LOS ANGELES — Another new development planned in Highland Park has several community groups banding together to fight what they are calling direct and indirect displacement across Northeast Los Angeles.
This community was once known as the “Beverly Hills for Latinos.” Now, the Hispanic population in Highland Park has dropped by about 20% and the people who were born and raised there say gentrification and new developments are displacing them.
John Urquiza started as a photographer documenting the struggles of the community facing gentrification in Northeast Los Angeles, but over time, the stories started to change him.
“The folks that I worked with out there and telling stories with, they’ve made it real,” Urquiza said.
It all came to a head back in 2015. The year Urquiza calls the peak of gentrification and displacement in Highland Park.
He shows pictures he took of the homeless sweep of 75 encampments along the Arroyo Seco River. Many who were living in the encampments, Urquiza said, were evicted previously from nearby apartments that were purchased and renovated in and around Highland Park.
Then, Urquiza watched as nearly 60 Latino, working-class families were evicted when a developer named Gelena Wasserman bought the Marmion Royal apartment complex not far away.
At that point, Urquiza knew he had to get more involved.
“I thought the Arroyo Sweep that I saw in the Arroyo Seco was probably the worst thing I’ve seen, and then I went through this whole process with the Marmion tenants. I mean, we were there a whole year, organizing and helping,” he explained.
But in the end, they lost the court case and the families who couldn’t pay the $1,000 rent increase were kicked out.
It was direct displacement, Urquiza said and now it’s happening again, indirectly, with the same developer planning to build a new apartment complex on Avenue 64.
Spectrum News tried to reach that developer, Gelena Wasserman, for a comment, but didn’t get a response. In the past, she has stated this development would be ideal for extended families.
“There are almost 1,400 rental units that are gonna be affected by this,” Urquiza explained. “This is gonna artificially inflate the neighborhood rental rates and that rental rate is gonna push people out.”
Urquiza is now considered an activist and an organizer as part of the Northeast Los Angeles Alliance. They’ve joined forces with several community groups to try to stop this development and several others just like it across the region.
At a Lincoln Heights overlook, they held a planning and development community speak out to discuss the devastating effects.
Eva Garcia was there to share her story. She’s a street vendor from Mexico, but has lived in Boyle Heights for 20 years. Garcia got involved in the housing fight after she said she was harassed and pushed out of her apartment during the pandemic.
“It’s not fair that I’ve run into people that live in their cars,” Garcia explained in Spanish. “Kids that wash their faces in the parks. This cannot be continuing anymore.”
Urquiza points to several areas in the immediate vicinity that are in danger of further development, saying that city and the developers are essentially shutting the community out and building whatever they want.
But he said with the struggle comes a solidarity to preserve the land and the housing that should be a human right.