Mired in overdose crisis, MacArthur Park struggles to revive Neighborhood Council

The working-class neighborhood of MacArthur Park, which sits at the epicenter of Los Angeles’ overdose crisis, has a pressing need to be heard in City Hall. But the city’s traditional strategy for involving residents in governing, the neighborhood council system, is failing.

The MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council stopped meeting earlier this year after only one person ran for one of its 17 empty seats. An attempt to revive the body at an Oct. 25 meeting yielded eight members in total, still not enough for a quorum, which requires nine.

The neighborhood council members say there are several barriers standing between residents and the council, including language challenges, government mistrust, a communal sense of helplessness, safety concerns walking to meetings and a lack of time to devote to meetings.

At the same time, the neighborhood council members know that the low-income, majority Latino community located near Downtown Los Angeles direly needs city resources and support.

Last year 83 fatal overdoses occurred in the zip code encompassing MacArthur Park, more than any other zip code in the county, according to data from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner. More than 28% of residents in the zip code live below the poverty line and the annual median household income is about $43,000, according to the U.S. Census.

“Our small businesses are struggling, the selling of narcotics on the streets, illegal vendors, the potholes, the streets that need cleaning, the shoplifting by the Metro station,” said MacArthur Park Neighborhood Councilmember Ivonneanette Machado. “There are illegal lock-outs, there are evictions going on.”

Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents MacArthur Park, is concerned about the neighborhood council’s struggle to attract members.

“Our neighborhood council system is one that we work with regularly. It’s a way for us to hear the concerns of community and it’s also a way for us to provide our community with desperately needed political education and health-related information,” Hernandez said. “I look forward to trying to figure out how we can bring more people into that neighborhood council.”

Machado, who has been on the neighborhood council for around six years, says she has found it tough to recruit members to the panel for several reasons.

“Maybe it’s because they don’t feel like they’re getting services from the city, maybe the rents are too high and they have to work (during neighborhood council meetings) and maybe they think there’s nothing that we have done to address homelessness directly,” she said.

Some residents also feel unsafe walking to meetings, which take place after dark, she added.

Gabriel Owens-Flores, a new neighborhood councilmember, said that residents’ economic status often limits their political participation.

“There’s a working-class kind of apathy, because people are in survival mode,” he said. “There’s people right now who are vending who would probably be great in here. They are working right now and they can’t stop working because they might miss rent.”

Many undocumented community members are also fearful of doing anything that puts them in contact with government authorities, Owens-Flores added.

More than 56% of the MacArthur Park’s residents are foreign born, according to census data, and the community provides a lifeline to many immigrant families.

It is home to a gorgeous park, and provides essential affordable housing, food, clothing and services in a city that can be oppressively expensive.

“Some of the most affordable food in the city is in MacArthur Park, it feeds the working-class of the whole city,” said Owens-Flores. “A lot of the people that work Downtown or on the Westside live here, and the city cannot run without these people.”

At the same time, MacArthur Park is home to violent gangs, a marketplace for stolen goods, a concentration of fentanyl dealers, homeless encampments and an overdose crisis.

“This summer was really bad, there was one week where it felt like every single day I saw somebody and I was like ‘I don’t know if they are alive or not.’ It’s horrifying,” said Grace Bryant, a MacArthur Park resident who is considering joining the neighborhood council.

Residents who attended the Oct. 25 neighborhood council meeting had lots of ideas about what the city could do to help.

Machado wants to distribute binders with Spanish language resources for people facing evictions. Bryant is calling for community trainings on how to use Narcan spray to reverse opioid overdoses. Alex Schoenner, another councilmember, envisions hiring park ambassadors to offer resources to people experiencing homelessness and keep an eye out for safety issues.

But the council can’t take any action until it attracts enough members to make a quorum.

Its inaction also translates into a financial loss for the community. At the end of the 2022 to 2023 fiscal year, the MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council had to give more than $16,000 in unspent funds back to the city.

Jose Galdamez, the city representative for the MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council, said the city is trying new outreach strategies to recruit members. They include sending mailers to residents; tabling at community events; and distributing fliers at schools, businesses and places of worship.

He and the other neighborhood council members hope their effort will prove enough to produce a quorum at the next meeting on Nov. 22.