By now, even people who do not live in Van Nuys, are aware of the vast pockets of blight that exist along such major streets as VanOwen, Victory, Sepulveda and Kester. Broken down apartments with graffiti gang tags, old motels that house prostitutes and drug dealers, vast asphalt parking lots without cars, and a variety of underused and undermaintained land.

Then why does the LAUSD want to invade a quiet, single famiy neighborhood, just north of VanOwen and east of Kester, and seize 22 homes for land to build its next elementary school? What greater good is accomplished by destroying a coherant and healthy community when so much around it is blighted and neglected?

In an eloquent essay that he wrote for the LA Times this past Sunday, writer Marcos M. Villatoro, who lives in this death sentenced area, ridicules the vast bureaucratic explanation for their plan:

“Not only can the government take my land without my permission, it can also set the price . And here, between the little streets of Tobias and Willis, Hart and Bassett, it can bulldoze a community that’s taken decades to build.

Over the years, I’ve learned to be mistrustful. I don’t take much to the phrase “the greater good.” Especially when it comes out of the mouths of powerful monoliths like the LAUSD.”

Neighborhood activist Norma says that the school sent a letter saying there is no vacant land in the area for a school. But Villatoro writes, “There’s a huge, fallow field one block north of us, owned by a church. Six blocks east of us stands a plot that the LAUSD bought up over a year ago. The houses are still there, behind barricades. There are overgrown fields, an abandoned Ralphs, an empty Red Cross building.”

Van Nuys Boulevard, north of VanOwen, is begging for some humanizing architectural plan. It is an eight lane highway of nothingness, surrounded by junk. Why not create a school, and perhaps some multi-family housing, as part of a development on Van Nuys Boulevard? Pay for the school by selling residential housing. This would make business sense and help foster a sense of caring for the people of Van Nuys that the LAUSD lacks.

But don’t murder a quiet, tree lined neighborhood and tell us its for our own good.