Filed under: Analysis, Gentrification, Housing, Southwest
This article comes from Salvo Paper and features an editorial on the Tenants Movement In LA.
It’s well known that L.A.’s housing market is one of the most absurdly expensive in the country — rivaled only by the S.F. Bay Area, New York City, and Miami. In every one of these metropoles, working class renters are being pushed to, and beyond, their limits. Left with no other choice, many have already been forced to uproot their lives, often having to relocate dozens or hundreds of miles away from their jobs, communities, and histories.
The federal government’s housing authority, the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), considers anyone paying 30% or more of their income toward rent to be “cost burdened”. In Los Angeles, 57% of renters fall into that category, a number that is quickly rising.
To many Angelenos navigating the rental market, only having to pay 30% of their paycheck toward rent would likely feel like a godsend. According to a recent analysis of U.S. Census data published by Zillow, the reality is that working class L.A. renters are spending what amounts to 121% of their income on shelter. Of course, you can’t spend more than 100% of your income on something — the statistic simply translates to a vast number of renters being forced to rely on government subsidies.
Looking at the numbers, one should quickly come to the realization that this situation is untenable — something has to give. For L.A. residents, it’s most often been the overwhelming burden of cost that has given way to homelessness. Reports published by the L.A. Homeless Services Authority detail that the homeless population in the county has risen more than 37% since 2010.
As if things weren’t dire enough, rents continue to rise in the city. According to RentCafe, the average cost of an apartment inside of the city (as of Feb. 2019) is $2,371. This amounts to a 7% increase over last year. While the increase may be slightly skewed by new luxury units, things come into sharp relief when we realize that units in the $700-$1,000 range make up only 1% of ALL available apartments across the city.
The squeeze that we’re feeling isn’t going to let up any time soon. International real estate capital is pouring into the city and shows no signs of abating. Billionaires from around the world are sinking their money into development projects at rates of more than $1.5 trillion dollars per year, hoping to generate unprecedented returns, and displacing working people in the process.
It’s these conditions that are backing L.A.’s working class renters into a corner, forcing them to make a choice: pack up and leave, or, organize and fight. Increasingly, it seems tenants are choosing the latter.
***
With the winter sun setting behind them, around 25 organizers, tenants, and supporters walked up the narrow staircase leading to apartment #12 of the Waverly Complex. This Silverlake apartment belonged to the Peffer family; Melinda, Michael, and their young daughter, and had been their home for more than 17 years. Now it was being transformed into a battleground.
After discussing their plans for the march and selecting volunteers to fill various roles on the day of, Rene Alexander led the tenants in a chant to bring the meeting to a close: “Hillside Villa is our place, we will not be displaced!” bellowed up from the collective voice of those gathered, echoing off of the courtyard walls and into the night sky.
Two days later, the tenants gathered once again, though this time they were accompanied by dozens of their supporters. As more than 150 people streamed into the building, tenants stood and addressed the crowd to rally them before marching.
One highlighted that the indignities they’ve suffered have also fallen on their children, referencing a recent policy introduced by building management that barred children from running in the courtyard. This measure represented an especially cruel irony, given that the buildings’ owners had recently ripped out the only piece of play equipment available to kids on the property, leaving only a concrete slab and bits of twisted rebar in its place.
Tenant partisans from the Cinco Puntos apartments, where a similar struggle is ongoing, arrived and voiced their solidarity with the Hillside Villa tenants, vowing to fight together and win.
As the crowd’s energy peaked, a banner reading “Build tenant power!” was unfolded, signalling to those gathered that the march was beginning. Bypassers on the sidewalk in front of the building were likely caught off guard by the absolute deluge of bodies that began pouring out of the front doors of the complex.
For the next two hours, the march snaked around Chinatown, chanting “Vulture landlords, get a real job!” and “Chinatown escucha, estamos en la lucha!”. Fliers detailing the fight were handed out to those on the streets, and the march stopped in key locations to highlight where multi-millionaire and billionaire investors had been buying up property.
As the march returned to Hillside Villa, the air was filled with what felt like a mixture of joy and militant determination. Tenants vowed to continue and escalate the fight until their landlord agreed to meet them in good faith negotiations.
***
Class struggle isn’t a phrase that you’ll often hear outside of insular leftist groups, or when it’s not being haphazardly bandied about as a fear mongering buzzword by right wing pundits.
Our contention is that one doesn’t necessarily need a terminology to describe what’s clearly in front of their nose. As working people, we of course know that the most wealthy sections of our society are continuously amassing an untold amount of riches, resources, and power, all on our backs and through our labor.
