Mass Transition The Gold Line's challenge to our community By Steven L. Anderson

Northeast Los Angeles is at a pivotal point in its history. Over 120 years ago, Charles Lummis established a salon along the Arroyo Seco, bringing artists and intellectuals from the east to Los Angeles for the first time. The neighborhoods of Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Glassell Park, Mt. Washington and Lincoln Heights have since been a place that has been proud of its artists and local culture. Several hundred artists now make their homes and studios in the area, finding affordable space, kindred sprits and a network of supportive arts institutions.

This summer the Gold Line light-rail train will finally be in operation, after several years of construction and litigation. An estimated 30,000 riders per day will hurtle through time and space between Pasadena and Downtown L.A. The return of mass transit to the area brings some exciting possibilities. The train will reduce the daily commute by thousands of cars, and the Arroyo area will find less gridlock, cleaner air and more pedestrian-friendly areas. We can begin to undo some of the damage to the social fabric and the environment that our auto-centric culture has wrought for the last 60 years. But this new conduit of man and machine can also bring gentrification, and changes that could scatter the families, businesses and culture that make these communities unique and livable.

Tafarai Bayne, of L.A.'s Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) defines gentrification as a process that begins in "areas that have a history of massive disinvestment," which are "identified for intense redevelopment and investment" by government agencies looking for tax revenues and developers seeking high profits. "As development begins to come in, property values start to climb, and with them rents. Once affordable housing becomes unaffordable for those who lived there, gentrification has occurred."

Northeast Los Angeles certainly fits the profile of a community that took a hit from the "white flight" of the 1960s and '70s, when much of the city's white middle-class residents fled for the promised land of the suburbs. Industry then pulled up its roots due to the recession of the early '80s and to cheap labor abroad. The effects of this disinvestment is still felt today. The Figueroa Street Improvement Project, a recent survey of Highland Park merchants, found that a majority of the businesses along Figueroa do not own their place of business, are sole proprietors, and average only three employees. And capital is leaking from the area: Highland Parkers tend to spend less money in their own neighborhood than does the rest of L.A. Add to this the fact that only half of Los Angelenos own their homes, and we're looking at an area that is not what many would call "capital intensive."

The increasing number of cafés and restaurants in Eagle Rock, the area's affordable spaces, the new crackdown on the Avenue gangs and the Gold Line's quality-of-life panacea could give Northeast L.A. a hipness that could rival Silver Lake. And when all the new people come here to take advantage, many of us will be forced out.

Now I don't mean to throw out an "orange alert." The odds are just as good that development could continue to bypass our little homeland here. But if we look at other similar situations around the country and around the city, it will become clear that it is time for people to take action.

New York's SoHo district may be the mother of all gentrification. The concept of the artist's loft was born here as our favorite pop/minimalist/feminist art stars moved into the empty shells of industry in the seventies. Their spirits still live on in these lofts, auras effectively marketed as big sweaters in the GAP stores that now occupy SoHo.

Even worse is the state of the East Village. Bohemian bourgeoisie have co-opted the very real history of social and artistic dissent that made its home here for over a century. Squatters and the homeless were forcibly removed by the police in the late 1980s, and anyone who was not a stockbroker soon fled as well. Artists regrouped in the 1990s across the river in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, which is now in danger of gentrifying as well. You can run but you can't hide?

Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood in the 1980s was populated by Blacks, Latinos and Polish immigrants, where the police would just as soon break your arm as look at you. Artists were able to find affordable working space and established a viable artists community. Developers saw potential in the area, raising new condos and converting apartments. Three-flat apartment buildings saw their prices nearly triple in the late nineties, and artists and the poor were forced to move to the inner suburbs or nearby slummy areas. Wicker Park's swansong came in the summer of 2001 when MTV's *The Real World* brought their monoculture steamroller into the center of the neighborhood. A loose coalition of artists, activists and rabble-rousers (including yours truly) were able to disrupt their plans through spontaneous situationist-style actions. But it was too late to affect the gentrification process, as most affordable housing in the area was already gone.

