Aliso Village

Aliso Village was a housing project in Los Angeles, California. It was built in in 1942 and demolished 1999. The 29-acre parcel was replaced by Pueblo del Sol. [cite news|title=Urban housing success story faces budget ax|publisher="San Francisco Chronicle"|date=2006-02-23|author=Sterngold, James|url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/23/MNG7UHDATS1.DTL&type=printable]

The complex was owned and managed by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.

Location

Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California, 1st Mission Road

Aliso Village Projects

Was one of the most impoverished areas of the city, and by the 1930s was considered one of the last remaining slums in the United States. Reformer Jacob Riis had visited The Flats in the early 1910s and declared them worse than anything in New York; a survey conducted by the city in the 1937 deemed 20% of the city's dwellings "unfit for human habitation," including most of The Flats. During World War II, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) razed The Flats and built Aliso Village projects in their place. Like most of HACLA's 1940s projects, Aliso Village were hailed at the time of their construction as some of the finest examples of the principles espoused by the garden city movement, and were racially integrated to boot.

Soon after the end the war, Aliso Village lost most of their non-Latino populations, and were increasingly populated by Mexican immigrants. With the river on one side and a massive rail yard on another, the construction of the East Los Angeles Interchange further isolated them from the rest of the city, and the closure of the Pacific Electric Railway dramatically reduced the mobility of many of the projects' residents. By the 1970s, overcrowding had eliminated much of Aliso Village's once-vaunted green spaces, physical deterioration had become rampant, and gangs were an increasing problem. In the 1980s the residents of Aliso Village began to organize with the support of Dolores Mission Church and its community Organization UNO and began to address these problems. By the late eighties the residents of the two housing projects had developed a network of community groups that pushed for better services and began negotiating truces between the different gangs, thus reducing the level of violence. In 1996, HACLA wrote off the projects, against the residents desires; Aliso Village was demolished and replaced with the New Urbanist, Pueblo del Sol "workforce housing" project. In the process two thirds of the residents of the housing projects were displaced in a situation reminiscing of the Chavez Ravine incident.

chools

Utah street Elementary school [http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/Utah_EL/] WAS LOCATED AT THE CENTER OF ALISO VILLAGE PROJECTS.Utah street school was mainly attended by Aliso Village residents. Pico Aliso and Pico residents had to walk up the hill to 2nd Street Elementary School [http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/2nd_Street_EL/]

Notable residents

*Paul Gonzales
*Mike Garrett
*Paulion Hunt
*Daniel Ramos "CHAKA"
*Willie Davis
*Sam Balter

References