LOS ANGELES — A change of this scale starts at the foundation. Multi-family home developer Christopher Mamian is transforming his childhood home into a 28-unit apartment building, which includes three units for ultra low-income families.

“It’s very bittersweet,” Mamian says. “I have a ton of memories in this house. Every time I walked into it, it was like I teleported into a different era.”

Mamian is pursuing this project for a whole host of reasons, but among them is his desire to help ease Los Angeles’ housing crisis, even if it’s by a small margin.

“Instead of there being one family here, living on a 14,000-square-foot lot, that would probably cost about $3.5 million to enjoy, we now get 28 apartments for families, three of which are for extremely low-income, and that is a better use of the land of this very precious area that is very walkable and has a ton of amenities,” Mamian said.

In LA, vacant land to build housing on is hard to come by.

One strategy city officials are using to increase LA’s housing stock, is approving projects in which older, smaller buildings and single-family homes are demolished, to make room for larger, newer projects that can house more people.

In LA’s plan to build more than 230,000 new units of housing by 2029, officials say more than 42,000 units are expected to be built on vacant and underutilized sites.

But this move sometimes comes at a cost.

Tucked away on a quiet street in Eagle Rock, just off York Boulevard are 17 rent-controlled apartments, where tenants like Celena Juarez and her mother Sally Juarez — a retired LAUSD teacher — have lived for most of their lives.

“From 6 years old, adolescent teenage years [to] early adult years. I’ve had my children here, so it holds all my memories, actually. It holds everything,” said Juarez.

Juarez, her mother and more than 40 other tenants are facing Ellis Act evictions, as their building is slated for demolition, to make way for a 153-unit affordable housing project that was fast-tracked through Mayor Karen Bass’ ED1 initiative.

The one- and two-bedroom units in the proposed project would all be offered at below market rate, providing affordable housing in a gentrified neighborhood in Los Angeles.

“Why would you put people on the streets to house people,” said Juarez, “It doesn’t make sense.”

Many of Juarez’s neighbors are retired, or on a fixed income and would struggle to find comparable housing in Eagle Rock or elsewhere in the city at the same rate they pay now.

LA City Council is looking into ways to protect tenants like Juarez. They recently asked the city’s planning department to draft a temporary ban on 100% affordable housing projects under the ED1 initiative, if the project would displace rent-controlled tenants. The ban would only apply to Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s district but has the potential to be expanded. However, since no concrete legislation has passed so far, tenants on Toland Way are still hanging in limbo.

As for Mamian, he agrees that some affordable housing should be preserved, but only if large-scale projects can be built elsewhere.

“The more developments we have like this, the more we can preserve the bungalow courts and the historic architecture that is charming and still endearing and still useful, he said.” “Much more so than this house was, as much as I loved it.”

And as bittersweet as this project is for him, he says he’s excited for what the future for this space has in store.