Rooted Resilience: Community Ownership in Chinatown

Affordable housing and homelessness

Central LA

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

Forged through waves of displacement and rebuilding (including its 1930s demolition for Union Station), LA Chinatown endures as a vital center of immigrant life, culture, and community—despite decades of systemic exclusion and economic hardship. It has long served as both a gateway for new arrivals as well as a lasting refuge for monolingual elders, undocumented tenants, and low-income families. Today, this diverse, working-class population (including Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Latinx communities) faces escalating threats from property speculation, landlord harassment and negligence, and consistent underinvestment; tenants are pressured constantly by predatory buyouts, illegal evictions, and unsafe living conditions. Over 29% of households earn less than $25,000 a year, but average monthly rents have soared to $2,400—burdening an already vulnerable community. Without intervention, Chinatown’s legacy of immigrant belonging and intergenerational stability is at risk.

LA2050 funding will address displacement in two interconnected ways: 1) Preventing it now, supporting the acquisition of 729 Yale St, where 5 working-class families face eviction; 2) Investing in long-term solutions, building the capacity and infrastructure needed for residents to shape a more just and thriving neighborhood.
This grant will support expert-led workshops on cooperative housing, collective governance, and affordability pathways—tailored for residents new to shared ownership—along with 1:1 coaching, stipends, food, and interpretation to ensure full and equitable participation. It will also support critical due diligence, including assessments, inspections, legal review, and translation of technical findings to ensure tenants are informed at every step. These predevelopment costs are typically required up front and must be covered well before acquisition financing is secured, making early-stage funding essential to getting community-driven projects off the ground.
Equally important, the grant will fund staffing and systems for community engagement and property stewardship, development of accessible multilingual political education materials, and facilitation of resident-led planning. This infrastructure is essential to growing tenant leadership and anchoring a long-term vision for community ownership—one that starts with keeping people housed and expands to include community-driven services, gathering spaces, and long-term cultural sustainability in Chinatown.

Though focused in Chinatown, LACCLT is part of a broader movement to build tenant power across LA County. In the short term, LA2050 funding will help keep 5 families housed and welcome 2 households into permanently affordable units, ensuring working-class residents can continue to claim space in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.
But our vision goes beyond one building. We’re investing in the infrastructure and organizing needed to move from survival to community-led thriving. Through political education tailored to residents’ lived experiences, we’re building tenant leadership and equipping residents to shape the future of their neighborhood.
To us, community means a diverse, multigenerational group united by shared values and mutual concern, and thrives when basic needs—housing, food, safety, and well-being—are met. This work lays the foundation for a Chinatown where residents can stay, and where others are drawn to a welcoming, inclusive neighborhood rooted in belonging and care.