The most drastic effects of gentrification has been in the internet boomtowns of the west coast. As dotcoms gobbled up urban space, the March 30, 2000 *Seattle Weekly* headline asked "Will the last artist to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?"

In San Francisco, a century's legacy of immigrants, leftists and artists was wiped clean within a few years. Rebecca Solnit follows the bubble's path of destruction through the city in her book *Hollow City*. The easy money and lavish spending of the internet boom cost the city 30 to 40 percent of its artist population.

E-businesses and condo developers preyed on the artist's live/work spaces--a well-intentioned but ill-fated attempt by artists to legitimize their practice though zoning laws. A majority of nonprofit operations in the city found their leases due to expire in 2000, and with rents increasing by as much as 600 percent, few were able to stay. The Mission District, which over the last thirty years had become a vibrant center for Latino and punk cultures, began losing its heritage as landmarks, murals and hangouts were ethnically cleansed by the runaway housing market. By the time the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project began calls for the defacement of SUVs, over 60 Starbucks franchises had taken hold in the city. Now that the boom economy has turned to bust, there is hope for San Francisco and Seattle. But at this moment, these cities are filled with more vacant spaces and more homeless people than ever before.

Los Angeles is no stranger to gentrification. Since the 1992 L.A. uprising, the steady influx of immigrants and the Clinton economy has helped to create a growing gap between the rich and poor. This has only increased the instability of L.A.'s neighborhoods, forcing changes in (formerly) working class and poor areas all over the city. Silver Lake and Los Feliz have seen rents and home prices skyrocket, and the fallout has begun to claim affordable housing in nearby Echo Park, Atwater Village and Chinatown.

Leimert Park Village, an urban enclave in L.A.'s Crenshaw area is enduring a similar problem. Activist Phyllis Battle's call for a rally to save the neighborhood describes a community that "...has stood synonymous with the voices of African American culture and art in Los Angeles. It is a place carved out by artists, musicians and poets--fought for in every note, beat, word and image." But the self-sufficiency and pride began to smell like profit to the forces of capital. The city government began to direct riot-recovery money and tax breaks for redevelopment to the area. Recently the police and building inspectors have been giving out more and more citations. Wal-Mart has laid plans to move into the neighborhood. Real estate speculator Russell Associates has just doubled the rents of locally owned shops, artist studios and The World Stage, a jazz and poetry performance space. Local activists see gentrification as just another tool for controlling minorities--to keep them consuming or to make them homeless, but never to create their own vision of community.

Another struggle against gentrification is in the areas around USC. These working class Latino neighborhoods have suffered from disinvestment over the past thirty years, but local groups have begun to see their efforts to improve the community reach fruition. But as the neighborhoods have gotten better, USC students who can pay more for housing have moved in. "We are seeing wide scale eviction, harassment of tenants and threats of INS and police," says Andrea Gibbons of SAJE. Recently, Over the past year, Norwood Elementary school has lost 150 students due mainly to evictions in the area.

To combat the forces of gentrification, SAJE has concentrated its efforts into a "Non-Displacement Zone," organizing tenants, defending against evictions, and advocating for the people of the community. SAJE also teamed up with Self Help Graphics and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics to organize the We Shall Not Be Moved project. Seven artists were selected to involve themselves in the local struggle and, working with a master printer, to create posters as a tool for reclaiming their neighborhoods.

In Northeast Los Angeles, it is not too late to hold "growth" accountable to the people of the community. As artists are often unjustly blamed for starting the process of gentrification, they should also realize that they do play a significant role in the future of their neighborhoods. Artists need to become members of their community and get involved in local grass-roots groups. Artists must begin to see that they are just as much of a stakeholder as the local homeless person, banker, gardener or grocer. Artists as regular people with skills and abilities to offer in the struggle.

Can we, as members of the community, use our talent of keen observation to look for changes in our neighborhood such as rising rents and property taxes, condo conversions, closing businesses or the arrival of corporate chain stores? Can we articulate abstract ideas like local power structures and global economics? Can we use our imagination to dream of a community where "growth" can benefit everyone in the area? Can we raise our voices and our hearts for the things we believe in? Yes, we can do these things and take action in the development of our surroundings. This is how the people of Northeast Los Angeles can keep the culture of our community alive, living through us and our efforts together.

