Williams said that the complexes had relatively little graffiti. Williams added that the nearest bank to the commercial strip was "several blocks away." In 1994 almost one third of Pacoima's residents lived in public housing complexes. Williams added that many of the retail outlets in Pacoima consisted of check-cashing outlets, storefront churches, pawn shops, and automobile repair shops.
In 1994, according to Timothy Williams of the Los Angeles Times, there were few boarded-up storefronts along Pacoima's main commercial strip along Van Nuys Boulevard, and no vacancies existed in Pacoima's main shopping center. The report added "Substandard home maintenance is widespread and borders on total neglect in some sectors." The report recommended establishing additional apartments in central Pacoima the Los Angeles Times report said that the recommendation was "clouded" by the presence of "enough apartment-zoned land to last 28 years" in the San Fernando Valley. The report advocated the establishment of a community center to "give Pacoima a degree of unity." Most of the residences in Pacoima were "of an older vintage." The article said most of the houses and yards, especially in the R-2 duplex zones, exhibited "sign of neglect." The report said that the range of types of houses was "unusually narrow for a community of this size." The report also said that the fact had a negative effect on the community that was reflected by a lack of purchasing power. The report recommended continued efforts to improve sidewalks and trees. The article stated that some sections of Laurel Canyon were "in a poor state of repair" and that there were "conspicuously minimal" curbs and sidewalks. The report recommended establishing shopping centers in areas outside of the Laurel Canyon-Van Nuys commercial axis. The council noted the lack of parking spaces and storefronts that appeared in disrepair or vacant. The article stated that the Pacoima Chamber of Commerce was expected to oppose the recommendation, and that the chamber favored deepening of the existing commercial zones along Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Van Nuys Boulevard. varying from banks to hamburger stands, including an unusual number of small business and service shops." A Los Angeles Times article stated that the physical image of the area was "somewhat depressing." The council recommended the establishment of smaller community shopping centers. In late 1966, a city planning report described the central business district of Pacoima along Van Nuys Boulevard as "a rambling, shallow strip pattern of commercial uses. Meagher said that the "neatness and cleanness" of the new infrastructure were "a challenge to homeowners grown apathetic to thoroughfares ankle deep in mud or dust." Some area businessmen established the San Fernando Valley Commercial & Savings Bank in November 1953 to finance area rehabilitation projects after other banks persistently refused to give loans to those projects. In early 1955, the city began a $500,000 project to add 9 mi (14 km) of curbs, sidewalks, and streets. In late 1952, the Los Angeles City Council allowed the Building and Safety Department to begin a slum clearance project to try to force homeowners who had houses deemed substandard to repair, demolish, or vacate those houses. Between 19, property values on Van Nuys Boulevard increased six times.
Pacoima had what Meagher described as "dusty footpaths and rutted dirt roads that in hard rains become beds for angry streams." Meagher added that the 450 houses in the area, with 2,000 inhabitants, "squatted" "within this clutch of residential blight." He described most of the houses as "substandard." Around 1955, the price of residential property increased in value, as lots that sold years prior for $100 sold for $800 in 1955. Landscape Įd Meagher of the Los Angeles Times wrote in 1955 that the 110-block area on the north side of San Fernando Road in Pacoima consisted of what he described as a "smear of sagging, leaning shacks and backhouses framed by disintegrating fences and clutter of tin cans, old lumber, stripped automobiles, bottles, rusted water heaters and other bric-a-brac of the back alleys." In 1955 Pacoima lacked curbs, paved sidewalks, and paved streets. Pacoima is bordered by the Los Angeles districts of Mission Hills on the west, Arleta on the south, Sun Valley on the southeast, Lake View Terrace on the northeast, and by the city of San Fernando on the north.
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