Los Angeles, CA – On March 13, organized tenants from El Apetito-Finessa Colectivo, neighborhood council members, and concerned residents appeared before a hearing at Ramona Hall Community Center in Highland Park. They were supporting an appeal against a major corporate development in Boyle Heights.

Viva Padilla, a small business owner and member of the Colectivo filed the appeal against Tiao Corporation in September 2023. After a grueling five-and-a-half hour meeting and three failed motions that ended at 10 p.m., the East LA Planning Commission passed a motion in favor of the appeal. It is a historic win for the community of Boyle Heights.

Due to this motion, the Tiao development project will not move forward. The appeal cited a list of concerns including the need to test for lead contamination and the harmful impact that gentrification and displacement would have on the community of Boyle Heights. The project proposed a six-story mixed use complex, with 45 market-rate units, five affordable units and a market hall with outside seating on the ground floor, similar to downtown LA’s Grand Central Market. 

During public comment at the hearing, 40 community members – many of them Spanish speakers – testified about their firsthand experiences about evictions, displacement and homelessness.

Broker Aaron Bellisten, Tiao’s Corporation’s representative, gave his rebuttal, stating that this project would bring housing and commercial opportunity to the residents.

Appellant Viva Padilla stated that it would dismantle the rich cultural-historic fabric of the Historic Brooklyn Avenue Neighborhood Corridor, made up of street vendors and artists like the músico nortenos and trios that busk at the corner of Chicago Street and Cesar Chavez Avenue, a tradition in place for over 50 years. 

Three out of five of the planning commissioners were swayed by public testimony and also cited their own concerns about the scale and tone-deafness of the project. Commissioner David Marquez, a Boyle Heights native, said he was hesitant to let the project move forward due to its being out of date: it was applying nearly 30-year-old zoning laws under the 1998 Adelante Eastside Redevelopment Plan. He felt the responsibility to foresee how the project would affect the area five to ten years into the future. 

The Adelante Plan will soon be replaced by the Boyle Heights Community Plan Update, which is currently making its way through the city after 15 years of development. Commissioner Gloria Gutierrez presented her findings on eviction rates, rent affordability across the nation, and placed an emphasis on the lack of alignment with a category under the Adelante Project that states that new developments must “meet the needs of its current residents” and “provide units with a wide array of rent brackets.” Commissioner Lydia Avila-Hernandez tearfully shared her own testimony on her past experience with eviction and wanted to abstain from voting before she decided to vote yes for the appeal. 

The passing of the motion to approve the appeal is a historic win for the community of Boyle Heights as appeals filed against proposed developments are notoriously denied. This is a shining example of how people power and organized tenants can strategize against corporate developments in order to fight against gentrification in their neighborhood.

#LosAngelesCA #CA #BoyleHeights #PeoplesStruggles #Housing #Gentrification #OppressedNationalities #ChicanoLatino

Los Angeles, CA – On June 30, the Boyle Heights community turned out in mass at a Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council’s (BHNC) special meeting to protest and demand the neighborhood council vote no on a big market rate housing development project by Tiao LLC. Proposed in the heart of Boyle Heights on the Cesar Chavez Avenue and Chicago Street block, the six-story 50-unit housing complex would evict and displace many local tenants and businesses, one of whom is a family of four generations who have been living there for 30 years.

The special meeting was called after many residents and supporters came out to the BHNC meeting for public comment on June 28 to speak out against Tiao Corporation and their plans to destroy the neighborhood. Viva Padilla, the owner of the bookstore Re/Arte Centro Literario, is among those affected by the development and spoke against it.

“This development is clearly not for our people,” Padilla said, “I fear that the economic fabric, historical importance, and cultural heritage of Cesar Chavez Ave will be erased because of this.”

Will Tiao, CEO of Tiao LLC, was not present at this meeting. A representative of Tiao LLC went to the special meeting and was given time to present and then dozens of community speakers spoke in opposition of the development. He did not give a good argument or case for it and did not acknowledge community concerns on the negative impact the development would have. The BHNC Board then gave brief comments and then a unanimous vote to draft an official letter of opposition was passed. The project must then go to the LA city planning department and city council for approval, but the community has plans to continue their opposition to stop this gentrification project.

