Real estate developers have drawn a bullseye around many of the most historic neighborhoods in Los Angeles, where they are displacing working class tenants, demolishing naturally occurring affordable housing, and getting parcels rezoned to build out-of-scale new projects that nobody who lives in these communities can afford.
They are aided in this harmful work by elected officials and civil servants operating under the shadow of a massive Federal racketeering investigation. Most of these property sales, land use hearings, evictions and demolitions happen quickly and are only observed by members of the “city family” and a small community of tenants’ rights advocates and historic preservationists.
But every once in a while, the forces of destruction target a Los Angeles landmark that’s so significant, the whole world takes notice.
by Kim Cooper, The Esotouric Blog
Full story here.