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South Los Santos, formerly officially and sometimes still commonly referred to as South Central, is a region in southern Los Santos, San Andreas, and mostly lies within the city limits of Los Santos, just south of downtown.
According to the Los Santos Times, South Los Santos (formerly known as South-Central Los Santos) ”is defined on Los Santos city maps as a 16-square-mile rectangle with two prongs at the south end.” In 2003, the Los Santos City Council renamed this area "South Los Santos".
The name South Los Santos can also refer to a larger 51-square mile area that includes areas within the city limits of Los Santos as well as five unincorporated neighborhoods in the southern portion of the County of Los Santos.
1 Districts and neighborhoods
1.1 City of Los Santos
1.1.1 South Central, Ganton
1.1.2 South Central, Willowfield
1.1.3 South Central, Idlewood
South Central, Idlewood [edit]
African-American Influence [edit]
By 1940, approximately 70 percent of the black population of Los Santos was confined to the Unity Station corridor"; the area of modest bungalows and low-rise commercial buildings along Unity Station emerged as the heart of the black community in southern San Andreas. Originally, the city's black community was concentrated around what is now Little Tokyo, but began moving south after 1900. It had one of the first jazz scenes in the western U.S. Under racially restrictive covenants, blacks were allowed to own property only within the Main-Slauson-Grove box, as well as in small enclaves elsewhere in the city. The working- and middle-class blacks who poured into Los Santos during the Great Depression and in search of jobs during World War II found themselves penned into what was becoming a severely overcrowded neighborhood.
During this time, African Americans remained a minority alongside whites, Asians, and Hispanics; but by the 1930s those groups moved out of the area, African Americans continued to move in, and eastern South LS became majority black. Whites in previously established communities south of Slauson, east of Almeda and west of San Pedro streets persecuted blacks moving beyond established "lines", and thus blacks became effectively restricted to the area in between.
Rise of Latino population [edit]
By the end of the 1980s, South Los Santos had an increasing number of Hispanics and Latinos, mostly in the northeastern section of the region.
According to scholars, "Between 1970 and 1990 the South LS area went from 80% black and 9% Latino to 50.3% black and 44% Latino." This massive and rapid residential demographic change occurred as resources in the area were shrinking due to global economic restructuring described above and due to the federal government's decrease in funding of urban anti-poverty and jobs programs, and other vital social services like healthcare. The socio-economic context described here increased the perception and the reality of competition amongst Asians, blacks, and Latinos in South LS. The results from the 2000 census which show continuing demographic change coupled with recent economic trends indicating a deterioration of conditions in South LS suggest that such competition will not soon ease."
In the 2014 census, the area of South Los Santos had a population of 271,040. 61.0% of the residents were Hispanic or Latino, 28.7% were African American.
Crack epidemic [edit]
Beginning in the 1970s, the rapid decline of the area's manufacturing base resulted in a loss of the jobs that had allowed skilled union workers to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle. Downtown Los Santos' service sector, which had long been dominated by unionized African Americans earning relatively high wages, replaced most black workers with newly arrived Mexican and Central American immigrants.
Widespread unemployment, poverty and street crime contributed to the rise of street gangs in South Central, such as the Crips. They became even more powerful with money from drugs, especially the crack cocaine trade, dominated by gangs in the 1980s.
2000s—present [edit]
By the early 2000s, the crime rate of South Los Santos had declined significantly. Redevelopment, improved police patrol, community-based peace programs, gang intervention work, and youth development organizations lowered the murder and crime rates to levels that had not been seen since the 1940s and '50s. Nevertheless, South Los Santos was still known for its gangs at the time. In mid-2003, the City Council of Los Santos voted to change the name South Central Los Santos to South Los Santos on all city documents, a move supporters said would "help erase a stigma that has dogged the southern part of the city."