The West San Fernando Valley: Culture and Contradictions

            Much to the dismay of the some residents of Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley has played an important role in the past and present development of the metropolis known as Los Angeles. While the San Fernando Valley is considered part of the city and county of Los Angeles, there is a perception perpetrated by Hollywood, Westsiders, as well as other people who live in the metropolitan area, that the Valley is an inferior and unwanted sibling which is inferior to the remainder of this vast city. However, the perception which is presented is neither accurate nor warranted as the San Fernando Valley, especially since the West San Fernando Valley has developed into a thriving suburban metropolis for those who choose to live outside the epicenter of the glamorized communities. Therefore in order to dispel this myth, I have selected the four contrasting communities located in West San Fernando Valley to examine for this purpose of this project including: Hidden Hills, Calabasas, Woodland Hills and Canoga Park, which in turn will illustrate a very different story unknown by many who have never lived or visited the valley in recent years. For the remainder of this paper, I will examine the communities above to identify the culture as well as the contradictions, dilemmas and challenges these cities face in the twenty-first century Los Angeles.

Hidden Hills

            Hidden Hills is probably one of the most affluent communities in Los Angeles that one who has lived in the greater Los Angeles area has never heard of largely because of its location in the western most half of the San Fernando Valley. Founded in 1951 and incorporated in 1961, Hidden Hills has been the home to the rich and famous who have chosen to live in Los Angeles, but yet remain unanimous in a gated community with three different entrances. However, what makes Hidden Hills a unique gated community is its status as an incorporated city within Los Angeles County with its own mayor, city council, police, etc. However, Hidden Hills is not a community that is open to anyone, instead it is the home for many wealthy individuals and families who have chosen to live in the San Fernando Valley, but yet desired to cut themselves off from the positive as well as negative changes occurring around them With the average home in Hidden Hills ranging $3-4 million, its 2017 citizens have found a reclusive place which for some is almost ideal in their eyes as they have the best of both worlds: the life of a major city, but yet the quietness of knowing that not anyone can live next door to them. Finally, because of the failure of the local city government as well as the Los Angeles Unified School District, Hidden Hills along with Calabasas, Agoura Hills, Malibu, and Westlake Village formed the Five-city Las Virgenes Malibu Council of Governments. The Five-City Las Virgenes Malibu Council of Governments is an agency voluntarily established by its members under a Joint Powers Agreement to provide a vehicle for members to engage in regional and cooperative planning and coordination of government services and responsibilities. One of these services includes its educational system which shared by four of the five members based largely upon geographical relationship to one another.

Calabasas

            The city of Calabasas was officially founded and incorporated in 1991 and was the last community to successfully secede from the City of Los Angeles. Calabasas like Hidden Hills is a small and charming community which was once home to horse property. The creation and development of Calabasas follows a similar story to the remainder of the Los Angeles. The changing demographics and rise of gated communities led to the creation of Calabasas as a new city which would be part of Los Angeles County, but independent from the City of Los Angeles, providing the people who could afford to live there, an opportunity to enjoy the life of a large city, within a controlled or gated suburban community. However, unlike Hidden Hills which is strictly a residential community with a very limited commercial infrastructure, Calabasas has several commercial areas including a large shopping complex called the Calabasas Commons largely frequented by the people who live in Calabasas and the neighboring West Valley communities like West Hills and Woodland Hills. Based upon interviews with people who live in Calabasas, the community was formed and has grown significantly due to the demographic, socio-economic and cultural changes throughout the West Valley. Therefore, Calabasas is often seen as a refuge for those who no longer want to be bothered by the crumbling infrastructure which includes: traffic, inadequate police protection, failing public schools, changes in demographics, etc. However, while Calabasas may appear to be on the surface, an extremely nice place to live, access is still limited only to those making several hundreds of thousand of dollars a year as the average home price is $1.7 million. With this said, it is important to consider that the Las Virgenes School District is renowned for its excellence and a larger family does save the cost of having to send each of their children to private schools because of the failing public schools found in the surrounding communities. From this perspective alone, Calabasas does provide an attractive alternative for those who can afford the steep cost.

