In December 2018, Hillside Villa's 30-year affordability covenant ended, opening it up to rent increases that would level its prices to the current harsh housing market value - prices that leave tenants like CPAF community member, Shao, and her mother hanging on the precipice of eviction, moving away, or becoming homeless.

According to Shao, "I began volunteering as an organizer around January of this year because of the large rent increases that my neighbors in my apartment complex received, notices of large rent increases that threatened their displacement from their homes.

Many of my neighbors have been longtime residents who have lived here for decades and it was unfair to me that just because the housing market had changed, their housing situation would have to change too even though they were working-class people whose income change did not catch up with rising housing prices.

This organizing work is important to me because everyone should be housed. Chinatown is an ethnic but also racially diverse immigrant working-class community and in order for us to survive, we must be able to call this place home."

Shao and her neighbors have been featured in the both the LA Times and LA Magazine this summer.

Read more here: https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-chinatown-apartment-evictions-20190622-story.html