Steve Anderson is an artist, co-publisher of *Cakewalk Magazine* and a Mt. Washington resident. For information and resources about the issues raised in this article, email: steve@cakewalkmag.com.

In many articles I read about gentrification, there seems to be this idea of the "privilege of the poor." It seems that writers believe that the poor hold a special place in the neighborhood, and that they're untouchable. That it's "their" neighborhood.

We hardly hear complaints when middle-class residents are pushed out by the wealthy, and the same writers who protest gentrification hardly raise a peep when middle-class residents are pushed out of their neighborhoods by crime, layoffs, plant closures, etc.

But when the poor are pushed out by those better off economically, then there is a great deal of noise.

Why are the poor privileged when it comes to a neighborhood's mix? Usually a bad neighboorhood didn't start that way. Why can't the middle-class residents who lived in Northeast L.A. return?

Please take a minute to think about what you wrote. Do you really think the poor are priveledged?
-Che

tryin to find the benifits of a mass transportation
system in a realitive perspective,especially
as it was some of the only open space in the
area 2 years ago(trying hard),most effected will
be pasadena and vicinity and think the "gentrification"
issue might be a little late there(extremely late)
but who knows,car owners are much more
likely to be doing any gentrification i think,and being
a member of the bus riders union I feel i will hopefully
be able to use this new system not just be over run by
it,but am not completely sure,the dialouge is good
though and all the flowers and animals that inhabited
its path just recently will be missed..........also
a few years prior to the ground breaking on this project
at the so.pasadena station there was a vacant lot
maybe the only one for miles that was hatilly walled off
(huge walls)for a storage space building,but i think
the property was upsurped for other reasons
(manly the real estate values and wealthy neighborhoods like near by san marino,-recent home of the jon birch society H.Q.) at the
expense of rather working class neighborhoods,
this is typical everywhere you find gentrification,
and also of a realization of class antagonizisms
(jon birch v.s. the gold line!) please respond

The battle against gentification started for me when I moved to manhattan in 1979 to live in NoHo, the realitors name for the Bowery. I had recently left a commune in Colorado and was attempting to reintegrate into the alternative urban world organising a political/cultural organization called Rock Against Raciscm. Lower manhaattan was still home to winos, CBGB's the Yippies, War Resisters League and the squats were close by in the lower east side. The Art scene was becoming the chic thing for investors, and Artists were seen as both victims and representatives of gentrification had come to that area. As the SOHOization of the rest of Manhattan was proceeding rapidly, I could not find a place I could afford and decided to try the west coast.
When I moved to San Francisco in 1980, I had hoped that I was going to a place that was still alternative lifestyle friendly. I discovered that the Haight was in the middle of a battle over that very issue. There were still plenty of collective houses. I found a place that was only $120 a month and you could participate in political and artistic alternatives without having to slave at a straight job.
The realitors and merchants were trying to chase out the street people (not the homeless created by Regan with his shifting of funds from housing to his military build up), the elderly and the black people, so that the new Yuppie class would move in. There was a major fight around a Bar "Achilles Heel" that was formerly a home for the elderly that were evicted to create this fern bar. For over 2 years every time the owner tried to open, his windows were bricked and until he hired thugs to beat up the resistors, he couldn't open.
There was a group called the Mindless Thugs, Anarchists who trashed real estate offices, military recruiting centers and merchants who actively supported the gentrification process. Things got so serious that the summer of 1980 was known as the Summer of Broken Glass in the Haight, mayor Feinstein put up rewards of $10,000 for info leading to the arrest of brick throwers and the merchants called the DA to meet with them. When he came a brick went sailing through the windows of the meeting place just as he was discussing how he was going to take care of the brick throwers. The merchants ended up offering a community center and funding for a place for the street people and promises to help the poor in the city before the mindless thugs and others stopped their campaign. It was a short lived victory.
I moved to LA in the early 90's and lived in Long Beach an inexpensive beach town at the time. I worked with the Food Not Bombs group there and something called the Caucophony Society, disgruntled artists and industry workers who enjoyed putting on elaborate hoaxes like fake UFO landings at UFO conventions and Mud People Shopping on Rodeo Drive. LA seemed to have room for everyone, But even LA has in the last half a dozen years become increasingly gentrified so that I can no longer afford the neighborhood I live in Santa Monica. When we had rent control there were plenty of low income people here. Once the Realitors gained power in the State Senate and House they passed the anti rent control legislation in Sacramento and now we have no control. The politicians have removed the local community's ability to legaly control the balance of people who could afford to live in a community. Now the marketplace has free reign, That means the rich control and we pay with no recourse but to vote with our feet.
There are only so many inexpensive places to go and the capitalists are deliberatly squeezing the market by not building low income housing. The FEDS have a fundamentalist Christian agenda to propagate the Single Family Seperate Houseing in Suburbia with all public spaces removed and controlled. All private spaces patroled and gated and all persons locked into debt and dependant on Christian Fundamentalist churches for social support as the remaining public services are removed for the latest version of the militarization of the country, now Homeland Security is the excuse.
If we still want to have space to explore social alternatives and not be herded into some kind of Fundamentalist Christian paradise, Think South Orange County and North San Diego County if you want to picture their ideal world. (I remember being sick one day and I drove from Irvine to Long Beach just looking for a safe place to pull over and sleep). The servants all in bantustans like Santa Ana, and TJ. Places like Echo Park, and Hyland Park will no longer exist. We have to fight back. That means taking an active stance. We need to make places we want to defend unhealthy for gentrifiers. Perhaps we need to revive the Mindless Thugs.

