Freeway Job Brings Grief for Neighbors : Widening: Residents say boarded-up homes in their Santa Ana area pose a danger to children and attract transients, gangs and drug users.

SANTA ANA —  Residents of Stafford Street near Grand Avenue did not protest much when they were told that a proposed expansion of the Santa Ana Freeway might force some residents to sell their homes and move.

They also did not complain when, starting more than a year ago, dust and noise from bulldozers knocking down some of the homes purchased by Caltrans filled their neighborhood, even though the actual freeway expansion will not get under way until 1992.

But what they do mind is what has happened as Caltrans has moved through the area knocking down homes. A steady stream of transients, gang members, prostitutes and drug users has followed, sometimes using abandoned buildings as hangouts.

The first of 11 homes that will have to be demolished was purchased by Caltrans more than a year ago, but seven of them are still sitting empty, abandoned and boarded up, with their lots overgrown, walls crumbling and pipes rusting. At one house, children have climbed over a flimsy chain-link fence to test their skateboarding skills in an empty swimming pool.

“We could live with the dirt lots, but we can’t live with vagrants living there, with human waste in the yards and with walls falling down where kids play,” said Cindy Peronto, who lives on Vance Place, around the corner from her childhood home on Stafford Street, where her parents still live.

“We’ve never had a problem with gangs before, and now look at all the grafitti,” she said, pointing to a wall around one abandoned house where several gangs had marked their turf with black spray paint. “This used to be a nice neighborhood.”

Expansion of the Santa Ana Freeway to 12 lanes between the Costa Mesa and Garden Grove freeways will require demolition of 150 to 175 homes near the existing corridor, said Ralph Neal, Caltrans deputy district director for rights of way.

“We share the neighborhood’s concern,” he said. “We try to keep (the homes) as secure as we can. Unfortunately, there are a lot of teen-agers and transients who find them very attractive. Teen-agers like a place to play and transients like to find shelter.”

He said complaints from neighbors in other areas where Caltrans is purchasing homes for rights of way are similar to those of the Santa Ana residents.

“We have the same problem everywhere in the state because the homes are boarded up for a while and because everybody knows the state is the owner,” Neal said. “They become especially attractive to teen-agers and to the transients.”

He said it takes several months before a home purchased for freeway expansion is demolished.

“When we acquire a home, we can’t do anything until the people vacate,” Neal said. “Then we have to follow certain procedures, and that whole process could take five or six months after the people move out.”

First, he said, Caltrans is required to make an asbestos inspection of the home. Next, the agency has to put the house--without the lot--up for public sale. If there are no buyers, Caltrans then has to collect bids from demolition companies to tear them down.

On Stafford, Neal said, bids for the demolition of five more homes were bid on Thursday, so they might be razed within a few weeks. Two more are going through asbestos inspections.

Construction on the freeway expansion in that area may begin by early 1992, he said. But in the meantime, he said, Caltrans has hired crews to go out on a daily basis to maintain the properties.

Neighbors say that the crews do not go out often enough and that they respond slowly to their complaints.

“If we try to contact them, we get the royal runaround,” said Karen Harley, who lives on Stafford across from some of the abandoned homes. “They tell us that it’s not their problem and that we should get out there and clean it up ourselves.”

She said that trash is dumped in some of the lots and that it stays there for weeks before it is cleared. People also go into the houses even though Caltrans has boarded them up.

“I saw a woman walking out of one of the houses last week, and she was obviously a hooker with a customer,” Harley said. “And I have to live in this neighborhood.”

A few weeks ago, she said, neighbors heard what they believe to be a gang drive-by shooting. No one was injured as far as she knows, but she said residents believe gangs are starting to fight over whose “turf” the abandoned homes will be.

The best solution for the neighborhood, Harley said, would be for Caltrans to speed up its demolition schedule.

“I don’t know how they’re doing it, whether they go ‘eeny, meeny, miney, mo,’ because they take a house here, a house there,” she said. “I’d rather have empty lots out there.

“This just brings a bad element into the neighborhood,” she said.