For the past ten years SAJE has been working to build urban land reform. We work in a part of Los Angeles that is large by organizer standards, but tiny with respect to the global nature of its problems. Our turf is South Central Los Angeles, or more specifically, the neighborhoods that are south of downtown and surround the Staples Center and the University of Southern California (USC).
The area known as South Central has recently been colonized by capital (or those hoping to attract capital), and in the spirit of all good colonizers, they have renamed it as (depending on whom you ask) the Figueroa Corridor, University Park, South Park, or "South Los Angeles" -- as though removing the word "Central" could erase the pain and conflict of the Watts Riots, the 1992 rebellions, and the current struggles over contested terrain.
Long-term community residents oppose USC Master Plan
Community leaders oppose inclusion of University Village into campus.
By Dan Loeterman
Pastor Brian Eklund has seen how the growing demand for housing near USC's campus has taken a devastating toll on parts of the surrounding community.
During the last decade, Eklund's St. Marks Lutheran Evangelical Church, on Vermont Avenue across from USC, has lost a quarter of its membership and has seen many churchgoers move away because they're unable to afford the rising cost of rent.
No-Contest Plea in L.A. Slumlord Case Owner gets probation, must make repairs for tearing down building around low-income tenants. By Susannah Rosenblatt,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer The landlord of a residential hotel near downtown Los Angeles who was accused of trying to drive out tenants by cutting phone lines, knocking down walls and ripping out sinks in the rent-controlled building pleaded no contest this week to 10 criminal counts, the city attorney's office announced Friday.
Joon Ho Lee, 47, was placed on probation for three years and ordered to repair the building in the 100 block of East 21st Street within a year, authorities said. Lee also must perform 200 hours of community service, undergo property management training and contribute $20,000 to an approved charity.
To most of us, it’s something that we don’t often think about in the abstract. ‘Home’ is just where we live.
Markie Anderson lived in the Morrison Hotel for eight years. He lived in a studio with a private bathroom on the fourth floor and while it wouldn’t have been much to most folks, for him it was home. He was one of the last people to move out of the Hotel after the tenants’ two-year struggle against the slumlord owners.
However, living in the Morrison Hotel and fighting untenable conditions caused by the slumlords were extremely costly to Markie.
When he moved into the Hotel, Markie was in a wheelchair. During the course of his eight years at the Hotel, he lost his left leg from an infection which he attributed to the unhealthy conditions of his building.
Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine
How slumlord siblings trashed the iconic Morrison Hotel
and how tenants fought back
By Ron Garmon
1969 was the year of Jim Morrison’s celebrated public obscenity in Miami, during which hundreds of flashing cameras failed to record the instant at Dinner Key Amphitheater when the singer flashed what legend suggests was a larger-than-average penis. The singer’s self-destruction paced that of the band he fronted as the Doors’ latest release, The Soft Parade, softly imploded.
A Robbie Krieger art project graced by his still-rousing number one hit “Touch Me” and some of Jim’s best sloe-eyed poetics on the title track, the band’s fourth album was a high-gloss misfire that puzzled their vast, vociferous fanbase. Morrison, a man with seismically shaky judgment in every other matter, then took over musical direction of the Doors and led them back to greatness.
So here's the good news about that: The developer, AEG, has acted with integrity, has lived up to the terms of the agreement, and, in 2005, joined forces with the Coalition to take on another developer that tried to evade the pact. Both the agreement and the Coalition have served as an example to others around the country and was recently featured in Tavis Smiley's best-selling Covenant with Black America
Residents of a building plagued by vermin and with holes in the walls seek to force owner to spend two nights there. By Jessica Garrison, Times Staff Writer
First, the landlord yanked the pipes out of their sinks. The Jimenez sisters put buckets underneath to catch the water before it streamed onto the floor.
Next, he stripped the facade from the outside of the building, exposing rotting boards and some gaping holes. He removed some windows, allowing cold air and sometimes pigeons into their rooms.
Their phone lines were cut, and gas and water service sputtered off and on. But even as rats and cockroaches ran wild in the walls around them, the three sisters, who, with their families, have each have rented rooms in the building for two decades, decided to stay and fight for their homes.
L.A. Cops Crack Down on Skid Row as
Gentrification Looms by Jessica Hoffmann
Fear and uncertainty pervade the streets of downtown Los Angeles’s Skid Row neighborhood, which has the highest concentration of homeless residents in the nation, as police activity in the area escalates.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), in conjunction with the mayor and city attorney, has stepped up its activity in the fifty-block Skid Row area just months after a federal appeals court called the city’s citations and arrests of people sleeping on sidewalks because they have nowhere else to go "cruel and unusual punishment." This month’s increased police presence comes in the midst of rapid gentrification of the area and a city-wide affordable-housing crisis.
People on the streets are "in a state of fear and apprehension," community organizer Rick Mantley said Wednesday after walking through the area with theLos Angeles Community Action Network’sCommunity Watch program.
What does ‘home’ mean to you?