I live three minutes from the Gold Line stop , this train is going to be a good thing for the neighborhood. Right now the north end of the line will stop in East Pasadena, but will eventually go to Claremont in East LA County, the south end of the Gold Line will eventually reach into the East LA communites after passing through Union Station and Little Tokyo.

With stops like Chinatown and the Southwest Museum, the cultural influences will continue to further impact Los Angelinos in a positive way. Add to this the Taylor Yard park projects, and the expansion of the Metro Rapid system into the Northeast very soon on the 81, 94, 180/181 bus lines, the residents of the area have everything to gain in protecting against extreme gentrification. Some gentrification to a degree is a good thing, resulting in jobs and oppotunities and tax dollarss.

The residents of Eagle Rock/Highland/Mt Wash are a unique, outspoken and diverse group that will ensure a united, progressive vision for their community.

Here we go.....!!!

As a white phd student at ucla, a transplant from new york, living in the Fairfax district of LA, I no doubt represent a "gentrifying" interest -- as per this article's standpoint. This despite the fact that my work in Education and ecopedagogy represents a radical left line which includes Marxist analysis. This also despite the fact that while I'm 33 years old, my contribution to the economy is nil, and I have not earned more than 6000 dollars a year in over 5 years, when I earned 33,000 in NY once, with my prior employment record being nothing to brag about. Still, I no doubt would be a gentrifier -- and I think the point here is that "gentrification" in these terms is not just a category of class. But it includes race predominantly, as well as other categories of cultural difference.

My role as what might be called an "environmental educator" -- though I would reject that term myself -- in the urban sprawl and wasteland that is the Los Angeles area...a zone of development built around an entirely irrational model of criss-crossing highways, dense networks of streets and avenues, and without the commitment to mass transit of every kind required for a city of this size to be sustainable, healthy, and pleasant to live in for all...my role as an educator in this has me riding mass transit regularly and supplementing with my bike.

I find the busses, contrary to stereotypes from the "gentrified" element that I encountered upon first moving here, to not only be rideable, but generally as efficient as a one-person car ride through dense traffic. Cheaper too. And better for the city's ecology.

This is not to say that there aren't major problems with the buslines, and I ride primarily MTA so I will level my charge there. In this respect, I encountered voices from the Bus Riders Union and I think that they are correct and to be thanked for pushing politically for a greater commitment on the part of the city to fund, repair and increase bus service for poorer districts.

