Lys Mendez
UP206A Final Report
Slum Housing and Health in South Los Angeles
Introduction
South Los Angeles suffers from the county’s highest rates of premature deaths and chronic
diseases. The region disproportionately suffers from high rates of asthma, heart disease, diabetes
and cancer, among several other health indicators. That presents social justice implications for
the community, which is made up of largely working class Latino immigrants or AfricanAmerican families. The area lacks resources such as access to medical facilities, quality public
transportation or grocery stores. Affordable housing is a serious issue for families who pay high
prices for inadequate housing conditions. Community organizations in the area have organized to
help residents battle landlords who want to illegally evict them in hopes of renting to more
profitable tenants as the area gentrifies (Lowe at al. 2007, 3).
Increasingly, public health officials and community organizations have started to make links
between the health indicators in the region and the housing conditions that residents live in.
Conditions such as asthma and lead poisoning have been connected to environmental issues in
the home. Mold and poor ventilation can cause and exacerbate a child’s asthma. Chipping paint
and dust can increase lead levels in children, with detrimental impacts to their health and
cognitive development. Organizations such as Strategic Actions for a Just Economy and St.
John’s Well Child and Family clinics are pushing local officials to step the necessary steps to
ensure that every family has a right to quality housing.
The following GIS analysis attempts to make a spatial link between the health indicators and the
slum housing conditions found in South Los Angeles. Looking at health data from Los Angeles
County Department of Public Health, the maps attempt to visually determine if South Los
Angeles is a hotspot for poor health. Using data from Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, the
maps attempt to answer the hypothesis that high rates of certain health conditions can be linked
to housing environmental factors. The visual representation of these issues in South Los Angeles
can serve as a guide for community organization and government agencies who are trying to
address severe health problems in South Los Angeles. GIS can be used to determine if stricter
housing regulations can have an impact on the health quality of some of the most vulnerable
residents in Los Angeles County.
Policy Question: Can housing regulations improve health conditions in South Los Angeles?
The Los Angeles Department of Public Health divides the county by service plan area and by
health district. Service Plan Areas (SPAs) are larger geographic units, while Health Districts
represent smaller communities. To highlight potential clustering of poor health outcomes, the
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maps reflect health indicators at the district level. Districts such as South, Southeast, San
Antonio and Compton are part of the South Los Angeles analysis.
The map reflects children’s asthma rates by health district. Data on health outcomes, including
lead poisoning and financial conditions, was obtained from the LA County Department of Public
Health via the website and a public records request. Using the joins and relates feature, the health
data was combined with the health districts to display the information. Asthma rates were
mapped to reflect what areas have concentrations of this condition. The map shows higher
concentrations in places such as Compton, Long Beach, Bellflower and Whittier. An inset map
highlights Los Angeles County location.
Lead poisoning
Similar to the asthma rates map, the following GIS map shows the rates of children lead
poisoning throughout Los Angeles County. Lead poisoning appears to be more clustered
spatially than asthma rates. South Los Angeles has a higher proportion of lead poisoning than
other parts of the county. Some of the differences are stark: the southwest health district has
almost 13 percent rate of child lead poisoning compared to less than one percent in Pasadena.
The map highlights the need to assess what special conditions are contributing to higher levels of
lead cases in communities around South Los Angeles.
Money as a barrier to medical care
Los Angeles County publishes a survey of health indicators, which asks about issues such as lack
of health insurance and access to care. Based on the socio-economic issues that determine access
to quality health care and quality of life in South Los Angeles, the analysis will focus on
financial barriers to health care for the creation of an upcoming index.
The data indicates a clustering of poverty in pockets of the county, with the worst centered on
South Los Angeles. The percentage of residents who answered that money was a barrier to
financial care was 24 percent in the southeast health district, compared to eight percent in the
west health district, which lies in the wealthier communities in South Los Angeles.
A chart on the map further breaks down the differences in financial barriers to health care by
race and ethnicity. Almost 20 percent of African-Americans in Los Angeles County indicate that
they’ve been unable to see a doctor for health problems because they couldn’t afford medical
care. The rates of financial barriers are higher for Latinos and American Indians, while Asians
and whites have rates under 10 percent.
Transportation barriers to medical care
Transportation was also listed as a barrier to receiving medical care by residents throughout Los
Angeles County. For residents in communities such as South Los Angeles with limited
availability to cars, poor public transportation service can make them captive audiences to the
limited and inadequate medical services available in their community.
The map indicates a spatial relationship between the lack of transportation access and South Los
Angeles. The higher rates our health indicator is again clustered in the South Los Angeles
communities. The graph on the map indicates that African-Americans again have the highest
proportion of transportation barriers, followed by Latinos.
