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A Latino Evolution in Prince George's
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Javier Molin, 21, arrived in Langley Park eight months ago because he had a relative there. He said that he likes his apartment and that if you keep your eyes open, the neighborhood is safe.
Molin, who moved to Maryland from Mexico, also said he likes that there are so many Latinos in the neighborhood. He drives to Baltimore for work, but wouldn't consider moving there, "because this neighborhood is more familiar," he said in Spanish. "It seems perfect to me how it is."
Maria Veator started renting an apartment in Langley Park eight years ago, moving from neighboring Adelphi.
"Here, you can do more if you don't have a car, and the rent was lower," she said in Spanish. "Now, it's high -- $1,100."
She called Langley Park the place where poorer people live -- and it makes her feel at home.
Veator, a native of El Salvador, has one grandchild in Langley Park. The rest live in Glenmont, outside the Beltway in Montgomery County. She said proudly that they're all U.S. citizens.
Veator was trying to sell atole, a drink, from a cooler on the sidewalk. She said that she had been looking for work for four months and hadn't been able to find any. All the jobs required English or a car.
She said that people would like to buy but are scared the police will come because she doesn't have a vending permit. "I'm not selling much," she said in Spanish.
William Hanna, an urban-planning professor at the University of Maryland, has studied the neighborhood for 12 years. He sends out a bilingual e-mail newsletter to 700 residents every two weeks and helps to organize an annual street festival, which this year will be held May 4.
He said he's alarmed by how expensive housing has gotten in the neighborhood: He hears that one-bedroom apartments now cost $825, when 10 years ago they were $485. He worries that working-class immigrants will be pushed out, especially if the Purple Line arrives at the intersection of University and New Hampshire, as is planned.
In the 1950s, the neighborhood was almost all white and heavily Jewish, he said. It became majority black in the 1970s and majority Latino in the 1990s.
Sometimes two families or a dozen single men pack into a one-bedroom apartment, he said. Others are what he called "comfortable working class."
