| The Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) has operated since 1992 in the City Heights area of San Diego. An Enterprise Community, City Heights is part of the physical, commercial, and residential heart of San Diego's Mid City. Its population, an estimated 67,173 residents, is approximately 37% Hispanic, 32% white, 13% African American, 13% Asian/Pacific, and 4% members of other ethnic, racial, or mixed groups. Thirty-nine primary languages are spoken in area schools.
City Heights developed as a bedroom suburb during one of San Diego's early boom periods and endured as a quiet working class community through the 1950s. Its housing was mostly modest single-family homes on small lots, but with many interesting homes perched on City Heights' perimeter canyons. By 1990, it had changed from a sleepy suburban community to an economically depressed area, due to several factors. In 1959, a short stretch of Interstate highway was scheduled to be built through City Heights. After numerous postponements, the highway is just now in completion. For 40 years, people postponed repairs and painting of homes because the highway was supposed to be coming any day. By 1990, many buildings and houses were vacant and boarded up, and most of the stores that remained were cheap discount stores or check-cashing stores.
Also, San Diego's population has rapidly increased since 1970, creating a tremendous pressure for homeowners to develop their small lots into high-density apartments. The stabilizing influence of homeownership was succeeded by new, poorer tenants in rented housing. In addition, the construction of a major Interstate highway a few miles north of City Heights made commuting from points further east feasible, diminishing City Heights' attractiveness as a bedroom community and taking away its role as a commercial center. The area's most prominent features are the many ethnic neighborhoods, stores, and restaurants clustered around its three central commercial corridors. Families who settled in Mid City were attracted to its ethnic communities, inexpensive housing, light manufacturing and retail industries, and convenience to freeways leading to jobs at the shipyards and hotels along San Diego's harbor. These same features contribute to an environment of crime, blight, and absence of upward mobility among residents. The crime rate has decreased substantially in recent years, but juvenile crime remains a problem in the area, which has the highest number of juvenile arrests in the County. Gangs flourish because youth have few opportunities for pro-social activities, such as social clubs, sports teams, and jobs, and because the area's poverty and dense, mobile population provide customers and cover for profitable illegal activities.
Mid City's median income is approximately $30,867 compared with $45,040 for the City of San Diego. The City Heights area has one of the highest concentrations of subsidized housing units in San Diego. There is a 24-unit public housing complex where the San Diego Housing Commission conducts its Moving to Work Housing Program. Ninety-nine percent of students at Central Elementary School qualify for free/reduced-rate lunch, which is typical for area schools. Each of City Heights' five elementary schools, two middle schools, and its high school is a Chapter 1 school with ethnically diverse student populations that have special education, language, and family service needs. Three-year dropout rates at the high school are 40-50%. Approximately 40% of all area adults over the age of 25 have not completed high school. Twelve percent of the area's civilian labor force is unemployed, and limited English ability and lack of education consign many residents to low-wage, low-skills jobs in the service and trade sectors with little prospects for career advance. Access to health care is limited as confirmed by the fact that 15% of emergency room visits at UCSD's Medical Center are non-emergency visits by residents from City Heights. The area continues to record the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the county.
Mid City For Youth (MCFY), UCSD's COPC partner, serves as the Community Advisory Committee for the COPC. A community collaboration, MCFY includes community residents, community-based organizations, public schools, universities, businesses, nonprofit and government agencies, youth, parents, ethnic and cultural groups, civic associations, and faith-based institutions. MCFY, formed in the late 1980s when a group of concerned Mid City community representatives came together to respond to the rapidly deteriorating conditions in the area, has gained recognition as a forum through which community concerns can be addressed.
The COPC's activities include evaluation of the local Moving to Work program; family violence prevention; youth forums, a violence prevention curriculum for students; mediation for juvenile offenders; and expansion and evaluation of the UCSD Department of Medicine's Poison Control System.
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