[The following article was originally printed in the Los Angeles Daily News' 5/7/06 issue.]

L.A. Uplift Can't Just Be For Some

by Mariel Garza

The other day I noticed work going on inside a formerly empty storefront on lower Sunset Boulevard. Behind the paper on the windows, workers were putting on the final touches of what will clearly be a hip urban salon featuring $65 haircuts and complimentary lattes.

The sight brought me a surge of pleasure followed by a pang of guilt. Any sign of urban renewal along this seedy stretch of lower Sunset Boulevard is welcome, but it comes at a steep price for many. I know that even as the 99-cent stores and Walgreens give way to trendy boutiques and quirky diners, once-affordable (if run-down) apartments and houses give way to half-million-dollar condos and million-dollar fix-ups.

How do I know this? I know it because this process is well under way in my downtown-adjacent neighborhood. Every weekend, apartment buildings erupt in stained mattresses, tired couches and broken press-board furniture stacked on the curb as their working-class residents seek new digs. Weeks later, those same buildings suddenly sport new paint jobs, native-plant landscaping and fresh tile.

From the beaches to the Eastside, the Valley to South  L.A., the same thing is happening with quiet regularity. Affluence is transforming former ghettos as the middle class moves onto streets and into neighborhoods they once wouldn't have driven through in the daytime. It's the usual process of gentrification, but it's happening in every corner of the city, leaving few and far-flung places where working people and families can afford to live. Meanwhile, gas prices soar, but that's another column.

In the process, the poorer residents of the city the renters are left behind. That's what happened to the denizens of Venice's Lincoln Place apartments in March, where the residents of more than 700 affordable units were forced out to make way for a new high-end development. That's also what happening right now to the tenants of 150 apartments in several Valley  Village buildings, who are being evicted from rent-controlled apartments that will be converted into condos.

They are among the more than 9,240 renters forced out of rent-controlled apartments in the past five years more than half of them in the past year. And that doesn't take into account those kicked out of non-rent-controlled units. It could be, and probably is, many thousands more who are suddenly out in a rental market where they are out-priced by several hundred dollars a month.

So what to do? Stop the gentrification? Tell people not to move into the crappy neighborhoods and stop them from opening trendy hair salons so as not to encourage the Santa Monica-ization of L.A.? Not in my neighborhood, you don't. I've seen ghetto-ization, and it's not good for anyone.

I know it's uncharitable, but I'm tired of every flat surface in my neighborhood covered in gang graffiti. I'm tired of the shootings every few days. I'm tired of being buzzed by the LAPD helicopters. I'm tired of trash piled up along the gutters of the main streets. And I'm tired of feeling guilty when I see houses fixed up, new businesses and other signs of vitality. It doesn't mean I want the poor people to leave and the SUV-driving yuppies to take over. I left Santa Monica for a reason.

In their typical way, Los Angeles' politicians finally responded to the growing crisis last week only after getting yelled at week after week, month after month, by upset renters. Their solution: three public hearings to let renters vent beginning next week, the last one in Valley Glen on May 31.

While it's a relief that the city's elected officials are finally taking action (Westside Councilman Bill Rosendahl noted his personal stake Wednesday: "I'm losing hundreds of constituents in my district to condo conversion"), it's pretty late in the game. Besides, the city's great ideas so far have been to slap up ugly affordable-housing units along major streets that look like cheesy motels, and will look as bad as what was there after a few years of hard use. This country tried segregating working poor into housing projects. It doesn't improve a neighborhood.

There must be some middle ground where gentrification benefits all residents of a neighborhood, where the rising tide of prosperity can lift up all boats not just some. And to find it, city leaders must do more than hold a few public hearings and adopt a few toothless ordinances. Good luck to them. They will need it.

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Article citation:

Garza, Mariel. "L.A. Uplift Can't Just Be For Some." Los Angeles Daily News (May 7, 2006): V1.

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