Tiao LLC purchased the historic block in 2020 for $2.1 million and applied to LA City for permits in 2022. The company began to harass the tenants by misinforming them that they needed to close their businesses by May, threatening their livelihoods by instilling fear in tenants. All major development projects must first be reviewed and vetted by the local Neighborhood Councils established by the LA City to promote community participation. In 2022, the BHNC Planning and Land Use Committee (PLUC) was chaired by David Silvas, a Beverly Hills real estate agent, but he neglected to place the project on the agenda. People suspect he met with the developer and intentionally failed to agendize this big project knowing there would be opposition. David Silvas finally left the BHNC board without giving proper notice.

The new PLUC Chair Shmuel Gonzales tried in early 2023 to review the project but it was never taken up to the general board agenda of the BHNC. It wasn't until outcry from the community that the project was placed on the June 30 agenda and the community turned out in force to oppose it.

The Tiao LLC development project would damage the historic character of this vibrant Chicano neighborhood. Boyle Heights has a long history of social activism where the community has fought against freeways, corporate polluters, police abuse and government neglect. The original Community Service Organization (CSO) was formed there, and many Jewish and Chicano radicals joined and organized with the CPUSA in the neighborhood throughout the 1930s and 40s.

Since 2016, Boyle Heights has faced gentrification with developers buying large apartment buildings, raising rents and evicting poor and working class Chicanos and new Mexican immigrants. With the influx of wealthy professionals moving in, landlords have increased the rent for working class tenants as art galleries, breweries and coffee shops began appearing throughout Boyle Heights and neighboring cities.

There has also been an increase in violent LAPD killings of young Chicano men. A block away from Chavez Avenue and Chicago Street is the site where LAPD killer cop Eden Medina shot and killed 14-year-old Jesse Romero, sparking outrage and large protests against police terror and demands for justice. As gentrification intensifies in Los Angeles, so does state-sanctioned violence.

A petition to “Save the Block! Stop Tiao Corporation'' is currently circulating to raise awareness in the community and eventually turned into the proper channels. Sign and share: https://tinyurl.com/msr9evjd

Carlos Montes is a member of Centro CSO: Community Service Organization.

#LosAngelesCA #HousingStruggles #gentrification #BoyleHeights #LA

Jersey City is nicknamed “The Sixth Borough” as New York residents, out-of-state transplants and Wall Street up-and-comers live there and commute into Manhattan for work.

At a recent Jersey City city council meeting, they approved an ordinance to transfer 16 acres of city-owned land to a ‘non-profit’ entity so that the Liberty Science Center (LSC) can develop a charter school named SciTech Scity. The Liberty Science Center is a 300,000-square-foot learning center located in Liberty State Park on the Jersey City bank of the Hudson River near the Statue of Liberty.

The transfer began with the city council selling the land to the Jersey City Redevelopment Authority (JCRA) for a whopping sum of $1. Then JCRA sold the land to SciTech Scity LLC for $10. LSC founded SciTech Scity LLC as a way to become the lead developer of SciTech Scity charter school.

The second major player in the deal is Ironstate Development Company of Hoboken. They will oversee the project from start to finish. This steal of the century only became public after a 61-page document was released, mere days before the city council was scheduled to vote on the plan. The citizens of Jersey City are only now seeing the true intent of the project, and why those brokering the deal worked so hard to conceal it from public scrutiny. The sale passed with a 6-3 city council vote, which amounts to nothing more than selling out the future of Jersey City’s beleaguered working class, to Ironstate and other project beneficiaries.

Ironstate Development Company has a sordid past in gentrifying at the expense of the working class. Their most recent project is the development of a ‘sustainable’ urban rental housing called Urban Ready Living (URL). These apartment buildings, marketed towards upper-class commuters, create an exclusive community in downtown Jersey City. This cuts out workers who depend on nearby public transportation to get into Manhattan.

