Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 4

      In this weeks blog I have chosen to analyze the area in Los Angeles that I am most familiar with, my home.

I have lived in the town of Hacienda Heights my entire life and never really thought critically about its make up and location until a few years ago. It is a small, middle class suburb that lies about 21 miles east of Downtown Los Angeles, nestled up against the Puente Hills in the San Gabriel Valley. It is a part of unincorporated Los Angeles County and has actively fought against becoming a city to avoid the creation of local taxes for services. In my opinion, the location feels pretty central to most of what is available around the greater metropolitan area. The 60 freeway runs through the city and is easily accessed for any travel in the area. You can get to the beaches of Orange County and West LA within an hour, reach downtown in 15 minutes (no traffic), and get to the mountains in an hour and 20 minutes. Hacienda Heights has just about everything any suburb needs, access to good public schools and a myriad of markets, restaurants, big box retailers, shopping malls, places of worship, libraries and nature trails and parks.

Hacienda Heights is not very well recognized and for that reason has been the site of such movies as Mr. and Mrs Smith and Back to the Future, it just looks like any suburb you'll find in the states. Its roots lie in a history of citrus agriculture that died out in the area during the 1940s and transitioned rather quickly into a bedroom community.

      When my family first moved to this town over 26 years ago, our neighborhood was dominantly white and we were the first Hispanic household on the street. My parents have said that it took a while for the neighbors to come around and that some never even spoke to them or acknowledged them. The housing market in the area has been pretty stable and through the 1990s many neighbors moved away to other communities and were replaced by more Hispanic or Asian households. The only neighbors that stayed were the ones that were already retired with a paid mortgage and had settled. I don't know if this slow trickling out of the white population in Hacienda Heights had any racial/ethnic motivations, but the transformation of the towns demographic has definitely made an impact on the businesses that now exist. Many areas have signage that are either in Chinese, Korean and English, but some shopping centers have signs in just Korean and Chinese.

 As a local that speaks neither of these languages you just need to know what is being sold through experience or friends telling you. This expansion of Asian businesses tells a story of the transition this community has undergone in the last 20 years. It began with the founding of the Hsi Lai Temple, it is the largest Buddhist temple in the Western Hemisphere and it is right in the middle of a residential area in Hacienda Heights overlooking the San Gabriel Valley. 

This cultural center has attracted new members of the community and entirely new commerce and demand. A large affluent Asian community has developed in the town given that most of the housing near the temple is further up into the hills and at a higher property value. This change in demographic can be seen in the local schools, including my local high school. I was on the yearbook staff and was in charge of organizing the archives for a school that has been established for over 50 years and a clear change can be seen in the yearbooks that chronicle the transformation in the local demographic over the years.
      The two defining streets in Hacienda Heights are Gale Avenue and Hacienda Boulevard. Gale Avenue runs along its northern border dividing it from City of Industry and La Puente. Both of these adjacent cities are literally on the other side of the tracks and it really is an abrupt change. The demographic changes to be dominantly Hispanic and generally lower income and higher crime. 

Along Gale are a series of shopping centers, fast food and sprinkled with strip clubs... Zoning laws in Hacienda Heights do not permit such establishments, but the demand clearly exists so there exist a number of them right on the border. Hacienda Blvd is lined with both residential neighborhoods and shopping centers that contain many local and large markets as well as centers for worship. These two streets experience the heaviest traffic and are what most people see as they drive through town trying to get to Azusa or La Habra Heights and probably miss the myriad of parks and nature trails that exist. It definitely isn't a unique community, but I can't imagine having the same experiences here anywhere else... this has been and will always be my hometown.