Paint, Plants and Pride

PACOIMA —  In 14 years as a Pacoima resident, Yolanda Cardenas could not afford to paint her home. Her frontyard was covered with dirt and the property--like many others on her block--looked rundown.

Enter Pacoima Beautiful, which helped Cardenas and her neighbors get grants for much-needed make-overs. Now the homes have fresh paint and scenic lawns surrounded by trees.

“I love the way my house looks, but one of the best things about this is that I know my neighbors now,” Cardenas said. “For all these years I didn’t know any of my neighbors, and now we all talk and watch out for each other.”

Created four years ago by a handful of volunteers, Pacoima Beautiful aims to improve the quality of life in this working-class, mostly Latino community of about 45,000 by getting residents to participate in the process.

“We’re going to make this city beautiful by cleaning it up, improving the landscaping and getting the community involved,” said Liseth Romero-Martinez, co-director of Pacoima Beautiful.

The group monitors neighborhoods in the roughly 7-square-mile area with 20 volunteer inspectors, who report areas with excess trash and graffiti and homes in desperate need of painting and landscaping.

Hundreds of volunteers, recruited mostly from the community, participate in monthly cleanup sessions. Last year, more than 1,200 people took part.

“We actually knock on doors,” Romero-Martinez said. “The community has been very responsive. People want change; they just don’t know how.”

Volunteers have distributed fliers written in English and Spanish throughout Pacoima, listing phone numbers to call for specific problems common in many areas.

For example, there’s a toll-free number for the sanitation department, which is responsible for picking up old mattresses and refrigerators that often sit on curbs for months. Other numbers are for reporting graffiti, abandoned vehicles and buildings, street maintenance and shopping-cart pickup.

Pacoima Beautiful also distributes 3,000 copies of its bilingual monthly newsletter to schools, libraries and residential areas with announcements of upcoming projects and “beautifying” tips.

“More specifically than the individual projects, they’re teaching people to assume their own destiny and play a role in it,” said state Sen. Richard Alarcon, who as a city councilman represented the northeast San Fernando Valley. “To me, that’s the real concept of empowerment.”

Other Valley groups do community cleanup work, Alarcon said, but none is as organized as Pacoima Beautiful.

In 1998, Pacoima Beautiful distributed 508 fruit trees to residents in exchange for volunteer work with the organization, which is headquartered at the Pacoima Youth and Family Center.

The group also planted 33 street trees, recruited youth from the nearby San Fernando Gardens public housing facility to help create a garden at the Pacoima Youth Center and worked with Cal State Northridge professors to help identify environmental problems in the area.

Another project involved planting trees at Broadous, Pacoima and Montague Street elementary schools.

“The whole community has benefited so much and it’s been great for us,” said Diane Pritchard, principal at Montague.

Pacoima Beautiful organizers hope those who have benefited from its work will give something back. Cardenas, for instance, volunteers regularly for Pacoima Beautiful’s monthly cleanup days, as do many of her neighbors. With a mostly volunteer staff--two are paid small salaries--the organization can use the help.

In the last couple of years, Pacoima Beautiful has received a total of $95,000 in grants--from Bank of America and the Environmental Protection Agency--and the group is pursuing others to stay afloat.

One of Pacoima Beautiful’s latest projects targeted businesses along Van Nuys Boulevard. The organization got the city to donate 100 brooms, which it distributed to business owners who were challenged to keep the street in front of their space clean.

“We call it the magic broom. If you use it, it works,” Romero-Martinez said, laughing. “Seriously, the area already looks better. There’s been a major improvement.”

Such results are sufficient compensation for long work hours, said Pacoima Beautiful founder and co-director Marlene Grossman, a volunteer who lives in Los Angeles.

After the 1992 L.A. riots, Grossman joined a small group of women who wanted to participate in the city’s healing effort by helping needy communities.

She soon became involved with a parent center at Pacoima’s Vaughn Street Elementary School that offers family counseling, job training and health programs.

“I immediately thought, ‘They don’t have a voice. They have been disenfranchised,’ ” Grossman said. “I wanted to help.”

With a master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA and a background in landscape design, Grossman figured she could start by getting the area much-needed vegetation.

So she got Tree People, a nonprofit group that plants trees all over the city, to do so in Pacoima and through the years the relationship has grown.

Grossman plans to hand over all of Pacoima Beautiful’s duties to Romero-Martinez so she can move on to projects in other communities. In the meantime, she continues to seek grants for Pacoima Beautiful and specific projects around the community.

Romero-Martinez is taking diligent notes because her goal is to change her community’s image.

“When I tell people I live and work in Pacoima, they roll their eyes and say, ‘Oh, my God!’ Unfortunately Pacoima has a terrible reputation,” she said. “Of course it’s a challenge, but that’s going to change. It already is.”

Pacoima Beautiful’s next cleanup day is scheduled for Saturday from 8 a.m.-noon. For information, call (818) 899-2454.