Jersey City’s Housing, Economic Development, and Commerce Department’s (HEDC) recommendation regarding the drawbacks of permitting publicly owned land to literally be given away to the private sector has been callously disregarded. In contrast to angry Ward F residents, city council President Rolando Lavarro argued that the city-owned land should be “sold” to SciTech Scity LLC, without any guarantees that the revenue would be shared with Jersey City.

The second point of contention is the STEM school that will be built at SciTech Scity. Before the city council meeting, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop released a statement indicating that the K-12 STEM School would be a public school. However, the statement was soon pushed aside as plans for a charter school emerged in its place.

New Jersey charter schools are technically considered public schools since they rely on taxpayer funds to support them. Furthermore, charter schools do not have to make public documents related to their operations, including financial statements and their trustee members. Not surprisingly though, these privately-owned enterprises guised as ‘public schools’ do not have to play by the same rules as their public school counterparts. As a result, they can accept and remove students as they wish, enabling them to ‘juke the stats.’ This is a pathetic attempt at peddling the fiction that traditional public schools are “broken beyond repair.” The fact that charter school teachers and staff are denied the right to unionize and collectively bargain contracts speaks volumes of the charter school PR machine’s true agenda.

At the city council meeting, Lorenzo Richardson (Jersey City Board of Education member), Ron Greco (president of the Jersey City Education Association Teachers Union) and Chris Gadsden (Jersey City Ward B councilman) spoke up to demand that the STEM school to be built at SciTech Scity be a Jersey City public school.

Jersey City Public Schools already has the resources and expertise to operate the proposed STEM school, and if SciTech Scity is allowed to open as a publicly-financed charter school, the people will be powerless to demand that such a school be made available to children from all of Jersey City’s six wards. The recently adopted city council plan does nothing to ease the overcrowding in downtown Jersey City public schools. Nor does it even so much as slow the pace at which working-class people are being displaced, as gentrifiers seek to gobble up ever more property and profit at the people’s expense.

The land transfer ordinance was approved by the city council by a vote of 6-3, despite city residents passionately making their cases as to why the ordinance needed to be defeated. The only members of the city council to vote against the land transfer ordinance were Ward B Councilman Chris Gadsden, Ward C Councilman Richard Boggiano and Ward D Councilman Michael Yun.

The SciTech Scity project is both the blueprint and end game for the gentrification of Jersey City’s heavily working -class Ward F. Upon completion of SciTech Scity, the property values near the center will skyrocket, which will be the death nail for Ward F’s working-class residents. These residents will be forced to move elsewhere, and more than likely out of the city altogether. These displaced residents are sure to be replaced by New York City transplants and social climbers from other parts of the country.

Jersey City community members are beginning to organize a campaign to fight back against these attacks on public education and the working class.

#JerseyCityNJ #HousingStruggles #gentrification #Antiracism

Los Angeles, CA – Marching and chanting, “Vecinos unidos, jamas seran vencidos!” (Neighbors, united, will never be defeated), over 50 community members, families and activists gathered outside of five Boyle Heights homes, Sept. 9, to fight back against displacement and gentrification. Boyle Heights families have been suffering displacement and evictions for many years. The community is also surrounded by freeways, rail yards and factories which cause pollution.

These five buildings have been home to over 20 families, many of whom have lived here for decades. The 20 families also united to form their very own union as tenants; this union is called Primera Esperanza or First Hope, located in the heart of Boyle Heights off 1st and Soto Street – two of the busiest streets.

The enemy to the 20 families is the East Los Angeles Community Corporation (ELACC) – which has served tenants with a 120-day eviction notice. ELACC has stated they will be building affordable housing buildings where the five homes stand, and will move in over 60 families in the place of these 20 families. ELACC is dislocating existing families and removing rent control units from the community.

Not guaranteed for the Boyle Heights families is a future place to live. Not guaranteed is the same price of rent, which for these families amounts to $450 to $500 per month. The affordable rent is one of the many reasons why these families have stayed and lived here for over ten years. And not guaranteed for these families is a prime location to numerous market places, laundromats and the public Metro station – all of which are within walking distance.

