By Eileen Hu
What was once the largest Chinatown between San Francisco and Los Angeles is now all but a memory. This area across the railroad tracks from downtown Salinas, the seat of Monterey County’s government, at one time was even officially declared a slum.
Today, a stroll down Soledad Street, in what was formerly a thriving Chinese community, reveals boarded up buildings, weeded lots, homeless people mingling close to the soup kitchen Dorothy’s Place and the newly developed Moon Gate affordable housing complex.
One block away on California Street is the Chinese Confucian Church and the almost 100-year-old sprawling Japanese Buddhist Temple property. The Confucian Church has installed a metal fence around its parking lot and the front gated is locked with a chain. The Japanese Temple showed signs of life, with a maintenance worker sweeping the street in front of the temple and sounds of activity coming from within the buildings.
The only businesses that appeared to be open for customers were Cruz Tires, Perez Auto Body and Gutierrez Drive-in restaurant.
Origin
Chinatown in Salinas is older than the city itself. Established in 1872, two years before the city
was officially incorporated, Chinatown moved to its current location on Soledad Street in 1893
when the first Chinatown burned down.
According to local historian Kent Seavy, at that time the Chinese accounted for about 10% of the city’s population. They participated in land reclamation to clear and drain the swamps that surrounded the town.
Because additional Chinese laborers were banned from immigrating to the United States due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Claus Spreckles brought over Japanese labor in 1898 to work in his sugar beet operation. The Japanese settled on Lake Street adjacent to Chinatown. They founded a Buddhist Temple on California Street in 1925.
With the growth of row crops in the Salinas Valley, the Filipino population grew. They formed a lodge and community church in 1920 to the east of Chinatown. The Philippines Mail, the longest-running Filipino newspaper in the United States, was published in Salinas Chinatown in the 1930s.
The Chinese started moving out of Chinatown in the 1950’s after the invalidation of the California Alien Land Laws. But the area continued to be a haven for immigrant families, businesses and organizations until the 1970s, when the railroad built a new overpass and iron fencing, which isolated the neighborhood from the rest of the city.
Decline
When the City of Salinas adopted a revitalization plan for downtown or “old town” in 1974, they had to deal with the homeless, the drunk and the vagrants. According to Aaron Nousaine, in his 2006 master’s thesis for California State University, Monterey Bay, by 1982 the number of arrests for public intoxication in the downtown area went down from over 10,000 to 1,600 per year.
But the City basically pushed the problem of vagrancy across the railroad tracks to Soledad Street in Chinatown. The problem was exacerbated after the Catholic charity Dorothy’s Kitchen opened a permanent soup kitchen in 1995 and later grew to include a women’s shelter. Later Victory Mission and men’s shelter as well as John the XXIII needle exchange located in the area.
In a 2012 KSBW interview, James Parker stated that there were about 150 drug deals a day in Chinatown. Those drugs included crack cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin. Chinatown was constantly in the news for crimes, but not just prostitution or drug dealing, even for armed robbery and murder.
As the Salinas downtown area was being cleaned up, the Chinatown area was experiencing decline. The area was declared a slum in the City’s 2019 Revitalization Plan.
Revitalization
In 2005, a 24 member Salinas Downtown Community Board (SDCB) was formed to bring revitalization and redevelopment to the Chinatown area. The board started operating with the guidance of California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) using a $600,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for community-based planning.
In 2007, 2010 and 2019 the City of Salinas developed Chinatown Revitalization Plans to incorporate into their General Plan. The 2019 Plan, noted the “presence of unregulated homeless encampments that compromise the public health and safety of the neighborhood . . . (in addition to ) 200 homeless individuals living on the streets in the Chinatown area.”
The SDCB envisioned a revitalized neighborhood with a four-story multi-use building as the center. The ground floor was to be commercial space and the three upper floors were for extremely low-income, formerly homeless individuals.
The land for the Moon Gate Plaza project was purchased by the City of Salinas. The complex was developed by the non-profit MidPen Housing, in part with a $2.5 million grant from Central California Alliance for Health. The idea was to use health care funds to create permanent supportive housing for clients who repeatedly used emergency rooms and needed to be hospitalized.
Construction on the $39 million complex was completed in 2019 and the first residents moved in January 2020. Commercial space on the ground floor was set aside for the City of Salinas, Asian Cultural Experience and Urban Arts Collaborative to provide health, wellness and education services, along with arts and other cultural programming.
As of July 2024, although non-profits occupied the building’s ground floor, none were open to the public, and trash was strewn in front of the building.
Conclusion
Despite almost 20 years of planning, funds from the City of Salinas, guidance from California
State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), and a brand new 90 unit housing project, still Salinas
Chinatown is not the vibrant hub the city had envisioned.
The Chinese have long moved out of Salinas Chinatown. Even the current Salinas Chinese Association uses a PO Box for its address. Many of the newer, highly educated Chinese immigrants from Taiwan and post 1949 mainland China who live in Salinas participate in activities sponsored by the Monterey Bay Chinese Association.
In order to preserve the history of Salinas Chinatown, Larry Hirahara, co-founder of the non- profit Asian Cultural Experience (ACE) and Buddhist Temple member, hopes to create a museum and cultural center in the Republic Café, one of the last active businesses in Chinatown which closed in 1988. The building is on a list of historic sites.
Hirahara has put on an Asian Festival in Salinas Chinatown for the past 15 years. It integrates Chinese, Japanese and Filipino culture in the form of food, art, performances and a walking tour.
AsAmNews is published by the non-profit, Asian American Media Inc.
We are supported through donations and such charitable organizations as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This holiday season, double your impact by making a tax-deductible donation to Asian American Media Inc and AsAmNews. Thanks to an additional benefactor, all donations will now be matched up to a total of $12,000.
Please also follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and X.
This article provides a sobering look at the challenges facing Chinatown in Salinas, CA, focusing on the rise in drug deals, homelessness, and crime. It highlights the complexities of urban decline and the struggles of marginalized communities, where the lack of resources and support systems often exacerbate social issues. I appreciate how the article not only addresses the problems but also calls for a more compassionate and multi-faceted approach to improving the area, from better access to mental health services to community-driven efforts for change. It’s an important reminder of the need for targeted interventions and the role of both local governments and residents in revitalizing neighborhoods and supporting those in need.