EDITORIAL : HOPE STREET.

CITY Attorney James Hahn's bid to get an injunction on 31 members of a North Hills area gang may be motivated in part to boost his mayoral candidacy, but it should be welcomed as good news by residents who have been fighting to take back their neighborhood from gangsters for years.

If approved at a May 20 hearing in Van Nuys Superior Court, the court order could open the door for a change of life in a neighborhood that prosecutors say has become overrun by the Langdon Street gang.

``They've been there so long, they are so dominant, as far as gang activity, and they are so much a part of the neighborhood that many of their activities have become habit,'' said Victor Kalustian, the deputy city attorney seeking the injunction.

Crimes like witness intimidation, theft of jewelry, stealing of lunch money are as much a part of street activity as people finding parking spots for their cars.

The injunction won't stop one of the 31 targeted gang members from getting into a car with a loaded rifle, driving into the zone and killing someone else, Kalustian said, but it has the ability to prevent the gangbangers from congregating on street corners, harassing the law-abiding residents and recruiting boys as young as 10 years old to join their ranks.

It also can give residents hope.

In 1993, Hahn got a similar injunction against members of the Blythe Street gang in a Panorama City neighborhood.

While the number of crimes has dropped in the area since then, lawlessness has not been eradicated. Still, the neighborhood has improved in other ways.

The injunction was part of the legal effort to reduce crime. At the same time, several city agencies and community organizations seized the opportunity to plant trees, change parking regulations, evict unsavory tenants, help landlords get loans to improve their buildings to attract better tenants and open after-school programs for kids, said Deputy City Attorney Julie Bishop.

``No one from this office is going to say the injunction caused a reduction in crime. It rallied the resources'' to raise the quality of life in the neighborhood, Bishop said.

If that's all that happens in North Hills, the injunction will be a success.

Hopefully those residents who fear the injunction's unintended effects will come to see that.

In the meantime, the residents are correct in calling for more parks, job-training programs, organized sports or frequent trash pick-up, and they should continue to plead their case.

The days of neglecting poor neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley must end before the cancer of blight spreads any more. If City Hall intends to start fixing what's broken in Los Angeles, it starts with challenges like those on Langdon Avenue.