Can LA solve its housing crisis without a wave of gentrification?

There’s a word you often hear in debates about housing in L.A.: gentrification.

The term describes the many changes that follow when higher-income people move into neighborhoods that have historically been havens for lower-income residents.

Often, gentrification brings new resources into a community: new developments, new job opportunities and lower crime rates.

But often, gentrification also ends up forcing lower-income residents out of the neighborhood as rents or home prices rise, or as landlords and developers force their eviction.

According to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, gentrification is a powerful force for economic change in cities, often accompanied by extreme and unnecessary cultural displacement.  

Across the U.S, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that gentrification displaced at least 135,000 Black and Hispanic residents from their neighborhoods and local independent businesses often face competition from new development and corporate chains. 

“Gentrification,” said Jackie Cornejo an economic analyst in the City of Los Angeles’ Housing and Community Investment Department, “is private corporate actors driving economic activity in a historically underinvested community, subsequently motivating private individual market actors—typically wealthier and wider folks to move in and displace poor residences and then attracting new economic activity once that said the neighborhood is quote-unquote transformed.”

Gentrification has displaced lower-income communities from several Los Angeles neighborhoods in the last decade: from  Hollywood, Silver Lake andEcho Park to North Hollywood to South Los Angeles.

“Gentrification affects housing affordability and the neighborhood character of the neighborhood cultural identity,” said Gustavo Leclerc, associate director of the Urban Humanities Initiative at  cityLAB UCLA, who has conducted research in lower-income and immigrant neighborhoods.

“The effects of gentrification typically have devastating and destabilizing effects on poor people of color,” Cornejo added.

While new development often riles neighbors, Cornejo said, “not every single kind of development should be considered gentrification, because at the end of the day underinvested communities should have grocery stores, parks, better schools, improved sidewalks, clean portable housing and all these other amenities that hire resources.”

Los Angeles can make it possible to build new developments/housing without displacing underprivileged communities. 

Cornejo said the state expects L.A. to accommodate 46,000 units of housing over an 8 year period.

“We have to build in order to address the existing need and future needs,” Cornejo said. “We have to do all that by making sure that we protect tenants, that there’s no net loss of housing, and to open up high resource neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have historically excluded housing production, and we have a tremendous opportunity to do that right now.”

The City council has approved the plan, but will need to revise the plan so the state can certify it. 

Swap meet closure raises questions about redevelopment

As developers search for new projects in certain neighborhoods, they’ve turned their attention to redeveloping a Southern California staple: swap meets.

The Union Swap Meet in East Hollywood was shut down to make way for apartments and a retail complex. The San Bernardino swap meet shutting down for affordable student housing and new workforce training facilities.

In North Hollywood, another swap meet is also closing for good.

Angelica Martinez, who sells toys at the North Hollywood swap meet, believes the market will be razed to build luxury apartments. Other new apartments have gone up nearby.

In a letter to vendors, the swap meet’s owners said they were unable to renew the lease with their landlord. The owner, Fred Kim, declined to comment to On Point.

Vendors at the North Hollywood Swap Meet received the letter from the market’s owners on Mid-February. The letter said business owners will have until the end of March to vacate their stalls.

Martinez is not sure what she’s going to do with all her inventory and is unsure of how she’s going to get by, financially, after the swap meet closes.

“What are we going to do? … One month warning wasn’t enough,” Martinez said.

Martinez is paying $700 dollars per month. Says a station at another swap meet can cost up to $3,000.

“My location isn’t that big,” she said, “but what I had would help me pay my bills.”

Martinez said a petition to keep the swap meet open has been going around. She hopes public outcry can save the businesses there.

This show was produced by Gitanjali Mahapatra, Debbie Martinez & Tracy Mejia