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Lemiert Park ponders its future in the face of gentrification




“If the old urban crisis was defined by the flight of business, jobs, and the middle class to the suburbs, the New Urban Crisis is defined by the back-to-the-city movement of the affluent and the educated—accompanied by rising inequality, deepening economic segregation, and increasingly unaffordable housing.”

-Richard Florida, in his book The New Urban Crisis


LEMIERT PARK - Gentrification.


It is a word, which for many Black Americans and people of color, has come to symbolize a forced disconnection and displacement from a community that for generations they have called home.


The history of gentrification, the process of renovating and improving a house or district in a lower-socioeconomic area to encourage an influx of middle-class tenants, in American cities is complex.


“America was founded on displacement,” said Justin Bradley, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) Taskforce member and DWP Outreach Associate. “There has been a history of displacing Native Americans… displacing African people via the Transatlantic Slave Trade…of displacing the original Mexican settlers of California…”


For many in The Lemiert Park and South Los Angeles area, the expansion on the metro line, the opening of institutions such as Kaiser Permanente and Starbucks’, and the plans for the building of more condominiums and stores, is greeted, not with excitement but with trepidation and skepticism as some wonder, who this all for?


“You really think that they are doing all this for us,” asked Lina Thomas, a longtime South Los Angeles resident. “White people are tired of commuting and they want to come back, they are tired of paying all that rent to live in a shoe box in West Los Angeles when they can have more space around here…watch in 20 years you won’t even recognize this place and I doubt that a lot of people that look like you and me will still be around.”


The facts may prove Thomas right, as a search on Zillow reveals that the average house in the 90008 is now being sold for between $700,000- $800,000 . The average median income in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area is $37,948.


Combating the effects of gentrification was the topic of “323 Gentrification,” a free workshop hosted by SAJE on March 30 at Hot and Cool in Leimert Park. The discussion focused on the impact of gentrification throughout Los Angeles, but also expanded its topics to include the history of redlining, rent control, tenant rights, and the importance of community health in creating thriving communities.


The second in what the organization hopes to be a year-long series pertaining to the housing crisis in Los Angeles, seeks to create a community-led coalition that ensures that people who live in these neighborhoods can become involved in the planning and governance processes that effect their neighborhood’s future.


Los Angeles is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis as many Angelinos are facing increasing poverty and rent prices that are driving them out of their homes. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, from 2000- 2012, median rents increased by 25 percent in L.A. County while income declined 9 percent.


Dennis Romero wrote in 2017, in his article “25 Years After the Riots, Economic Conditions in Many L.A. Neighborhoods Are Worse,” that South Los Angeles communities are worse off than they were in the 1990’s and the lack of access to affordable housing, goods, and services is a recipe for another community uprising. In fact, 27 years after the uprising, South Los Angeles is among the most overcrowded neighborhoods in the country.

According to Romero 80% of those who live in South Los Angeles are renters and 45% live in poverty, these people have no power when it comes to the ebb and flow of the housing market and whether or not their community stays affordable.


Indeed, Bradley believes that gentrification will continue to thrive as long as members of these communities stay in a “renter’s mindset.” Bradley points out that the majority of real estate and commercial properties owned in South Los Angeles are owned by those of other ethnicities who “do not understand our plight…and pour money into their communities and use their funds in ways that help their families.”

However, with a recent study by Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies showing that the median wealth of Black Americans will fall to zero by 2053, they ability for Black communities to hold on, let alone become buyers rather than consumers, in the face of gentrification looks increasingly bleak.

I’m not saying that we have the economic power to do it, I am saying that we do not have the collective cultural unity,” said Derek Holt, a facilitator at the discussion. "And while gentrification does not have to mean the displacement of a community’s current population, it often it does.


Those who site gentrification as the beginning of the end of communities of color in South Los Angeles look to commercial projects such as “The Reef,” a $1.2 billion redevelopment project at 1933 S. Broadway, which was approved by the Los Angeles City Council in 2016, that will build a massive housing, hotel, and retail project that are expected to be out of the price range of those who currently live in the community.


In fact, critics of the gentrification of Los Angeles state that it is driven both by city policy and by professional investors, for financial gain at the expense of middle or working-class homeowners and renters.


With hind-sight being 20/20, Holt fears that areas like Lemiert Park are already lost.

“Black folks do not have the economics to hold it,” said Holt, who states that the majority of real estate in Lemiert Park is owned by people of other ethnicities who are not likely to sell to Black people in the community any time soon, and the current Black businesses in the area mostly rent, and risk rent increases or evictions that can put them out of business.

Still, all might not be lost in places like Lemiert Park. Holt points out that the Black churches in Los Angeles collect billions in tides each year and that they are in a position to become power brokers in the community, acting as lenders and landlords who can keep as many spaces Black as possible.


Holt, though, recommends that Black Angelinos look to develop areas such as Riverside and the Inland Empire, which has seen an increase in their Black population in recent years. He suggests that there is an opportunity to build thriving Black communities in these areas based on the information we have now based on the purchase of real estate that is “intentional… and be mindful and persistent… and build something for us.”


“Gentrification is not necessarily a bad thing,” said Holt. “Gentrification is about progress… it is just about making sure Black people don’t lose in the process. There are some changes that we have to make, things that we have to do, and hard conversations that we need to have if we do not want to(be pushed so far out) that we end up in the middle of the Mohave desert in the next 50 or 60 years .”


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