Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, November 29, 2024…
- When a developer buys a building in a working-class neighborhood with plans to tear it down and build new apartments, the current tenants can feel powerless. But that’s not always the case. A fight over gentrification in Los Angeles didn’t go exactly the way you expect.
Can Gentrification Fears Stop Teardown? Tenants Hope So
Jose Parra remembers when the tables of his mom’s Boyle Heights restaurant were packed with musicians enjoying shrimp and pork stew, and there were occasional sightings of Banda El Recodo, a famous norteño band from Sinaloa. “It’s a historic spot,” says Parra of the restaurant his family has run for 17 years.
Now as neighborhood rents go up, Parra, who lives upstairs with his mom and grandma, sees fewer musicians coming through for dinner, though the spot is still a neighborhood gathering place.
Boyle Heights is changing despite its reputation for a passionate and sometimes militant approach to preventing gentrification. The city faces a housing crisis, and only building more housing will stop it. El Apetito, as well as the hair salon, independent bookstore, and residential tenants who share the same building now face a loss greater than the absence of local musicians. For the past year, they’ve stared down the kind of change that pushes working class people out of LA, and transforms the character of neighborhoods.
But unlike many other businesses that have closed or relocated, these tenants have used the city’s own processes to fight back — and scored some victories.