A few years ago, investors bought the Koreatown fourplex where Mary Carmen Martinez had lived for nearly 20 years and tried to evict the tenants.
Martinez, who works at the restaurant, and her neighbors decided to fight to stay, posted a sign in their window that read “No Cash for Keys,” and went to court together to sue their neighbor’s eviction. Appeared in court.
She knew how important rent-controlled apartments were to working people and how her modestly sized apartment helped her live in Los Angeles. When her children were babies, they could crawl safely and didn’t get cramped like they used to. And her mother was able to live with her and help take care of the children while making ends meet.
The apartment, she says, “is my life.” A life of struggle, of want, of living, of working. ”
After working with the nonprofit that purchased the building, she and her neighbors found success thanks to persistence and a little timing. Now they are in the process of owning the property themselves, but they have promised to keep the price affordable and never make a huge profit from it.
If it goes well, Martinez, 56, said, “I hope it goes well. “Just having a safe home will make me feel like I’ve accomplished my goals. If my kids need a place to stay, this is a place they can come to with peace of mind. For me, it’s about making money.” It’s more important than earning money.”
“As a single mother, I never dreamed I would be able to own something like this,” Mary Carmen Martinez said. “With three kids and my salary, it didn’t feel possible to me.”
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
For so many Angelenos, owning a single-family home and building wealth through stocks is a dream. But advocates, who have long seen soaring housing costs make ownership increasingly unaffordable and tenants continue to struggle with soaring rents, are taking a different approach to homeownership. He insists that the time has come.
They want working-class tenants to own the building, ensure stability, and ensure that the working class makes decisions about how the building is run, what repairs are done, monthly expenses are paid, and everything else that happens. I would like to be a tenant of But they also want to keep them permanently affordable, which means giving up the potential for huge profits on sales.
Until now, efforts to get these ideas off the ground have been limited by funding. Buying one small building in LA can cost millions of dollars. But the city’s “mansion tax” is expected to change that, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, about a third of which could be earmarked to support “public housing.” . Such projects require tenants to play a meaningful role in the operation of the property, encourage tenant ownership, and include covenants that keep the building affordable in perpetuity.
“Often the hardest part of making it happen is finding the funding to make it happen. We have the vision, we have the program, and now we have the We have the money,” said Joe Donlin, director of the U.S. House LA Coalition, which brought ULA to the vote.
The initiative, drafted by renters’ rights groups, homeless service providers, affordable housing nonprofits and labor unions, aims to strengthen public housing across the city and will invest 22.5% of its funding. The purpose is to allocate it to “alternative housing models that allow residents to secure housing.” The right to participate directly and meaningfully in decision-making regarding the operation and management of the project. ”
“Where feasible and desirable, projects shall include resident ownership,” the law states.
Another source of funding for such projects would be part of the legislation that supports tenant ownership in projects that buy older buildings and renovate them into affordable housing, as in Martinez’s case. . The law allocates an additional 10% of funding for such efforts.
Yet another funding pot will allocate millions of dollars to create training, education and other support to get the project off the ground.
The tax has raised nearly $440 million since its introduction last year, according to city data. Although the amount was lower than backers expected and the law still faces challenges in court, it creates a new and important pool of funding for projects across the city and housing advocates say they will soon I would like to start using it in the future.
Experts say the project’s novel approach could make it difficult to secure the federal and state funding that traditionally provides most support for affordable housing developments. say:
“If you’re trying to develop a model and all the federal and state resources are aligned to support a different model, it can be very difficult,” said UC Berkeley’s Turner Center for Housing Innovation. says Sarah Karlinsky, director of research at. .
In Los Angeles, the city would likely need to invest a significant amount of money per unit to make the project work, she said.
“In times of limited resources, that can be very difficult,” she says.
Supporters argue that the public housing model they are introducing to the city is nothing new, pointing to similar programs in place in New York City, Singapore, Vienna and elsewhere. But he says it just doesn’t have much support in Los Angeles.
But the initiative is gaining popularity across the country. Earlier this year, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) introduced federal legislation to promote public housing, arguing that “waiting for the private market alone is not enough. I can’t do it,” he insisted. Solve the housing crisis. ” A state law approved last year commissioned a study to analyze the opportunities and obstacles to increasing public housing in California.
At present, there is no single agreed definition of social housing, nor is there a single model for how it should work. But in Los Angeles, they argue that public housing should be permanently affordable and that tenants should have a meaningful say in governance and opportunities to own their properties. They also want to see new projects built on public land.
Supporters are looking to community land trusts to help guide the way.
Community Land Trusts (also known as CLTs) are nonprofit organizations that purchase real estate with the goal of keeping it affordable. The trust retains ownership of the land while selling or leasing the property itself to low-income tenants.
Tenants may own their apartment or part of the building. Equity is often capped so that if a person leaves, the building remains available for purchase by the next occupant.
Across California, land trusts are only a small part of the affordable housing market, although they have been on the rise since 2000. According to the California Community Land Trust Network, there were approximately 1,600 units in 29 community land trusts in the state in 2022. There were only a few projects like that in LA. But they received a boost in 2020 when Los Angeles County approved a $14 million pilot program for land trusts to buy and rehabilitate properties across the county.
The program resulted in the preservation of eight properties in the county, totaling 43 homes, according to a report commissioned by the progressive nonprofit Liberty Hill Foundation.
One of those buildings is a small Craftsman-style home not far from the University of Southern California, where Noe Herrera and his brother have lived since July 2018, paying about $500 a month in rent. I live in
A few years ago, Herrera approached the owner about the possibility of buying the property, knowing the price was probably out of reach. He was surprised to learn that the owners were interested in selling the house to Herrera and other tenants in the building. But he wanted to do it in a way that kept it affordable.
In 2021, TRUST South LA, a community land trust organization, closed a deal to purchase the land for $475,000 below market value using funds from the county’s pilot project. They ultimately plan to transfer ownership of the properties to Herrera and others through a resident-determined ownership model, such as a limited stock housing cooperative.
“These cases are rare,” said Oscar Monge, the group’s interim executive director. “However, it is important for us to emphasize that there are property owners who are trying to provide affordability to their tenants.”
Herrera, who works as a bartender, said he wished he could have owned the house outright and eventually profited from it. That’s the dream, he said.
But they also know they can’t afford to pay market rates. An injury a few years ago left him only able to work part-time. Low rent allows him to keep a roof over his head. Therefore, he said he understands the urgent need to keep housing affordable.
Mary Carmen Martinez says rent-controlled apartments have made it possible for her to live as a single mother in Los Angeles.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
In Koreatown, Martinez and her neighbors were initially skeptical when contacted by the Beverly Vermont Regional Community Land Trust. They had become close, banding together to oppose their landlord’s efforts to evict them by giving them cash in exchange for the keys. And they were worried about an organization claiming to want to help them by buying the building and returning ownership to them. But over the course of several weeks of meetings, they grew more confident in their work.
In 2021, the organization raised $1.6 million from county funds to purchase the property. Since then, the group has been working to renovate the dilapidated building, while Martinez and her neighbors have been working to form a nonprofit cooperative that could take ownership of the property. They named this building “Señoras,” which means “houses.” Almost all of the residents in this building are single mothers.
They created their own rules for how residents decided how much to contribute to a property’s repair fund, which repairs to prioritize, and how to handle disagreements. Martinez said he expects to take ownership of the building by next year. The land trust will continue to own the land.
Martinez said she now feels like she has a place to live the rest of her life.
“I know I won’t be on the streets in my old age,” she said.
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