What most folks who are not familiar with LA realize is just how big it is and spread out it is with literally 1000's of densely packed hoods and districts strewn all over the landscape. Much of these hoods are either declining former middle class burgs declined into run down semi-slums,often rezoned into apartment/SFH/townhome mishmashes, or already rotted ghettos. Then there are out and out pure ghetto apt slum districts such as those surrounding DWTN LA and in the 3rd world steaming pile called Northeast San Fernando Valley, and of course infamous South Central LA, but you will find these gang infested graffiti-ed ghettos all over the city.
I wrote this detailed description of 3 LA zips back during height of RE bubble insanity in early 2007 when RE fraud and 300-400% markups of RE in LA ghetto zones was rampant:
'The ghettoization and conversion of LA into a humongous third-world festering gang-infested black hole region is largely ignored by the MSM especially our LA times due Mainly to ignorance, naivety, or PC correctness. Very few have been out to all these ghetto hoods to actually see the ramshackle century- old crackshacks in graffiti-ed slums selling for 1/2 million or more in impoverished illegal-alien packed slumzones where average household income is $45,000-50,000 at most(real, not stated liar incomes)
These are just three chosen slumzips to give an example:there are hundreds of slumzone zips like these all over LA county. I looked at data for home prices/ sales in many of these slumzones last 2 years and have been thru many of these hoods.
In Pacoima 91331 i saw homes selling for $500,000+ and a few listed as high as 3/4 of a million. Pacoima is one of the worst slums areas of the east SVF and a hotzone for RE fraudulent activity.
Lennox 90304(Inglewood/lax area) is one of nastiest blighted slumburgs in LA
yet i saw ton's of teardown/refurbished quick fix & flip 2/1,s going for $450,00-500,000 as late as last june.
LA zip 90011 which is directly south of LA dwtn is a real nasty polluted inner LA ghetto zip within earshot of dwtn. Median prices here averaged close to 1/2 mil in mid-2007. There was so much dumping and polluting in this hood, as with most of the ghetto hoods i've been thru, that it could have been declared an EPA superfund site.'
I can go into detail about a 100 more zips which are similarly ghettoized but will cite just a few more La dumps:
Wilmington- grimy LA port city with sizable illegal alien and gang element
Maywood: City is almost run and controlled by massive 18th st gang and is a complete ghetto district. Ditto for its sister hoods cudahy and bell
La Puente:illegal alien/gang-infested ghetto black hole in far eastern edge of la county.
LA inner dwtn region-a slew of ghettos such as rampart, pico union, chinatowm, westlake, Jefferson park, boyle hts ring dtwn area.
East LA: a big illegal-alien/gang-infested black hole
Compton: big mixed black/immigrant/illegal-alien pocket
Alameda corridor/710 fwy; LA County grimy industrial district with 7-8 cities and 90% impoverished- mostly recent immigrant Hispanics with 1/3 of these being illegals.
NOTE: I am well qualified to make a detailed inventory of the geographic/demographic features of LA and indeed much of SCal as i spent 15 years as a delivery driver driving into a LOT of hoods and districts all over greater LA basin region. I know the makeup of LA as well as anyone actively blogging about LA.