport. To LAX's south is the city of El Segundo. To the west and northwest is the Los Angeles neighborhood of Playa del Rey, including a thin strip of land separating the airport from the Pacific Ocean.

Westchester was mostly farmland 100 years ago until LAX became an airport in 1928. Loyola Marymount University moved its present campus to Westchester the following year. The area soon went through a phase of rapid development with neighborhoods popping up to support the new airport and university. But as the area around LAX grew, so too did the need for the airport to do the same.

LAX was built during the middle of a rapid population boom for the city. From 1920 to 1940, Los Angeles's population nearly tripled, going from America's 10th most populated city at 576,673, to the nations fifth at a little over 1.5 million. By the 1980s, Los Angeles's population grew past 3 million and dethroned Chicago as America's second most populated city.

This population growth meant Los Angeles needed an airport that could keep up, and LAX delivered. It's now the second busiest airport in the United States and fourth busiest in the entire world based on total passengers at around 80 million per year as of 2016 according to the Port Authority of New York, and New Jersey. LAX's annual passenger count increased by nearly 8 percent from the previous year. This is far ahead of other busy international airports in the top 10 like Heathrow in London, 0.97 percent, O'Hare in Chicago, 1.79 percent, and Charles de Gaulle in Paris, 0.25.

For a large American city with a busy international airport, Los Angeles faces a few unique challenges with LAX. For one, the airport is directly surrounded on three sides by residential areas and an ocean on the fourth. Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport is the world's busiest airport, but it's in America's ninth largest metropolitan area. Unlike Los Angeles, Atlanta serves more as a layover hub than an actual destination. This means many people don't actually leave the airport when they arrive to Atlanta and don't add to outside traffic. Atlanta-Hartsfield also has 4,700 acres of land to work with, while LAX is at 3,500.

New York is America's largest city, but benefits from having three regional airports in the list of the U.S.'s top 20 busiest. Chicago is served by O'Hare, America's third busiest airport, but has over twice as much land area than LAX. The San Francisco Bay Area is served by four of America's top 40 busiest airports. But LAX is the singular dominant airport in the greater Los Angeles region that is America's second largest metropolitan area and has a population of over 18 million people. None of LA's other regional airport's, Bob Hope in Burbank, John Wayne in Orange County, San Bernardino, Ontario and Long Beach are among America's top 50 busiest.

LAX and the surrounding area are strained by how busy it is. Traffic into the airport is notorious with local residents. As LAX has gotten busier over the years, the imperative for airport expansion has increased. This has caused tension between the airport and surrounding neighborhoods for decades.

Denny Schneider is the president of the Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion. His organization's mission is to work with elected officials and local leaders to promote airport regionalization in Los Angeles. Their goal is for regional airports to take on more of the Los Angeles area air traffic burden so LAX can have some of its traffic mitigated.

“LAX is not only in a congested area, but it's very small by airport standards,” Schneider said. “The measure of safety of an airport is the number of operations per acre, and the higher that number the worse it is. Well LAX is ten times worse than any other airport because it's so small and it has such a large number of operations.”

Cyndi Hench is the president of the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa, which represents the communities of Westchester, Playa del Rey and Playa Vista. Neighborhood councils are not part of the actual city council, but serve as a mediator between communities and city leaders due to the potential difficulty of having local concerns heard in a city as large as Los Angeles.

“It was amazing that Manchester Square didn't get taken sooner,” she said. “Homes shouldn't be under the flight path anyway.”

Manchester Square is not the first neighborhood to be put under eminent domain by LAX. The now-nonexistent neighborhood of Surfridge was once the barrier on the airport's west and northwest side between it and the Pacific Ocean. Surfridge succumbed to airport growth in the 1960s and 1970s as LAX expanded several runways, putting the neighborhood directly under the flight path.

More recently, LAX tried to expand its northernmost runway 260 feet closer to Playa del Rey and Westchester because of safety reasons according supporters of the matter. That effort was met by a fierce legal battle with the two sides ultimately settling and the runway not moving.

Hench says that because LAX has used eminent domain in the past that it makes area residents skittish anytime they hear about airport construction. “We often quickly correlate construction and improvement with expansion just out of fear,” she says. “If LAX had its dream and it wasn't going cost an arm and a leg, I think they would take all the land as far as they could because they're so landlocked.”

Garrett Smith also serves on the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa. He lived in Manchester Square for a decade between 1977 and 1987, and says the neighborhood was “fully functional” back then.