Woodland Hills

            Woodland Hills was founded in 1922 in a time when the West San Fernando Valley was farm land. Throughout its history, Woodland Hills has grown to become a gem located in the extreme western half of the San Fernando Valley. In recent years Woodland Hills has received a great deal of attention because of the expansion of the Warner Center, otherwise known as a commercial and corporate capital of the San Fernando Valley. According to Wikipedia, the Warner Center was when conceived was first envisioned in the 1970s and considered complete in the mid-1990s It was built to relieve traffic to/from downtown Los Angeles, as well as generate jobs in the San Fernando Valley, however, the Warner Center has done much more than it was originally anticipated as it has put Woodland Hills on the map. Because of its location, the Warner Center has attracted small and large corporations to area of the Valley, few knew even existed prior to its emergence. With many small and large companies as well as university extension centers choosing to locate themselves in Woodland Hill this city has resulted in the development of a vibrant community, which in turn has raised the average price of houses and also led to the building of new luxury apartments and condominiums in the surrounding area.

While some may argue Woodland Hills has become more commercialized as a result, the new corporate interest in the West San Fernando Valley has also led to new up-scale restaurants, a mall as well an interest in this peaceful city. However, prior to the resurgence of the community, Woodland Hills had much to be proud of as the community is home to a thriving private school market, some of the highest performing public elementary and high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and an area that has largely not suffered as of yet from the problem of uncontrollable traffic and overcrowding which has plagued many parts of Los Angeles as well as Southern California. Finally, it is also important to note that the economic development of Woodland Hills has also positively contributed to the redevelopment and economic vitality of Canoga Park as well. Many of the Latino service workers have found jobs working in Woodland Hills in a variety of entry level jobs which has mutually benefited both communities. With this said, Woodland Hills does suffer from the one major problem: lack of adequate essential services which include police protection because historically it has been a city of minimal crime.

Canoga Park

            Canoga Park is fascinating city located in the West San Fernando Valley which is a community that is of stark contrast to the three previous communities examined above. Founded in 1933, Canoga Park was rezoned in the early 1990’s as a result largely of the size and changing demographics. Once a city inhabited by lower middle class and working class whites, Canoga Park, throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s quickly changed its demographic and cultural composition. As a larger number of Latino’s began to populate Los Angeles, Canoga Park was ripe for change and it did. As a result, in the early 1990’s, Canoga Park was rezoned and two smaller communities were carved out: West Hills in its western half and Winnetka in the Eastern portion. Once again, three contrasting communities were created as West Hills developed to become a middle and upper middle class community mirroring its neighbor to the south and west Woodland Hills, as Canoga Park and Winnetka became places with high percentages of poorer Latino or Mexican immigrants.

Despite these challenges, in the new millennium, Canoga Park due largely to community councils has seen an economic resurgence as a plan was put in place to change both the perception and reality of Canoga Park. While Canoga Park suffers from the challenges associated with first-generation uneducated immigrant communities, entrepreneurs who have an understanding of the Latino community have established businesses that have directly benefited a cash driven community. One example of these investments include the Vallarta Supermarkets, which had began as a low-cost supermarket designed to meet the needs of the largely Latino and Mexican immigrant community. Since their founding of Vallarta several years ago, new stores have been created in the surrounding communities offering the people of these generally impoverished communities an opportunity to buy quality groceries at a less expensive price.

            Finally, it also important to mention that what is considered to be Canoga Park’s main street has seen a face lift as well. Due to the presence of community council, the sex shops and prostitution which has resulted in increased crime and drugs which once dominated Canoga Park no longer has the same presence it once did. As a result of these changes new restaurants, theatres as well as other cultural landmarks have begun to reshape the look, feel and culture of this largely immigrant community. Clearly, there is no question that a Latino immigrant middle class will need to form in Canoga Park for these positive economic and cultural changes to continue, this is one community on the rise and could serve as a potential model for other communities with similar demographic trends.

