Pacoima Beautiful: Transforming the Environment

Green space, park access, and trees

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

The Northeast San Fernando Valley (NESFV) is one of California’s most environmentally vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Nearly 95% of residents are low-income, people of color long subjected to the traumas of environmental racism, historical exclusion, redlining, and discriminatory practices. They live aside more than 300 industrial facilities, rock quarries, landfills, and power stations. Pacoima is one of the most park deprived areas in Southern California. This severe lack of open space has resulted in significant physical and mental health conditions for neighborhood residents that could be alleviated or reduced through better access to safe, open, and green spaces.
Pacoima Beautiful engages our entire community to participate together in building a healthier future. We strive to positively impact all generations by connecting them to their land, to each other, and to a shared vision of improving their relationship to their environment.

Pacoima Beautiful’s vision is to create a revitalized sense of place, where there is equitable access to outdoor spaces, residents feel safe and healthy, and have a voice to advocate for their physical and mental health. Examples of active projects include:
Provide access to and repurpose open spaces
Pacoima Beautiful is working on capital projects that will enhance access to open space. In 2021 we repurpsed an area that was previously an illegal dumping ground with trees, plants, and raised vegetable gardens. Over the next three years, we anticipate building two more sidewalk gardens and two new school gardens
Improve the ecological health of Pacoima
Pacoima Beautiful is working with partners to manage over 9M gallons of stormwater in the region, including the Pacoima Wash Greenway. The project is being planned through a community informed process and proposes building infrastructure that will greatly enhance access to open space in the region. Create a sense of place
We are currently reshaping four miles of the Pacoima Wash – a 33-mile long tributary of the Los Angeles River – into a community asset conducive to healthy, sustainable living. Improvements include nature-based infrastructure to capture, filter and manage stormwater and restore climate-appropriate plants, picnic areas, a natural playground, a large gathering area, educational signage, walking paths, a stormwater basin that doubles as an outdoor classroom, and more.

Pacoima Beautiful embodies a community-driven grassroots approach rooted in movement-building. Understanding that access to nature is therapeutic and proven to promote healing and improve physical and mental health, we green and beautify open spaces for community members to engage with nature. Pacoima’s location at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains makes it critical to the ecology of Southern California. The NESFV has some of the most permeable soils in the region, making it important for groundwater infiltration. Its location adjacent to the Angeles National Forest makes it an important wildlife corridor. Creating projects that both improve water quality and provide open space habitat will not just create a better environment within Pacoima, but the entire Los Angeles basin. Pacoima Beautiful addresses mental health and wellness through much of our work, mitigating the climate grief our community feels through experiencing environmental destruction and climate change.

We collect community input through monthly meetings, allowing for formalized channels of feedback from residents, volunteers, and program participants. We conduct surveys and collect feedback from community members, program participants, and partners to gather insights on the perceived impact and effectiveness of the work to assess whether the programs are meeting community needs and expectations.
At our core, Pacoima Beautiful represents and amplifies the experiences and perspectives of the residents we serve. To us, success looks like our community mobilizing to define resident-based solutions, coming together to beautify the neighborhood and create green spaces, and becoming empowered as environmental justice stewards. Our long-term impact will be felt when the NESFV embodies the safe and healthy haven it can be for local families to thrive.