Yet, to the degree that the BRU or other organizations seek to prevent investment in a properly working subway line -- as is had by other major urban areas -- I cannot support such arguments, with a caveat.

My experience of the various color-coded train lines in LA has been positive. They work -- often better than the busses -- you can't beat the cost, and they are quick. Initially I rode the trains to see who was riding -- was it upper class whites pretending it was Manhattan, and utilizing a surburban-oriented model of mass-transit that was deflecting from the monies properly spent on proletariat busses?

My experience is, "No." In fact, it was members of the very same communities that I see representing the majority of the passengers on the busses. Predominantly Latino/Chicano and secondarily African-american. In fact, I saw less gentrifying white priv. on the trains than on the busses, far less. To me, this was a relief and thus I cannot condone fighting trains for the poorer communities.

However, the state is in a budget crisis and mass-transit needs to quickly become a much more favorable option for ALL LOS ANGELINOS, not just the working class. To the degree that there is a small kitty available of funds for the promotion and upkeep of the mass transit system in LA, then, I would counsel making sure that the bus system -- a system already in place throughout the city -- remains a priority. At such time as more monies are available for the upgrade and increased instantiation of rail transit throughout the region, this should then receive greater attention.

It is a shame that during the boom of the 1980s and 1990s that the city of LA did not find a way to implement the mass transit rail system and instead built more freeway lanes and sold more and bigger cars for one-passenger drivers w/ cell phones. It is a shame that the city was not better planned to begin with and is thus a hollywood spectacle, southern california garden of eden that is in fact a predatory capitalist ecological nightmare.

Still, there are the means here to move in another direction. Beyond the category of "gentrification," mass transit is right now a powerful counter-force against the trends that boomed LA for entertainment riches. Yes, it could be co-opted and the further implementation and upkeep of the system has to be as thoughtfully planned as we wish the city had been to begin with. But neither busses nor trains are inherently evil.

We need to move away from the Manichean rhetoric of one vs. the other that the Bush administration promotes universally. Instead, we need to have a democratic commitment to the transit technologies available and think together about how they can help to make the city a better place in which to live.

As a seven year plus Mt. Washington resident with on-going concerns about the Gold Line, I have demonstrated against the problems the train could bring to our community, against voices that have called these concerns elitist. The train was for the people of North East LA without other forms of transit, we were told, and of course that's true. In addition, it's for the planet, since--as we can all see--we MUST wean ourselves from our addiction to automobiles and oil, particularly in a city that can probably boast the highest rate of gasoline consumption on earth. Shame on LA that it doesn't have good rapid transit throughout the city! My concern, as a Gold Line demonstrator, however, has been that the train be constructed and operated in a way that provides an incentive, not disincentive, for other areas of Los Angeles. Only time will tell on that one. Once again it's been the people against big bucks.

As to gentrification, I think it's true that as the city becomes better unified through transit, people of various income levels will find it easier to move into areas once written off as the hinterlands--a good as well as bad thing. I have heard Los Angeles described as the most racially segregated city in America. We get in our cars and drive to our enclaves and turn our backs on each other. If we can ever get out of our automobiles, we may be able to change that, which will mean increased diversity, both racially and economically. There's no way of stopping that, and we also need to remember that 40 years ago, Highland Park was a lot more stable economically--what's wrong with bringing back some of that, to benefit everyone? It's hard to imagine the Figueroa corridor ever becoming Main St. in Santa Monica or even Silver Lake. On the other hand, I am in complete agreement with the writer--we all must be on guard against the kind of gentrification that pushes out long-time residents, and to do that, we must take an active role in the development of our communities. If anyplace has the ability to become the first truly diverse community of Los Angeles, it is North East LA. But only time will tell on that one too.

>> If anyplace has the ability to become the first
>> truly diverse community of Los Angeles,
>>it is North East LA. But only time will tell
>>on that one too.

I live in Orange County, please allow me to describe my immediate neighborhood.

My neighbors to the right are Mexican/Puerto Rican.
To the Left are Asians. Next house down on the Left - Middle Eastern. There are two black families on our street.

We all work for a living. Very few of us are 1st generation Americans. It has taken several generations for us to get here.

