I ask her how you prevent that kind of situation from happening in Boyle Heights. No Los Angeles house hunting story would be complete without mentioning gentrification. They have small children that are in a bilingual program in our neighborhood. In the last decade, gentrification grew closer to Lincoln Heights, transforming downtown L.A. and Chinatown on one side, and Eagle Rock and Highland Park on another. Kevin Barney is 47, and he recently purchased his very first home in Boyle Heights. “These are Hispanic people that have owned these homes for 20, 30 years. With housing prices climbing ever higher in Los Angeles, most low-income neighborhoods are on gentrification watch. Garcia admits that gentrification certainly has its downsides, despite the money she’s making as a real estate agent in changing neighborhoods. LOS ANGELES — The neighborhood of Boyle Heights has long been known as a bustling, if somewhat insular, Latino enclave in Eastside Los Angeles. That many businesses have shut down and it’s a bunch of rich, white people who can afford to live in those neighborhoods. Barrales gets emotional as she relates to Blaney: “They postponed it to the next year, but her daughter doesn’t want it now. And then two blocks down a 7-11 is supposed to be coming in.”. And so Blaney is fighting on behalf of residents and business owners that she says are being unfairly squeezed out by landlords to make room for an influx of gentrifiers. “Sometimes the roosters go at each other like in a vocal contest. “Even with the affordable housing being built in different parts of the city, there tends to be very few units built at extremely low-income levels, and more units built at higher income levels, around 50 or 60 thousand, which some would consider low-income. Back at Kevin Barney’s little yellow bungalow, his real estate agent, Rose Garcia, is doing the math. Community members and organizations understand that change is inevitable, but they don’t want to see local businesses pushed out by gentrification. On a recent afternoon in Boyle Heights, affordable housing advocate Elizabeth Blaney gave me a 360 view of gentrification in the neighborhood. Defend Boyle Heights sparks controversy with anti-gentrification push. The Barrales family, like many other low-income Latino families, is in danger of slipping through the cracks caused by gentrification in Boyle Heights, she says. I’m a runner so I go running down Cesar Chavez and I haven’t seen a single franchise. Copyright © 2020 Boyle Heights Beat. On a nondescript street corner near the freeway, Blaney points out the tower of an old, Art Deco Sears Department store, and tells me that the building will soon be market-rate, luxury apartments. On August 25, community members in Boyle Heights mobilized to resist the planned construction of a new 5G cell phone tower on the site of a community garden and cultural center, which residents say will accelerate gentrification. Español. An influx of new people and development drive up housing and rental prices. As big development projects spread into Boyle Heights from Downtown, the neighborhood has been watchful. Boyle Heights also proved a crucible of gang violence, which was practically invented in Los Angeles; in 1992, there were 97 homicides attributed to … Courtesy: Elizabeth Blaney, Elvira Barrales, her husband and four children have lived in a one-bedroom apartment above a small market in Boyle Heights for 16 years. “So she was feeling very, very sad because her 15-year-old turned 15, so the [quinceanera] that they had planned they had to cancel,” Blaney translates. The family brings in about $20,000 a year in income. Then we get all the ice cream trucks.”. There’s no McDonalds, there’s no Starbucks. “I always say I used to dodge bullets, now I dodge hipsters. Photo: Boyle Heights residents protest construction of new Verizon tower in front of community garden. Two of … But he’s gotten a lot more from the neighborhood than its convenient location. Art galleries there have faced anger from the community, and now protesters are opposing a new upscale coffee house called Weird Wave Coffee Brewers. If Barrales and her family lose their apartment in the future, there isn’t really anywhere for them to go, says Blaney. Boyle Heights has become a flashpoint in the gentrification debate. I ask if they’ll have the quinceanera now that their home is safe. A revolutionary mass organization combating & resisting gentrification in Boyle Heights The signs of gentrification are everywhere in Boyle Heights: first-time homeowners who moved from other parts of the city, a bunch of new art galleries, complaints of rapacious landlords kicking out low-income tenants and activists fighting back. Residents of the Northeastern Los Angeles neighborhood speak of both evils and benefits of gentrification, and many agree that Boyle Heights may soon experience the same phenomenon. We offer this special edition of Boyle Heats Beat to illuminate the issues. OUR neighborhood.”. Boyle Heights Activists Say Gentrification Is The Real Hate Crime. That is certainly the case in Boyle Heights, the mostly Latino, mostly low-income neighborhood just east of Downtown LA. Elmer, I was fixing a watch, and he said you need to pick it up, I’m closing on Friday. 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