Demographics: Highland Park is a diverse neighborhood, with over 70% of the population identifying as Hispanic or Latino, and 40% of the population born outside of the United States. It is a fairly young neighborhood, with a median age of 35. Highland Park has a high percentage of married couple families (45%), and about half of households consist of four or more people.
Housing in Highland Park: As Highland Park was one of LA’s first residential suburbs, it is unsurprising that Highland Park has an aging housing stock—35% of the housing structures in Highland Park were built before 1940, and a majority are single-family homes. About 60% of residents in Highland Park are renters, and 40% are owners. A quarter of renters in Highland Park experience a high housing burden and spend more than 50% of their income on rent.
Background History: Located on the northeast edge of Los Angeles, the land comprising the Highland Park neighborhood has a rich social, political and economic history spanning back to its earliest documented years in the 1600s as the location of the Native American Hahamong’na tribe (Fischer, 2008). The history of Highland Park is most well-documented after the Mexican-American War, when thousands of acres of western land was annexed to the United States in the 1820s, and Rancho San Rafael, what is now known as Highland Park, became part of California (KCET, 2013). During this transitional period at the turn of the century for Highland Park, the arts and culture scene developed. Led by William Lees Judson and George Wharton James, the Arts & Crafts movement took shape in the region, as residents sought a method to connect architecture and construction with the physical landscape surrounding them (KCET, 2013).
Highland Park was eventually annexed to the City of Los Angeles in 1895, which in return, provided municipal services such as water and police protection, making Highland Park one of the first suburbs of the city (KCET, 2013). In the same year, the Pacific Electric rail line spanning from Downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena opened, and spurred the real estate boom in Highland Park, as people were able to easily travel to employment centers in the two major economic hubs, while still enjoying the comforts of suburban life (KCET, 2013). Once the Arroyo Seco Parkway was completed in 1940, the dynamics of Highland Park quickly changed. While the downtown Highland Park area used to attract customers traveling on the Pacific Electric rail line, the presence of a freeway drew more residents to their cars, and away from the commercial center (KCET, 2013).
When rents declined in the 1950s, Mexican immigrant communities saw an opportunity in Highland Park as an affordable place to settle (KCET, 2013). Not surprisingly, the neighborhood, along with many others in East Los Angeles, became a lively site of the Chicano political and cultural movement during the 1960s and 70s (KCET, 2013). However during the next decades, Highland Park followed the pattern of many other inner-city Los Angeles neighborhoods that slipped in decline due to an increase in poverty combined with poor educational and social services (KCET, 2013).
In the 21st Century
After the housing crisis in 2008, Highland Park experienced a multitude of foreclosures that investors are taking advantage of by purchasing homes with low interest rates, remodeling them and then selling them to “young professionals priced out of Echo Park and Silver Lake” (Lazo, 2012). According to the real estate and technology Redfin Research Center, Highland Park was ranked the “hottest neighborhood” in the country as sales were up 73%, and prices were up 31% (Ellis, 2013). Several factors leading to the attractiveness of Highland Park include bike lanes, a Metro stop and a “sidewalk culture” often absent in much of Los Angeles (Lazo, 2012). The main commercial thoroughfare, York Boulevard is also participating in the Green LA Coalition’s Living Streets Initiative that seeks to revitalize the streetscape through innovative urban design (Lehman, 2012). Concerns of gentrification and displacement of longtime residents due to increased housing prices and an influx of new businesses that cater to a younger, wealthier population currently shape the dialogue of the future of the Highland Park neighborhood.
This information as well as much more on the statistics of Highland Park can be found in this report on the state of Highland Park, drawn up by UCLA students in 2013.
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