Empowering LA Chinatown: Co-Creating a Path to Community Ownership

Affordable housing and homelessness

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

LA Chinatown residents are facing an increase in rent, evictions, landlord harassment, and landlord negligence. The affordable housing stock is rapidly decreasing as residents are forced out and properties are redeveloped as market-rate housing. While many residents have been fighting to remain in their homes, these efforts are just one piece of the puzzle - as eviction fights grow in number, they have led to pervasive burnout of tenant organizers and advocates. In search of a long-term sustainable solution to prevent displacement and gentrification, a group of intergenerational community members established the LA Chinatown Community Land Trust (“LACCLT”) to acquire existing stock, preserve affordability for legacy residents, and collectively oversee property management. More broadly, LACCLT also strives to promote a healthy built environment including accessible/safe walkways, public green spaces, and community-serving amenities such as access to fresh groceries/health services.

During the first few years of development (2021-2023), LACCLT focused on becoming an incorporated organization in order to establish the legal structure needed to run the organization with accountability and transparency. We established our first official board and also are in the process of updating our bylaws to guide our work. During this time, we have also been developing relationships with local stakeholders including grassroots housing justice organizers, tenant associations, long-term civic organizations, and elected offices. Through these deep conversations and the experiences of our members, we are very aware of the various issues that the community faces. The community is losing affordable housing as properties are sold to large developers, more market rate housing is being built that is financially out of reach for most of the community, and small business and amenities are being lost every year. LACCLT currently faces a capacity gap in our prioritization of potential real estate opportunities to develop/preserve affordable housing. While individuals have shared property sale opportunities with us, we are in need of a prioritization strategy to ensure we are centering the needs of the community rather than taking on every single project that passes our desks. The LA2050 grant will allow LACCLT to develop a full 5-year strategic plan and implementation roadmap needed to continue moving our mission forward in a focused, community-informed manner.

The housing and affordability crisis is present throughout all of LA County and the City of LA. On its face, it doesn’t seem like supporting a single community would reap benefits for the rest of the County, but in fact, the CLT movement has been blossoming across the county, state, country, and even continent. Across LA, sister CLTs like Beverly-Vermont CLT, TRUST South LA, El Sereno CLT, and Liberty CLT have been growing, and CLTs across Chinatowns in Boston, Toronto and others have been both starting and maturing. Supporting the development of the LA Chinatown CLT would contribute to a community-centered movement of self-determination and ownership specifically focused on working class and low-income residents living all over the County of LA. This momentum also makes the possibility of creating a CLT more viable for other communities in LA County and provides hope and power to those living specifically in Chinatown.

We are proposing a strategic plan that is co-created with the community, entailing a 12-month process across 3 phases: 1) assess current opportunities and community priorities, 2) undergo visioning sessions to develop/refine our mission, values, and goals, and 3) develop a roadmap for how to operationalize these opportunities and goals. Please refer to Q#11 to see the key metrics and deliverables we hope to track in each phase of our timeline. While we have close ties with housing justice, mutual aid, and small business advocacy organizations in Chinatown, the strategic planning process will expand the breadth and depth of our community engagement efforts. The LA2050 grant will additionally support the advancement of our organizational capacity - providing access to market research tools and expertise that will result in a real estate development strategy aligned with the community’s priorities as identified in the strategic planning process.