Mount Hope Residents Are Creating a New Vision for Their Community 10%
By Mariana Martínez Barba21%
8/4/2026, 2:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Optimism Bias, and Confirmation Bias, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 9.5% saturation with 154 hits. Analysis detected 1,281 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,623 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 20.6% and a BS Rank of 10% (24,790 of 27,322 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 90.70% of the article peer group.
Elena Franco has good and bad memories of growing up in Mount Hope.
She remembers riding her bike around the neighborhood, catching tadpoles at a dirt lot and playing basketball with her older brother and neighbors.
Then, there’s the bad.
People she knew were shot and killed.
Her next-door neighbor was murdered at Dennis V.
Allen Park.
When she was 14, she tried to stop a group of guys from beating up her brother, and she got hurt too.
She said the neighborhood – bordered by three major freeways and two large cemeteries – was considered “the hood” back in the 1980s.
She said the neighborhood has been historically underserved and had a lot of gang and drug activity over the years.
“It still is, but we’re changing that,” she said.
According to 2022 San Diego County poverty data, Mount Hope ranked in the 100 th percentile for residents living below 200 percent of the poverty level.
That means it has some of the highest concentrations of low-income residents in the region.
Franco represents a turning point in the community since she became chair of the Mount Hope Neighborhood Group in 2023.
The group is a space for community members to address neighborhood concerns.
She wants to work with the San Diego city government – not against it – to bring positive changes to the area.
That includes working closely with District 9 Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera and his team.
Despite decades of neglect and failed government promises, the neighborhood group brings together childhood friends and lifelong neighbors to revitalize Mount Hope.
They want to revive their neighborhood park, secure funding for a recreation center, and educate residents on how they too can have their say in local politics.
“What we’re trying to work on right now, our vision outside of the rec center, is also to not only activate the community and get … more people involved, but to have a voice where people can hear us,” she said.“
City council can hear us, city government can hear us.
Have it be a voice that they know isn’t going away.
It’s gonna be a constant, and it’s gonna get louder.”
Mount Hope has about 5,000 residents and 77 percent of those are Latino, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau.
About 10 percent of residents are Black, 7 percent are Asian and 4 percent are White.
Change has been slow in the community.
Inewsource reported it took two years to fix a scorched playground at Dennis V.
Allen Park.
CBS8 reported residents felt ignored by requests for park improvements , while the Union-Tribune reported community members took matters into their own hands .
The city has yet to reopen a bathroom that burned down two years ago and set up some temporary porta-potties instead.
Though city officials set aside money this fiscal year to rebuild the restroom, they said it could take another two years to build it.
In the city’s capital improvements budget a recreation center for the neighborhood is marked “low” priority, even though residents have been requesting the center for decades.
City officials said that’s because of lack of funding, and that it would take about $40 million for the entire project.
“I guess they show up with their trucks here and there, and then nothing happens,” said 53-year-old resident Tamika Hamilton about city officials.
“And then I guess the pressure finally gets on them.
That’s when they built the playground for the kids.”
In 1979, Maria Riveroll and Reynaldo Pisaño organized the Mt.
Hope/Helix Heights Residents’ Association, in what would later become known as the Mount Hope Neighborhood Group.
Riveroll said the reason they started the group was to protect the neighborhood, and advocate for city services residents weren’t getting.
They demanded that city officials help reduce crime, remove graffiti and provide steady schedules on street sweeping.
“It was a flash in the pan,” said Riveroll about city officials.
“They did it for a minute and then it was all gone.
But we kept on ‘em.”
Now, the 82-year-old said things are totally different.
She said the current neighborhood group has the city’s ear and that the city is working with them.
Franco leads the group along with two childhood friends, Juan Samuel Cruz, 49, and Norman “Nkeyz” Brewer, 57.
Cruz is secretary of the group and Brewer is the vice chair.
They also have board members.
All three of them grew up in Mount Hope.
