West Long Beach (or "the Westside") is a

working-class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

neighborhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neigh ...

Long Beach Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. It is the westernmost part of Long Beach, separated from the rest of the city by the Long Beach Freeway (Interstate 710) and the

Los Angeles River The Los Angeles River (), historically known as by the Tongva and the by the Spanish, is a major river in Los Angeles County, California. Its headwaters are in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains, and it flows nearly from Canoga Park ...

. Its boundaries are the Los Angeles River to the east, Interstate 405 to the north, Anaheim Street to the south, and

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, Carson and the Terminal Island Freeway to the west. The largest industry in the area is the combined Ports of Long Beach and

. There is also a large

Shell Oil Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company, headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Y ...

refinery A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries ...

in nearby Wilmington and the massive Intermodal Container Transfer Facility (ICTF) on the neighborhood's western edge. The neighborhood is a mix of older residential housing, apartments and townhouses, and industrial buildings. The primary thoroughfare is Santa Fe Avenue, which runs north to south through the center of the neighborhood. The neighborhood has three official parks, including Silverado Park. In 2010 a renewed 12.39 acre park, named after Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, was completed next to Cabrillo High School. The neighborhood was historically a working-class neighborhood due to its proximity to the Port of Long Beach and the large Shell Oil refinery in nearby Wilmington. A large U.S. Navy housing complex once stood in the neighborhood, on Santa Fe Avenue near Pacific Coast Highway ( Cabrillo High School now stands on the site). Like many neighborhoods with largely working-class populations,

deindustrialization Deindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially of heavy industry or manufacturing industry. There are different interpr ...

in the 1970s took its toll, and the neighborhood was largely poor by the early 1980s. A local neighborhood group, the West Long Beach Association, was founded in 1997 to improve the living conditions in the neighborhood. While conditions have improved in the early 2000s, the neighborhood is still one of the poorest in Long Beach. , residents in West Long Beach had no access to banking services. There has been and continues to be heavy gang activity and a high rate of violent crime in the neighborhood, and large portions of the neighborhood are under gang injunctions directed at the East Side Longos, West Side Longos gang and Rollin 80's West Coast Crip Gang, as well as home to other local gangs such as Sons of Samoa Samoan gang, Westside Islanders Chamorro/Filipino gang, Pimpside Phamily Filipino gang, Cove Side Neighborhood Crip gang, and Long Beach Satanas Filipino gang. According to the 2000 US Census, there were 35,637 residents of the 90810 ZIP code, which is nearly coterminous with West Long Beach. In terms of race and ethnicity, the neighborhood's population was roughly 23.8% Caucasian, 16.4% African American, 0.8% American Indian, 23.2% Asian, 3.1% Pacific Islander, 27.2% other races, and 5.5% two or more races. Hispanics and Latinos made up 45.6% of the population. The area is served by Cabrillo High School (9–12), Stephens Middle School (6–8), Muir Academy (K–8), Garfield Elementary (K-5) and Hudson School (K-8); all operated by the

Long Beach Unified School District The Long Beach Unified School District is a school district headquartered in Long Beach, California, United States. Established in 1885, Long Beach Unified School District educates 64,000 students in 84 public schools in the cities of Long ...

. Police service in the area is rendered by the Long Beach Police Department Western Division, which operates a station at Pacific Coast Hwy and Santa Fe. There is a large Filipino community in the neighborhood.

References

{{reflist Neighborhoods in Long Beach, California

See also

References