When it comes to city pickup of illegally dumped piles of junk, Los Angeles's poorer neighborhoods often get shafted (slower response times, more requests ignored); other city services, like pothole repair and graffiti removal, are just as unequal, but the pattern is harder to make out. There is a discrepancy of more than three weeks between the pothole repair time for the best and worst neighborhood, an LA Times analysis of city data found. But the neighborhood that received the fastest fixes for potholes was Elysian Park and the deep Valley won out for fastest graffiti removal.
Using data dating back to 2010 from the LA Bureau of Street Services, the Los Angeles Office of Community Beautification, and the LA Bureau of Sanitation, the worst and best neighborhoods for the following city services are:
Potholes
Best: Elysian Park (median pothole fix in 3 days)
Worst: Hollywood Hills West (median pothole fix in 29.9 days)
Bulky item pick-up
Best: Atwater Village (2.9 percent of items picked up after next collection day)
Worst: Wilmington (62.1 percent of items picked up after next collection day)
Graffiti removal
Best: (tie) Sunland and Tujunga (Median of 0.1 days' wait to have graffiti removed)
Worst: (tie) Mid-City and Mid-Wilshire (Median of 3.6 days' wait for the same service)
Slow response times were frequently found in both affluent and poorer areas. Pothole repair, for example, was slow in both Studio City (20.8 days) and Vermont Knolls (19 days). But the fact that no one can find a pattern or accurately explain the vastly unequal response times to these problems isn't exactly comforting. "In some cases, agency officials weren't aware of the imbalances and were unable to explain them," says the Times.
· Disparities found in core city services, analysis shows [LAT]
· Los Angeles Just Isn't Picking Up Trash in Poor Neighborhoods [Curbed LA]