Youth From South Los Angeles and Boyle Heights Speak on Gentrification
Five young women from South Los Angeles and Boyle Heights spoke about the rising effects of gentrification in their communities on Saturday, Sept. 30. The event, “Youth Voices: Gentrification,” was hosted by Las Fotos Project, a nonprofit organization that provides mentorship for teenage girls through forms of self-expression, as a part of their “City Rising” exhibit.
Gentrification is a growing issue around LA as large companies and more people able, and willing, to pay higher rents and mortgages move in — displacing those who cannot afford rising prices, the panelists said.
Mary Reyes, 18, a freshman at California State University, Northridge, described mistreatment and constant bullying toward her family and neighbors from their property managers. The building owners were not allowed to legally raise the rent by more than 5 percent each year.
Instead, she said, they looked for excuses to push out existing tenants so the apartments could be rented to people willing to pay more. According to Reyes, her relatives were served with a bogus three-day eviction notice that would’ve left the family scrambling to move if they hadn’t gotten lawyers involved to help them stay.
“A lot of the times people don’t know their rights so they willingly leave,” Reyes said. “I went from having most of my neighbors be gardeners to now I have a neighbor who’s a teacher at USC.”
The University of Southern California’s expansion initiatives are also affecting gentrification in the surrounding University Park neighborhood. USC’s $700-million renovation of the University Village, which opened this year, displaced several long-standing businesses. According to Marisabel Perez, 17, a freshman at the University of California, Irvine, several of ventures in her hometown of University Park have shut down because of new developments.
“They [USC] have just been building a community that’s catering more to the university students, which I get. When you’re at university you want to feel at home, but at the same time it’s affecting us as community members,” said Perez. “Basically our community is already seen as a low-income community, so if you’re displaced from a low-income community, where do you go after that?”
During the question and answer portion of the Las Fotos Project event, an audience member pointed out the speakers’ decisions to leave their communities for school and professional pursuits, and asked if they would be contributing to gentrification by paying more for housing when they return to the area as higher earners.
The speakers emphasized they would be returning to their neighborhoods in order to give back.
“In that case, although it may seem as, ‘Oh, you’re gentrifying too because you’re leaving and coming back and you’re willing to pay more,’ [but] we’re doing this out of respect,” said Perez, who wants to contribute to University Park by developing more programs for young people.
All the speakers at the event expressed an underlying anguish over leaving their neighborhoods for college.
“In a sense it feels a little bit guilty because you’re leaving that connection when in reality it’s about going out there, doing your own thing, finding that passion and coming back even more educated and even more experienced to help your community, because that’s what it really is about,” said Xochil Ramirez, 17, a junior at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights.
“Soon I’ll be going off, but I know that it’s always going to be at the back of my head that what I’m doing in college is going to be so that I can come back to my community,” said Stephanie Medina, 17, a senior at Mendez High School in Boyle Heights.
Event moderator Julianna Aguirre Martinez, 17, a senior at Franklin High School, lives in Highland Park, a neighborhood in Northeast LA. Over the past year housing prices in her community have risen 14 percent, according to the Trulia real estate website. That’s three percent higher than the LA County average.
Martinez used the prices at Highland Park Bowl to describe the disparate realities within a gentrifying community. The recently refurbished bowling alley charges $40 to $60 per lane and $5 to rent a pair of shoes.
“How is a family going to go enjoy themselves? How can my mom take me? She can’t afford that. She can barely afford one person,” she said. “A person that’s working minimum wage is pretty much working to pay for what, three hours? My people are not in there.”
The speakers largely emphasized the need for new residents to show respect for the communities that already exist in the area.
“They’re only interested in the good stuff about our community, but they never necessarily want to help us grow,” Medina said. “When we do have these developments and we are growing, that’s when people want to come in and kind of just take it over.”
With the changes brought by gentrification, many wish to preserve the culture integral to their neighborhoods.
“Diversity is a great thing and it’s something we always want to see,” Medina said. “We should be exposed to different people and different cultures, and so that’s never really an issue. It’s just when we’re not able to preserve ours and really showcase what our culture really is because we don’t really appreciate when people try to change it or just use it for the aesthetics.”
It is up to young residents to learn about, and arm themselves against, gentrification in their communities, Reyes said.
“My parents work almost all day,” she said. “They don’t have time to go out and be an active member; they barely have time to rest. I feel like it’s up to the youth to be engaged and informed and try to be active because a lot of the times our parents don’t have time for that.”
Despite efforts to bring awareness to the negative impacts gentrification is having on their communities, the five young women said more change is inevitable. They all expressed hope that their generation will lead the effort in easing the coming transition for their neighbors and loved ones.