“It was probably middle class to low middle class,” Smith said. “The airport noise was really bad. The flights would fly directly overhead, and I don't know how many feet up it was, but I think I might have been able to see people wave out the window.”

Smith says he doesn't agree with how Manchester Square's decline has been handled because it's removing low-cost housing that won't be replaced. In an expensive city like Los Angeles, housing comes at a premium. Smith says when developers tear down low-cost housing they usually have to replace it elsewhere in the city, but LAX hasn't done so, nor will it help move out Manchester Square's homeless population.

“That's because of all of these FAA grants that they had received that all of their money could only be used for aviation purposes,” Smith said. “And that's the excuse the airport gives us today, that they would like to help the homeless that are leaving there, but they can't use the airport funds to do that.”

LAWA is spending a little over $105 million to purchase the 37 remaining homes, duplexes and apartment complexes in Manchester Square. The money will come from revenue generated by LAX, not taxpayer dollars. Even though LAX is managed by Los Angeles World Airports, which is part of the city of Los Angeles, they generate all of their revenue through airport operations.

Walking around Manchester Square, it's hard to imagine that it was once just another neighborhood like Omar Gonzalez and Garrett Smith described. But it's also difficult to imagine that next summer the airport intends to turn this neighborhood of mostly vacant, fenced up lots, and streets filled with tents and RV's into facilities that will help alleviate airport congestion.

Manchester Square is scheduled to make way for the Landside Access Modernization Program, a $5.5 billion initiative by Los Angeles World Airports to consolidate its rental car facilities, add additional parking, a transportation hub and a people mover. Currently rental car companies that serve LAX have their lots spread out around the LAX region.

“By consolidating them into one location, it makes it really convenient for individuals to find where they need to pick-up or drop-off their rental car,” said Mark Waier, director of communications at Los Angeles World Airports. “It also eliminates those individuals driving around, confused, trying to find the Hertz, or the Avis, or the Budget lot and adding to our emissions.”

The people mover will eliminate the need for shuttles to drive into the loop area of the airport where people currently drop-off and pick-up travelers. Instead, anyone who needs to rent a car can just take the train. LAX anticipates the elimination of shuttles will reduce traffic in the loop.

While he may be looking forward to the day it can make its operations flow more efficiently, they still have to handle the situation of the remaining property owners who haven't left. Of the 37 properties the Los Angeles City Council voted to use eminent domain on, Waier says only four holdouts remain.

Omar Gonzalez and his family are one of those holdouts. Another is a man named Michael Parris, who has been a resident of Manchester Square for over 60 years and was the only resident of the neighborhood at the city council meeting voicing his opposition. Waier says that “it's sad” whenever someone has to lose their home in these situations.

“Eminent domain and the actions of asking people to relocate is never an easy thing,“ Waier said. “But looking at the bigger picture and the impact that those project's going to have on the city of Los Angeles and all the visitors who come here is going to be really incredible.“

Then there is the homeless population. The airport estimates that about 150 homeless people live in Manchester Square. They say that people living in RVs or campers have been living there on average between 3 to 5 years. Since 2016, LAWA has worked to address this issue by creating the Manchester Square Task Force.

Their goal is to conduct community outreach, figure out homeless people's needs and eventually place them into housing. According to the most recent report by LAWA updated in December 2017, between June 2017 and December 2017, the amount of tents has gone down from 59 to 37, while the amount of RVs have dropped by more than half, from 44 to 15.

“Every homeless person has a really interesting different story and they all have different issues,“ Waier said. “It's about figuring out what that issue is and then finding them the help that they need in order to get them off the street.“

Manchester Square resident Omar Gonzalez sits in his home and remembers what it was like growing up next to LAX. The walls of the house are no match for the airplane noise outside, as every aircraft that fly's over the house thunder over.

“It was noisy where you're trying to watch TV, have conversations outside, it was a little hard,“ Gonzalez said. “But over the years people did grow out of it. People did get used to it I would say.“

While LAX is expected to gain new facilities that will alleviate area traffic congestion, Gonzalez struggles to find the silver lining in the situation. To him he is losing the house he has lived virtually his entire life in. The neighborhood may be a shell of itself, but the memories remain.

“It shocks me a bit,“ Gonzalez says when asked about LAX's reasoning for tearing down the neighborhood and making way for the new facilities. “I guess all they really care about is the money. They're getting some cut. It's sad for us but for them they're happy about their money with what they're going to be doing.“

Gonzalez is still searching for a new home to move into. He will have to be out of Manchester Square by January 2018. LAWA expects construction to begin by summer 2018.