"Challenged neighborhood
What happens at notorious 'Zoo' is criminal"
Life in a blighted condo complex...

RIALTO - People living in the Rialto Apartments behind Eisenhower High School know well the sign of a drug deal, the sound of a gunshot and the smell of sun-bleached urine. And for months, they felt the inconvenience of having to go to the post office after a firefight stopped daily deliveries.
Driving into gunfire on Winchester Drive last summer was the final straw for a letter carrier. She had already heard rumors about violence in the area. Now she'd seen it. Concerned about safety, the U.S. Postal Service in July told residents of the Willow-Winchester neighborhood to travel two miles south on Willow Avenue for their bills and packages. Or go without. The list of problems goes on and on: Many of the 160 units are dilapidated and boarded up. Animal feces and trash form a pungent ground cover. Fire hydrants, for a time, were turned off. The community pool is drained. In jest of the neighborhood's Third World nature and in reference to a notoriously deadly part of Los Angeles known as "The Jungle' residents dubbed it "The Zoo.' It's a war zone where two-bedroom condos rent for $800 or more per month and residents are afraid to go outside at night. Some of the tenants receive federal housing assistance; most are working poor who can afford no more.
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The condominium complex was built in 1969 as an affordable housing project and it was a gem, Dutrey said. When it first opened, there were no absentee landlords; owners occupied every unit. "It used to be a decent, nice place. Old people would be yelling at young ones to not step on the grass,' said Jarryd, 45, who declined to give his last name and lives in a unit on Clifford Street. "It got bad, little by little.' As people began to move away, they kept their properties or sold them to management companies. Renters poured in, the homeowners' association weakened and the snaking complex became a disjointed neighborhood with 90 owners none apparently living there. Crime skyrocketed. "It is a definite constant struggle to manage the property,' said Doug McGoon of Wheeler Steffen Property Management, which oversees the vast homeowners' association. "We are dealing with drugs and gunshots instead of ugly curtains.' He said the crime is fostered by greedy absentee owners who don't screen tenants.


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