For the past three years, 70-year-old Antonia Beltran has arrived early to Dolores Frances Affordable Housing in Pico Union, where she works as a community nurse assistant helping elderly residents. But as she looks for parking, walks the streets and runs errands for her job, she says she’s noticed one thing consistently: the streets aren’t clean.
“The streets are so dirty right now that it’s unpleasant just to walk around,” Beltran said. “I do see the city cleaning. There are workers in vans going through the neighborhood picking up trash.”
Adding to cleanup efforts in the neighborhood will be another clean team announced Wednesday by LA City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez at Pico Union Project.
The initiative is funded through the California Department of Transportation Clean California Community Cleanup and Employment Pathway grant program. It is meant to address trash, weed abatement and illegal dumping, according to Hernandez.
The Pico Union team is one of two new clean teams being launched in Council District 1. The other one is in Chinatown.
The teams, made up of formerly incarcerated workers through the Center for Employment Opportunities, will prioritize cleaning freeway underpasses in Pico Union.
“We have a lot of illegal dumping in our underpasses in these areas, a lot of trash that accumulates,” Hernandez said. “That’s what their primary focus will be.”
Illegal dumping and trash accumulation have long been concerns in Pico Union, where residents frequently report bulky items, litter and debris collecting near freeway underpasses, sidewalks and heavily trafficked corridors. So far this year, residents in Pico Union have reported 1,784 illegal dumping cases, according to data collected by Crosstown.
Crews will also respond to other cleanup needs across the neighborhood based on calls Council District 1 receives.
Jovany Curiel, a senior site supervisor for the Center for Employment Opportunities, said the Pico Union clean team will have four workers and they will receive a weekly schedule from Council District 1 outlining which sites they will tend to.
Luis Vega, 31, one of the clean team workers, said joining the effort was personal for him because he’s from Pico Union.
“I decided to join because I wanted to give back to my community,” Vega said. “I spent so much time being incarcerated, taking from my community. It’s time that I decided to invest in myself, invest in my future and become a part of the reintegration into society.”
Raul Mondragon, a 43-year-old Pico Union resident who was previously incarcerated, also said being part of the clean team has significantly changed his life.
“It’s helped me to maintain my sobriety,” he said.
Mondragon added that he’s also cleaned streets in other neighborhoods before arriving in Pico Union.
Hernandez said cleanliness has been one of her office’s top priorities and that she has already spent more than $1.2 million in discretionary funds on clean teams across the district. The new crews, she said, became possible after the city secured state grant funding following about a year-long application process. While the teams are currently temporary, and will be around for at least a year, she said her goal is to make them a permanent fixture in the neighborhoods.
“What I want people to feel is that their tax dollars are in their neighborhoods,” she said.
She added that residents frequently tell her they want cleaner sidewalks that feel safer.
“People don’t feel safe if their neighborhoods are dirty and full of graffiti and weeds,” Hernandez said. “ We hear from them all the time: ‘I just want to be able to walk through a clean sidewalk and have my child be able to do that too.’”
Beltran said she hopes the cleanups won’t just be short-term fixes. She believes lasting change will also require different issues to be addressed at the same time.
“It’s good, but they can’t change people’s behavior. They clean everything up, and within a week it looks the same again. It’s hard to know what the solution is,” Beltran said. “There are a lot of homeless people, and they’re the ones creating most of the mess, not the community.”
CD 1 did not immediately respond to requests for comment about this.
Hernandez said she also wants residents to become more involved in keeping their neighborhoods clean and reporting issues when they see them.
“I think we want to have more people love their community, real, truly,” she said. “Because right now, there seems to be no more empathy towards even just throwing your trash in the trash can.”