“It doesn’t make a difference whether the company forcing us out of our homes is ELACC or a big corporation, we are still going to be left without a home,” said Terry Navarro. Navarro and her daughter, both of whom are disabled, have lived at Primera Esperanza for more than eight years. “Today we came out to demand that ELACC guarantee us, the 20 families, affordable housing, first right of return, and that we not get documented with challenging qualifications. We want to see all of these demands in writing!”

Present at the rally, and the lead organizers to support Primera Esperanza, was Union de Vecinos, supported by the Los Angeles Tenants Union, Centro CSO, and various community members and allies.

Elizabeth Blaney, an organizer with Union de Vecinos said, “We have already lost thousands of families to dislocation and gentrification, and it is time ELACC let these families stay.”

Future events are planned for Primera Esperanza and you can find more information here: https://www.facebook.com/uniondevecinos

#LosAngelesCA #ChicanoLatino #HousingStruggles #CentroCSO #gentrification #BoyleHeights #UnionDeVecinos

Chicago, IL – Residents of the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side are fighting to hold on to our neighborhood. We are threatened by gentrification, which is happening in many poor areas of the city. What does this mean? It means that 61st Street, which used to have a thriving business strip, would have condos instead.

Our foe is the alderman of the 20th ward, Arenda Troutman. She is backed by powerful developers, such as Brinshore Development, LLC. This company was involved in the elimination of public housing. They have made $600 million in recent years, largely from building expensive houses where the Chicago Housing Authority projects were torn down. As the property values in the center of the city rise, they want to now extend the land grab further south.

Troutman Faces Unified Black Community

In 1999, Alderman Troutman pushed through a vote in the City Council that changed the law about building permits on 61st Street between Indiana and Langley Avenues. This ‘rezoning,’ from business to residential, means small businesses, like a daycare, laundromat, a medical clinic and a grocery store are being pushed out. Small businesses that applied for licenses have been denied and property taxes have increased close to 100% in the area.

Donna Ramey, a lawyer and president of the 61st Street Business and Property Owners Association, sued the city to reverse the zoning change. That was successful for a while, but this year, Troutman put her ordinance again before the Council’s Zoning Committee.

On May 13, 50 people picketed in front of Troutman’s ward office to protest her plan. She refused to meet with them. Because of her arrogance, the protesters carried signs calling Troutman a ‘stale fish.’

On May 19, the day of the hearing by the Zoning Committee, a bus full of residents showed up to speak against the zoning change. Seventeen people, including working people who are renters in the area, testified against Troutman’s plan. Tenants have seen their rents rise, and fear they will soon be unable to afford to live along 61st Street. Only three people testified for Troutman. But the committee was not moved by this mobilization of the community. They adopted the change she requested.

As the community members were leaving the council chambers that day, Alderman Troutman followed us out. She pretended to want to listen to our concerns. We told her that we wouldn’t be fooled by tricks from her politician’s handbook. There will be a new alderman in the 20th ward!

Daley + Developers = Displacement

This is one battle in a struggle that is going on across Chicago. Under Mayor Daley, the rich are taking over neighborhoods, driving out members of communities that have lived there for decades. The Black community has been especially hard hit by the housing crisis. But the same pressure is on the other oppressed nationality communities, like the mainly Puerto Rican neighborhood of Humboldt Park, the mostly Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen as well as Uptown, where many low-income white workers live.

The struggle continues across the city. There is a continuing fight in the Bronzeville area of the North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood. The next neighborhood battle is shaping up in Englewood. This zoning change is a temporary victory for Troutman and for the developers that back her. The working people who live in Woodlawn, together with the small businesses there, will continue to say no to gentrification.

#ChicagoIL #CapitalismAndEconomy #PoorPeoplesMovements #News #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #HousingStruggles #ResidentsOfTheWoodlawnNeighborhood #ChicagosSouthSide #threatenedByGentrification #ArendaTroutman #WoodlawnNeighborhood #BrinshoreDevelopmentLLC #ChicagoHousingAuthority #TroutmanFacesUnifiedBlackCommunity #DonnaRamey #BronzevilleArea #NorthKenwoodOaklandNeighborhood #gentrification