La'Kita Williams doesn't notice much that her home is in the middle of the city's highest-crime neighborhood.

The sirens, drug dealers and the occasional gunshots or stabbings are commonplace there, even though police are almost constantly patrolling the area.

Residents live with fear and resignation.

For the 16-year-old resident of the Sun Valley neighborhood, the crime rate and its problems are just part of life.

"I feel safe here," said Williams, who has lived in the area's housing projects since she was 9. "I'm here all the time by myself."

But next door, the sentiments are different.

"I don't feel safe," said Katrina Torres, whose sister lives there. "But it's a way of life around here."

For the sixth consecutive year, the west-central neighborhood has the highest crime rate in Denver, according to a report released by the Denver Police Department.

The small neighborhood, home to Invesco Field at Mile High stadium, is wedged between the South Platte River and Federal Boulevard. Reported crimes went up 14 percent there in 2005.

A handful of single-family homes mix with warehouses, a power plant, an elementary school and a large housing project.

But because of its affordability, many residents have no choice but to put up with the crime and noise.

On Holden Place, near Decatur Street, the modest brick houses with well-cared-for lawns are a stark contrast to the housing project on West 11th Avenue.

At Sun Valley Homes, a Denver Housing Authority project, freshly laundered clothes hang from clotheslines above dirt yards.

Sheets hang in windows as makeshift curtains, and toddlers run around in diapers.

On Wednesday afternoon, Williams sat in the shade of a large tree with Torres and her sister Raena, watching three energetic boys play in a plastic swimming pool.

A spent bullet casing lay in the dirt just steps from where the boys played.

Raena Torres moved into the projects a year and a half ago with her four young sons. Her sister visits almost every day so she feels safer.

At night, Torres wishes she had bars on her windows to keep out the thieves and other riffraff that don't allow her to sleep peacefully.

"I'm afraid to be here at night," Torres said,

She's asked to be moved to another low-income housing project elsewhere in the city, but has been denied, she said.

Even if her life was threatened, or she needed a restraining order, it would be tough for the housing authority to find another place for her family, she said.

"If I could move anywhere, I'd go to the Westwood Projects or back to the south side," she said.

The neighborhood had the highest rate of stolen cars - 46 per 1,000 people.

Once, Katrina Torres had her car windows broken and license plates stolen, but they didn't take the car.

But that is the closest crime has come to their family, the sisters said - except for the time when someone was murdered around the block from them a few months back, Katrina Torres added as an afterthought.

"It's scary to think about," Katrina Torres said.

"To think about how the kids are going to grow up around here, to hope it's not the path they are going to follow."

Sun Valley demographic profile

Population......1,496

Race and ethnicity

Hispanic   52.2%

Black   17.3%

Asian   13.5%

White    10.1%

American Indian   1.9%

Other   4.7%

Economics

Median household income    $7,411

Poverty    72%

Households with no car    62%

Children under 18 living with:

Married parents    17.5%

Single mothers    65.3%

Single fathers   6.4%

Grandparents   8.4%

Other relatives   2.4%Source: 2000 U.S. Census