The preschool of Laguna Presbyterian Church sits like a sheltered gem of innocence in a busy downtown. Fortunately, the children are very young, ages 2 to 5, so they probably don’t know what stale urine smells like.
Steps away from the school across a small alley is Hagan Place, a low-income housing complex for HIV/AIDS patients established by the city of Laguna Beach. There is a dark entryway that leads up to a public parking lot.
The entryway has a small set of crooked stairs littered with broken booze bottles, cigarettes and feces. The stench is overwhelming. It clearly has not been cleaned in a very long time but occupied regularly by those who need shelter and mayhem.
One imagines a tourist eagerly visiting Laguna for the first time, parking in the gleaming lot above, only to descend into a degenerate pit of neglect and incongruence.
It’s not an overstatement to say the pit is more like a rancid, skid row enclave of L.A. – not Laguna, not Orange County, not anywhere else. And yet, it’s here.
Ironically, the city prides itself on Hagan Place. It’s really the only very low-income housing in Laguna that caters to people with HIV/AIDS. There are just 24 units but they are always full with a waiting list. While the parking lot is technically separate from Hagan management, it’s connected and therefore viewed by the public as responsible.
The city assisted a private, non-profit corporation in the original development in 1993, and the Building Department is supposed to implement and enforce state codes that require accessibility.
That accessibility apparently does not include the back-alley entrance.
Meanwhile, the church suffers through it. For more than 60 years, the preschool has been preparing impressionable children to embrace life. Among its values, “we believe that education is a partnership between school and home.”
It’s not a partnership between dark and light.
The children have to know on some level that bad things happen outside of the preschool walls.
They only have to look a few feet away.
Editor’s note: Laguna Beach Councilman Peter Blake said he forwarded this story to Shohreh Dupois, City Manager, and she responded: “Public works staff went in and cleaned out all trash and debris. They pressure washed the stairs and washed the walls to remove any urine smells. They removed/covered a small amount of graffiti. All lights are working. They have ordered a few parts to replace broken light covers. Going forward this area will be inspected M W F by our downtown Maintenance Crew.”