South Los Angeles as a health-risk hotspot
Using the previous four maps, the following analysis attempts to determine if South Los Angeles
is truly a hotspot of poor health outcomes. The previous four maps were converted into rasters
and reclassified to create a health risk index. Would the data highlight that a disproportionate
rate of poor health indicators were clustered in South Los Angeles?
As indicated in the map below, the raster data highlights what was spatially evident in the
previous four maps. While other areas in the county also suffer from high rates of several healthrisk indicators, the problems seem to be clustered around the area known as South Los Angeles.
The highest values for the health indicators lie in the south, southeast and southwest health
districts, proving that there are particular needs and circumstances driving the poor health
outcomes in those communities. In the next set of maps we will analyze the relationship between
health outcomes and housing conditions in South Los Angeles.
Density of Slum Housing in South Los Angeles
Strategic Actions for a Just Economy is an organization that works on housing and economic
justice in South Los Angeles. SAJE partners with other community groups to comprehensively
address the health, social justice, housing and economic inequities in South Los Angeles. SAJE
provided a survey conducted by St. John’s Well Child and Family Center on housing conditions
in patient’s homes. If a patient came in for an illness that has been identified as a potential link
with housing issues, patients were asked to identify what triggers in their home may have
contributed to their condition. The list of slum housing conditions included rats, mold, poor
ventilation, holes in the wall, roaches and bedbugs.
Graduated symbols indicated what homes identified multiple slum housing conditions. The geocoded addresses are displayed on an inset map of the county to indicate that most are clustered in
the South Los Angeles health districts. The larger map further underscores that the worst housing
conditions are found in the southern communities that previous maps highlighted as poor-health
hotspots.
Are there other explanations for South Los Angeles cluster?
The survey data of slum housing conditions came from a clinic that specifically focuses on South
Los Angeles, so it was difficult to analyze whether the region did have a disproportionate
number of slum landlords. While the previous map did indicate that the worst conditions are
clustered in specific South Los Angeles neighborhoods, it didn’t prove that slum housing was
endemic to the area. The Los Angeles Department of Housing did not respond to requests for
data on housing code violations in time for the final project. The data may become available for
future analysis.
The following map was an attempt to determine if other factors, such as proximity to the
freeway, could potentially explain the high number of asthma cases in South Los Angeles.
Visually, the survey addresses appeared to be clustered along the 110 Interstate corridor. Using a
1,500-ft. buffer, the data was analyzed to determine if a higher proportion of asthma cases were
found among the critical region near highways, as determined by air-quality and environmental
justice advocates.
About 20 percent of the homes in the buffer zone were asthma cases (highlighted by red dots),
but that proportion matched the ration of the sample. When the locations of St. John’s clinics
were geocoded and placed on the map, it appears that the cases are more likely clustered around
the clinics than the highway. The map below uses eight layers, which includes an attribute subset
selection of LA County highways from a state highway shapefile.
Transportation Service
The last map looks at the spatial relationship between proposed service cuts to MTA bus service,
slum housing conditions and St. John’s clinic locations. The previous hotspot index is used to
highlight the neighborhoods with the worst slum housing conditions, overlayed with clinic
locations and the transit service that runs through those neighborhoods. Attribute sub-set
selection was used to extract the lines that run through South Los Angeles from a larger shapefile
of MTA transit service. A one-mile buffer was created around clinic sites to determine whether
any bus lines were targets for service reductions that might affect St. John’s transit-dependent
customers. While the line proposed for cuts is not within the buffer zone, reductions to Rapid
Lines 740 and 794 will directly impacts patients at two St. John’s clinics. Service reductions also
impact the highest health-risk neighborhoods.
Policy Recommendations
The spatial relationship between poor health indicators and the prevalence of slum housing in
South Los Angeles indicates that stricter housing code regulations are needed in the area. The
following recommendations come out of the GIS analysis:
 Stricter housing codes that address housing environmental issues that affect health.
 Better housing inspections and harsher citations that remove the incentive to be a
slumlord.
 Resources to organizations that address health and housing concerns in region.
 Better coordination among school, health, and social services to address housing
concerns.
 Better transportation access in medically-underserved areas.
Additional Resources
The following serves as a Works Cited list and resources for further research on the issue:
Albert Lowe and Gilda Haas, eds., The Shame of the City: Slum Housing and the Critical Threat
to the Health of L.A. Children and Families, (Los Angeles: Strategic Actions for a Just
Economy, April 2007).
Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Office of Health Assessment and
Epidemiology. Key Indicators of Health by Service Planning Area; June 2009
Park A, Watson N, Galloway-Gilliam L. South Los Angeles Health Equity Scorecard. Los
Angeles, CA: Community Health Councils, 2008:17-18.