IMHO, the divisions you describe are more economic than racial in nature.

Re: Meyer

So untrue! The stories of middle class people being pushed around show up in the LA Times all the time, in the Real Estate section, and written up as "rising property values" and "defense layoffs create soft market". It's really just a question of reading between the lines, and applying some political perspective to what's happening.

Re: Gary Rumor
"The Art scene was becoming the chic thing for investors, and Artists were seen as both victims and representatives of gentrification had come to that area."

Yeah, so true. When people talk about "artists" it's code for "white"... not that all artists are white, but, as far as real estate is concerned, the only artists who count are white. And therein lies the dynamic -- white artists tend to produce for white customers, which translates into a mass audience. Art brought from the poor neighborhood is akin to the "import" of days past - a sign that the colonialist powers have tamed the wild frontier. The artist is, him/herself the object as well, the harbinger of civilization, the pioneer, the hip.

Re: Richard the planner

What's with the shit talking about LA? Typical liberal New Yorker, step off, please. There are only 2 cities like NYC - San Fran and NYC, and they're both like that because of the geographical constraints of water. To consider them some kind of norm in American cities is foolish.

The rest of what you say is true. All the insults LAs transportation suffers is primarily from Angelenos like myself who were raised in the suburbs. Yeah, the buses suck, if you're 9 miles from downtown!

Re: Judith

I can see Fig becoming like Silverlake. Silverlake used to look like Fig not too long ago. Also "economically stable" is a euphemism for "bourgie". And LA is not a segregated city, believe it or not. People who say it is aren't looking in the right neighborhoods. You're such a liberal, it ain't even funny.

Re: MadMaxim

I've been looking around my slightly middle class neighborhood, and in the poorer areas, and noticing a lot of "your kind" are moving in and raising the housing prices. Diverse, affluent, SUV driving, consumerist, anti-immigrant jagoffs. And I don't really like y'all, thanks very much.

I'm 2.5 generation, but, I like immigrants, fobs, what have you. I hate fob haters of all races. Go back to OC, or the IE or the midwest.

Re: everyone

I think there's different kinds of "gentrification" going on. There's the slow gentrification that's been going on in HP for a long time since the 1970s. There's the more rapid shift happening in places like Silverlake and Koreatown. Then, there's areas like the Artists District, the Brewery, and the Bank Building, which are a kind of institutionalized gentrification-by-artist. And there's the insanity that is the Medici and Orsini downtown -- walled condo fortresses for the rich.

There's also suburban densification and gentrification, where the cheapest, low income rentals in a suburb are razed and replaced with expensive high density 2-story stucco single family houses that sell for 350k to 600k each. Dozens of these have gone up in my neighborhood. The people who move in are white collar SUV/Seadoo/BMW jagoffs moving in from the IE or OC.

IMHO, the only really corrosive gentrification is when it all happens so quickly, and the invaders strut around like *their* standard of living is being lowered by the tacky habits of their "new" neighbor (who has been living there 20 years longer than the interloper) so they call the cops on the poor sap, or oganize to impose some new "laws" about doing an oil change in the driveway.

You know the kind. No respect for the residents. I say, go ahead and buy them out, but, maybe you should wait for them to die or figure out a way to jack up the price some, you know?

Hey, at least he gets to sell out. In the poorer areas like Highland Park, so few people own the houses that the poor people there won't get to cash in on the local land boom. Kudos to the factory worker or waiter who sells the 80k shack for 250k, I say, but, what a bummer if the guy is renting from some greedy tightwad absentee landlord who won't let his "income property" go back into the housing market. (You want to know who makes a ghetto a ghetto? Read some Iceberg Slim novels and know this -- it's greedy middle class people putting the squeeze on the poor and keeping properties off the market.)

What can anyone do? The properties are individually owned, and the owners are free to sell. I think the best you can hope for is for non-jerks to move in and settle for a decade or so. At least some poor kids might benefit from middle class folks being around, and maybe some middle class people will learn to not be so prejudiced about the poor, in this poverty-hating country of ours.

johnny jagoff - from the caucasian-free zones of the 626