Franco currently resides in San Carlos but comes back to the neighborhood frequently to look after her 90-year-old mom who owns a home in the area.
Franco is a single mom and had her daughter in 2009.
She moved out of Mount Hope in 2020 to give her daughter better schooling opportunities.
She is also treasurer of the Southeastern San Diego Community Planning Group.
A mural in Mount Hope on July 31, 2026.
/ Mariana Martínez Barba
Cruz raised both his sons to be “second-generation Mount Hopeans” and Brewer also still lives in the neighborhood.
In 2024, the group started to host events at the neighborhood park.
They hosted a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration in October last year featuring lowriders and Aztec dancers.
Franco said because of the events more community members started coming out to the park and engaged in the work of the neighborhood group.
But getting people to the neighborhood meetings is hard.
Franco said that’s because Mount Hope residents often don’t have the time or resources to participate in local meetings.
“The problem with this neighborhood is that a lot of the people who live here are working class and often have more than just one job,” she said.
“So the way you would experience it, say for instance in Rolando or Tallmadge, where people might be retired or just have one job and have more time to come out to the meetings.”
They’ve also learned how to navigate the bureaucracies of local government.
Community members have long asked for a rec center.
The group wanted to push for it, but they didn’t know where to start.
Cruz said being in a marginalized community, it’s difficult to know where to get resources and information from.
“You start losing heart and then next thing you know one year passes, another year passes, and so nobody does anything.
Now we got a good group of people that are invested in the community,” said Cruz.
Who leads neighborhood groups across the city makes a difference, too.
For example, Franco said a lot of other community or planning groups have people that are former city employees that are familiar with how processes work at the city.
“Us at Mount Hope, we were clueless,” she said.
Franco said Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera and his office have been helpful in guiding them through steps and processes to secure things for their neighborhood.
In the last three years, the group has made progress.
The group worked with city officials to amend the park’s general development plan to allow for the future construction of a rec center.
They also pushed city officials to budget $2 million this fiscal year toward fixing their park bathroom.
They also created a community recreation group through the city’s parks and recreation department for park improvements and plans for the rec center.
City officials gave them permission to start the group even without the rec center being built.
Normally, she said the formation of the group comes after a rec center is opened.
“Those small wins are big wins to us,” said Cruz.
But why the city hasn’t opened a rec center continues to be a pain point for community members, and it’s unclear when it would be built.
When asked why, city officials merely said the amendment to the park’s general development plan has been formally approved and officially adopted.
A future project to design, permit and construct the rec center and other improvements identified in the amendment is on hold until the proper funding is identified.
City officials said it would cost $30 million to construct the rec center, and an additional $10 million for design, project management and other costs.
Franco said she met Mayor Todd Gloria at the Hispanic Heritage Event at the park last year and told him she understood the city was broke and that funding for the rec center was probably not attainable.
“And his words to me were, ‘No Elena, there is money.
It just needs to be reallocated.’
He came before the whole event, got on the microphone and said that he was gonna do everything in his power to get us that rec center.
But this budget didn’t have any likes of it,” said Franco.
The Mayor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Its also unclear when city officials will replace the bathroom that burnt down at Dennis V.
Allen Park.
Tyler Becker, a spokesperson with the city’s engineering and capital projects department, said it could take up to two years based on similar projects.
“This is a preliminary estimate, with significant information still to be gathered to make a better assessment,” said Becker in an email statement.
As for Riveroll, she continues to be involved in the neighborhood group several decades later.
She said when she started the group, they didn’t have the resources and commitment to build a rec center.
“Juan and them have a commitment and a passion that we never had to get this center off the ground,” said Riveroll.
“ I think that Juan, Elena, and everybody else concerned is on the right path.”
The post Mount Hope Residents Are Creating a New Vision for Their Community appeared first on Voice of San Diego .
Speakers
7speakers50%attributed speech810writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageJuan Samuel Cruz
81 attributed words10.0% of attributed speech26% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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