Jose Parra remembers when the tables of his mom’s Boyle Heights restaurant were packed with musicians enjoying shrimp and pork stew, and there were occasional sightings of Banda El Recodo, a famous norteño band from Sinaloa.
“It’s a historic spot,” says Parra of the restaurant his family has run for 17 years.
Now as neighborhood rents go up, Parra, who lives upstairs with his mom and grandma, sees fewer musicians coming through for dinner, though the spot is still a neighborhood gathering place.
Boyle Heights is changing despite its reputation for a passionate and sometimes militant approach to preventing gentrification. The city faces a housing crisis, and only building more housing will stop it.
El Apetito, as well as the hair salon, independent bookstore, and residential tenants who share the same building now face a loss greater than the absence of local musicians. For the past year, they’ve stared down the kind of change that pushes working class people out of LA, and transforms the character of neighborhoods.
But unlike many other businesses that have closed or relocated, these tenants have used the city’s own processes to fight back — and scored some victories.
The landlord of this building on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue hopes to construct a 50-unit apartment complex with retail tenants on the site. Photo by Megan Jamerson/KCRW.
One day last fall, Parra’s mom, Rosa Garcia, received a letter from their landlord. The real estate company that had bought their building in 2020 had the permits it needed to demolish the structure, which houses five stores and three apartments, to make way for a larger building.
It wouldn’t happen immediately, but when it did, the family would lose their income and home.
“Los Angeles is full of people who live on the streets,” says Garcia, in Spanish. “We could be more of those people because the whole family depends on this place.”
At first, Garcia felt powerless. But it turns out there is one thing she could do — appeal the City of LA’s decision to approve the project. Under the leadership of Viva Padilla, who owns the independent bookstore Re Arte Centro Literario in the same building, the tenants created an informal coalition, and filed an appeal.
Viva Padilla stocks her independent bookstore Re Arte Centro Literario with bilingual materials and Chicano literature. Photo by Megan Jamerson/KCRW.
In an argument over a new apartment building or development, appellants typically make their case by listing a project’s adverse environmental or health effects, like its threat to a rare species, or how it would increase traffic and worsen air pollution.
Padilla wrote a 75-page appeal that made a different argument: If the project were allowed to move forward, she wrote, it would create a domino effect of displacement along the entire street, and the culture of Boyle Heights would be lost to gentrification.
“Small businesses are what makes a community what it is,” says Padilla. In addition to El Apetito's 53 years in the community, she points to the block’s long-time panaderia and check cashing place. “This is what keeps us fed [and] connected to the community.”
The owner of the property, Will Tiao, says he is not trying to displace Boyle Heights tenants or erase the community’s culture. Tiao’s been buying and managing commercial and multi-family properties in Boyle Heights for more than 10 years, while also joining community organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and Variety Boys and Girls Club.
“This neighborhood is changing. We want to be part and parcel of that change,” says Tiao, who with his wife, co-owns the real estate company Tiao Properties. “I understand that change is scary for a lot of people, and I'm not denying that. But I think that there are ways to make things change that are inclusive, and that's what we're trying to be.”
The new development would include 50 apartments — five reserved for very low-income tenants and 45 at market rate. The three families that live in the building now have the right to return when the project is finished. To keep commercial rent low, Tiao says, his architect designed the first floor as an open-air marketplace with vendor stalls.
In January, the East Los Angeles Area Planning Commission spent nearly five hours hearing the tenants' appeal to the project, Tiao Properties’ response, and comment from the community.
Padilla sat in the front row, while behind her community members held signs in protest of the project.
On the dais, Commissioner Gloria Gutierrez appeared to be swayed by public comments about evictions and displacement. “I think there's validity and real concern,” says Gutierrez.
Guttierez made a motion to grant the appeal, and it passed 3 to 2.
“It's crazy still, to think that it happened,” says Padilla. “I'm still processing.”
Part of the reason this decision is so significant is that state law says there has to be a measurable public health or safety issue to stop new housing projects. Gentrification and displacement don’t quite reach the threshold when there’s a housing crisis in LA.
In July, Tiao Properties sued the City of LA, alleging that denying the project based on potential city-wide gentrification impacts doesn't reach the legal threshold under the Housing Accountability Act.
And then in October, the California Department of Housing and Community Development wrote a letter to the LA City Planner asking them to reconsider the commission’s decision.
Things are already changing in the building. Padilla’s bookstore is closing in December. According to Tiao, she’s being evicted for not paying rent in April. Padilla says she tried to pay late but Tiao didn’t accept the money.
Still she says communities like Boyle Heights need to keep fighting developments. “Even if it sounds impossible, we have to go for it,” she says.
The fate of the building’s remaining tenants could be decided early next year. Tiao Properties’ lawsuit goes to trial in January. There is a precedent in favor of developers — one landlord won a similar suit in Crenshaw in 2020.
Meanwhile, Rosa Garcia anxiously awaits a decision.
“Let this nervousness that we experience every day be over, because it is not life, you do not live,” Garcia says in Spanish. “It puts pressure on you because you say, ‘When tomorrow comes, what is going to happen?’”