The West San Fernando Valley: Culture and Contradictions

            The San Fernando Valley with a population of 1.7 million people along with the thriving West San Fernando Valley is a culture and contradictions as often it is not given the credit it deserves within the larger metropolis of Los Angeles. As outlined above, the West San Fernando Valley is home to some of Los Angeles most affluent citizens, as well as its most poor immigrant Latinos. However, the West San Fernando Valley from many perspectives is a microcosm of the larger city. The communities of the West San Fernando Valley are semi-independent, yet thriving areas in which real estate, commercial development, as well the number of educated people is statistically higher than both the city of Los Angeles as well as the State of California. Though the Valley, but more importantly the West Valley is rarely given fair credit for its economic contributions as well as something development, the communities which make up this area of Los Angeles present some extremely complicated and complex contradictions. As a community, the cities of West Valley pay a large percentage of taxes to both city and county governments, but have seen little return in their investment. Though the West Valley is known for its high performing schools, there has been no new construction of public schools in this region in decades. Instead, the reverse has resulted, as the Los Angeles Unified School District has closed several elementary and middle schools because of staggering and dwindling enrollment, therefore resulting in over-crowding in neighboring high performing schools. The only solution put forward by the school district has been to create charter schools which are formed and administered independently of the central administration located in Downtown Los Angeles. The creation of additional charter schools each year, illustrates another contradiction as there is little proof that the Charter Schools actually improve education, anymore than public schools do. Additionally, as a result of the failure of the public schools, a thriving private school market now dominates the West Valley yielding a symbol of social status as many families have opted to send their kids private. Whether this trend will continue is uncertain, especially if Los Angeles is plagued by a recession similar to that of the one in the early 1990’s.

            So far, my account of the West San Fernando Valley has been relatively positive with few exceptions, however, I do not want to address a few reasons why the middle class or those aspiring to remain or become members of the middle class should have some concerns. While Woodland Hills has become the economic epicenter of the San Fernando Valley, the ability to buy a house in the place one’s parents lived has become extremely challenging, even for the educated elite. (I am defining the educated elite as anyone who earned an advanced degree beyond the baccalaureate degree.) While economic development and community revitalization benefits almost everyone in the community, there are some that are left out. The market for anything can only remain high when there is demand for the product and while most people really believe that a home in Woodland Hills should be worth at least $650,000, the home is only worth that much, when there are people willing to purchase or consume the good. With a small but growing educated elite looking to buy homes in the West San Fernando Valley, the reality of an extreme high cost of living, failing public schools, crippling traffic, longer work hours, and inconsistent salary raises, means that economists and sociologists may need to rethink the definition of the word profession and educated to include only those people employed limited professions. For those people who have enough foresight to enter high income professions allowing only these individuals more purchasing power and the opportunity to buy and live in the West San Fernando Valley and should be hailed as an individual accomplishment. However, for the people left out of the equation, it is important to take a second look at what is going on. Los Angeles and the communities in the West San Fernando Valley can only continue to flourish when economic development coupled with fair wages that provide real purchasing power for those who seek to live in the community. I am not sure that the communities of the West San Fernando Valley are prepared for the answer that awaits. Los Angeles has some very serious problems which if these challenges are not given fair attention, the infrastructure which took so many years to build will quickly crumple.

From my vantage point as an Angelino who has only lived in Los Angeles for two years, I see two important issues that somehow will need to work themselves out. The first challenge remains the obvious lack of a Latino middle class. While I have no problem with gated communities or gated cities, as America affords people both opportunity and a wide variety of choices, the growing Latino community needs to form a thriving first generation middle class of professionals who enter the workforce, eventually advance to highest levels of society resulting in more opportunity for the generations to come. If this does not happen, the consequences may be dire. Secondly, the collapse of the public school system coupled with the middle class distrust of even the highest performing schools in the West Valley, has created a market failure that I fear in the future the private market will not be able to fix. The cost of educating students in  K-12 as well as higher education has risen dramatically and I do not think in the future that middle class families will be able to afford to live in the West Valley (many parts of Los Angeles as well) and send their kids to private schools. If enrollment declines even slightly in the thriving private school market, this will force some schools which are on the brink of economic disaster to close, resulting in even greater competition for the few spots that remain. It is clear to me a market failure has occurred when schools like Chaminade College Preparatory located in West Hills, a neighboring city of Woodland Hills has amassed a $20 million budget and unspecified endowment in the millions. When one contrasts Chaminade with a small private parochial K-8 school in Canoga Park, barely able to balance the budget each year, another contradiction emerges. In my estimate, if the K-8 parochial school in Canoga Park suffered a severe decline in enrollment, the school would likely not be able to operate because of the economic burdens and constrained resources. However, once again, this is the price the community pays when the public schools fail to meet the needs of the larger society.

Conclusion:

            In closing, the West San Fernando Valley as I have detailed above is mirrored in a culture of contradictions, some which are positive and others negative. The lack of knowledge many native Angelinos have of the West San Fernando Valley is quite puzzling at times, however, understandable because of the provincial view many have of the communities around them. The West San Fernando Valley in my eyes tells another story of Los Angeles, one which continues to remain uncertain as well as frightening if we as Angelinos continue to ignore the community around us.