In this way, our interests, and the interests of our bosses and landlords, fundamentally conflict.
We want to control our own destinies, to be able to do more than simply scrape by on the work that we do, and to live in dignified, comfortable, and safe housing. Those who we work for, or rent from, however, are only interested in extracting as much as they can from us. On the job this might look like having to work longer hours, at a faster pace, for the same pay. In our homes this may look like a greedy landlord jacking up rental prices when he or she sees fit.
In both cases, you’d probably disagree with the choices that they’ve made for you.
If you wanted a simple definition of class struggle, there it is. If you want an example of where actual, lived, class conflict is playing out in Los Angeles, look no further than the L.A.’s housing crisis. Wealthy investors are, as we’ve illustrated above, actively pushing the most vulnerable sections of the working class out of the city or onto the streets, all in service of extracting more rent from whoever has the means to take their place.
Research done by L.A. Tenants Union organizer Jacob Woocher, has helped to make clear the geographic component of housing and class conflict in Los Angeles. According to an October 2018 article penned by Woocher, published on knock-la.com, many of the wealthiest landlords participating in the wholesale eviction and flipping of L.A.’s working class neighborhoods, make their own homes in places like Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, Buena Park, and Palo Alto.
If we’re going to take class struggle seriously; if we’re going to take the blatant attacks on our ability to continue to live in this city seriously, it’s incumbent on us to get organized and leverage our own power.
Groups like the L.A. Tenants Union (LATU) are prime examples of where to start. LATU in particular was founded and continues to be run by and for tenants themselves. The organization has local sections across nearly the entire city, and meetings are free to attend.
The rising tide of the tenants movement in L.A. has so far seen some of the most militant, aggressive, and successful organizing campaigns around housing in the whole of the United States. Tenants of Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights launched, and subsequently won, a nearly year long rent strike to prevent increases. Tenants at the three building Burlington complex in Westlake Village, last year organized the largest rent strike in the history of Los Angeles — more than 80 families participated…and won.
If we want to make leeches like bosses and landlords go extinct, so that we can start to control our own lives, our own affairs – we have to begin by building our power as a class. Organizations like LATU, as well as the numerous independent tenants associations around the city, help us to do just this, in three three distinct ways. First, they help us to identify and strategize around our shared problems. Next, they help us to conceive of ourselves as a cohesive grouping with shared interests – a class. Finally, once both of the prior pieces are in place, these organizations help us to concentrate and exert our class power, in order to achieve our goals.
In building these institutions of class power, where we live, work, and go to school, we can one day gain full and democratic control of them — to do with them whatever we see fit.
Update: Feb 13, 2020: Email sent to IGD from Attorney
This article is generally concerned with the ongoing housing crisis here in Los Angeles, and as such, it examines a subject entirely deserving of discussion, assessment, and change. My client and one specific property of theirs have been singled out for rather extensive treatment within the article as a case study, with Steven Taylor being portrayed as one of the villains of the piece: he is apparently “ultra rich” (whatever that might actually mean) and “one of L.A.’s most notorious vulture landlords” (ditto – although this certainly does not sound favorable).
Meanwhile, the tenants in the Taylor property in question, and especially the Peffer family, are painted as hapless victims. However, as the attached files illustrate, in September 2018, Melinda Peffer illegally entered and trespassed upon Taylor property, and approximately three months later, a CA Superior Court jury found that Taylor did not evict the Peffers as retaliation for their actions, but simply as part of conducting lawful business as a landowner in the City of Los Angeles.
My clients were not charged with any criminal wrongdoing in this matter, and they even prevailed in the civil trial from which the attached Judgment document originates. Unfortunately for them, however, your article treats them as though they have already been tried and convicted of misconduct. In the wake of the publication of your story, Taylor’s reputation has suffered, and their relationships with potential investors and lenders have become impaired.
Therefore, given the damages that Taylor Equities continues to suffer due to the above-noted link remaining open and accessible, we respectfully request that you remove the associated content from your website, or in the alternative, that you redact my client’s name from the article.
Please feel free to contact me should you wish to discuss this matter. We look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
/s/ Steven A. SeinbergSteven A. Seinberg, Esq.
Attorney at Law
Photos by Erik Adams and courtesy of L.A. Tenants Union.
Additional reporting by Erik Adams.
Salvo is a quarterly print and digital newspaper, covering issues in the
greater L.A. area from a working class perspective.