Speaker 1: This is Latino USA, the Radio Journal of News and
Speaker 1: Kurturre Latino USC Latin Latino USA. I'm Maria in no Hossa.
Speaker 1: We bring you stories that are underreported but that mattered
Speaker 1: to you, overlooked by the rest of the media, and
Speaker 1: while the country is struggling to deal with these, we
Speaker 1: listen to the stories of Black and Latino Studios United
Speaker 1: Latino Front, a cultural renaissance organizing at the forefront of
Speaker 1: the movement. I'm Maria Ino Jossan, Nobayan, Hey, Latino USA, listener, Gomostas,
Speaker 1: Here's a show de los Archivos from Futuro Media and PRX.
Speaker 1: It's Latino USA. I'm Maria Ino Hossan.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: What happens when you're moved out of your house for
Speaker 1: a highway in Los Angeles and then your neighborhood becomes
Speaker 1: a ghost town. We follow the families who are reclaiming
Speaker 1: these empty homes. In twenty twenty, as the state of
Speaker 1: California was issuing a statewide mandate to shelter in place
Speaker 1: during the COVID pandemic, about a dozen unhoused families began
Speaker 1: to occupy vacant homes in Elsino. In Northeast Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Producer Huiarocha is going to pick up the story from there.
Speaker 3: We found this house and we were so excited. We
Speaker 3: were screaming and like just overjoyed. We had community over
Speaker 3: that came and played music. We had some harocho, we
Speaker 3: had trancheas.
Speaker 4: That's MARTA's sculero. She's remembering the day she moved into
Speaker 4: her new house. It's a two bedroom on Sheffield Avenue
Speaker 4: and in Sereno, a residential neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: Martha's living room is filled with books and on one
Speaker 4: of the walls is a banner that reads housing for All.
Speaker 3: This is the first room we walked into, and when
Speaker 3: we walked into obviously it was empty, and now it's
Speaker 3: filled with furniture and.
Speaker 1: And him on my art and my rocks.
Speaker 4: That's Messi, Martha's eight year old daughter. Before Martha and
Speaker 4: her two daughters got to this house, they'd been CouchSurfing
Speaker 4: for a year and a half because of skyrocketing rents
Speaker 4: in the city.
Speaker 3: It was just really bad for us. I had to
Speaker 3: live in places that were cramped, even though family and
Speaker 3: friends tried their best to help us.
Speaker 4: Martha struggled to find affordable housing for months, but when
Speaker 4: the coronavirus pandemic began, finding her own place to live
Speaker 4: became even more urgent. So on March fourteenth of twenty twenty, Martha,
Speaker 4: with the help of community organizers, decided to occupy one
Speaker 4: of the many vacant homes in Elserno.
Speaker 3: A few neighbors there were really unsupportive. They would call
Speaker 3: us squatters.
Speaker 4: But Martha doesn't consider herself a squad. She calls herself
Speaker 4: a reclaimer because this house she's occupying actually belongs to
Speaker 4: the government. Today, the state owns about one hundred and
Speaker 4: forty vacant properties in this area alone.
Speaker 3: The state is literally hoarding these houses that are empty
Speaker 3: while people are suffering on the streets. How is this
Speaker 3: even possible?
Speaker 5: To me?
Speaker 3: That really became important to expose that and to let
Speaker 3: other people know, like this is not right and we
Speaker 3: shouldn't let this happen.
Speaker 1: Martha moved into the house on Sheffield Avenue in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: but the story of these vacant homes goes back many decades.
Speaker 5: In this century, America has become a nation on wils.
Speaker 5: We ride on wheels to work, to shop, to play,
Speaker 5: to go about any place we want to go. And
Speaker 5: therein lies the challenge building highways and roads and streets
Speaker 5: fast enough to keep up with a knee.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen fifty six, the United States undertook the
Speaker 1: largest infrastructure project of its time, building a forty one
Speaker 1: thousand mile system of highways that would unite the entire nation.
Speaker 5: These new highways will have a far reaching economic impact
Speaker 5: on the entire nation. They open up vast new areas
Speaker 5: for suburban living, and they encourage industry to disperse out
Speaker 5: of city congestion.
Speaker 1: Historically, in Los Angeles and all over the country, freeway
Speaker 1: construction has had a massive impact on housing. While this
Speaker 1: web of freeways allowed the sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles
Speaker 1: to grow, entire neighborhoods were demolished in order to construct
Speaker 1: those roads, and it was usually black and brown communities
Speaker 1: that paid the price. One of those communities was in
Speaker 1: El Cerno in northeast Los Angeles. Back in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, the California Department of Transportation bought the
Speaker 1: house that Marta lives in and hundreds of other homes
Speaker 1: in order to construct the seven to ten freeway. This
Speaker 1: is a story of a house in Elo and its
Speaker 1: residents past and present who have fought to make it
Speaker 1: their home. Back to producer Julia Rocha.
Speaker 4: Driving on a freeway in Los Angeles will get you
Speaker 4: from point A to point B, but if you take
Speaker 4: the scenic route, you get to see the personality of
Speaker 4: each neighborhood. The East Side of LA has been a
Speaker 4: historically immigrant and LATINX area, intersected by almost every major
Speaker 4: freeway in the county. If you drive north, you'll get
Speaker 4: to Edo, which sits at a crossroads between two worlds,
Speaker 4: nestled between the working class neighborhoods of the East Side
Speaker 4: and the white picket fences of wealthier suburbs like Pasadena.
Speaker 4: Edo's main street, Huntington Drive, is bustling with restaurants and
Speaker 4: stores decked out in bright murals. According to the most
Speaker 4: recent census data, ed Serno is eighty one percent Latino
Speaker 4: and mostly lower middle class. The neighborhood's residential streets are
Speaker 4: lined with rows of modest, single family homes.
Speaker 6: My first impressions were, this is what a neighborhood looks like.
Speaker 6: On TV.
Speaker 4: That's Michelle Chavis. She was thirteen years old in nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty six when her family was looking to move into
Speaker 4: a bigger home. Michelle's mom was a file clerk and
Speaker 4: her dad was a construction worker. At the time, Michelle,
Speaker 4: her parents, and her younger brother Jamie were all living
Speaker 4: in a one bedroom apartment in rose Hill, a residential
Speaker 4: area just a few miles northwest of Et Serno.
Speaker 6: A pretty bad neighborhood and originally grew up in. You
Speaker 6: stayed in your house and made sure your doors were
Speaker 6: locked because it was not safe.
Speaker 4: A single family home had never been an option until
Speaker 4: Michelle's mom heard about an affordable rent program in the
Speaker 4: neighborhood of Essida. It was run by the California Department
Speaker 4: of Transportation, better known as Caltrans. Back in the sixties,
Speaker 4: Caltrans purchased hundreds of homes in En Serno, Alhambra, and
Speaker 4: Pasadena in order to demolish them and construct the seven
Speaker 4: ten Freeway. The freeway began at the port of Long Beach,
Speaker 4: one of the nation's busiest sites of international trade, and
Speaker 4: connected it to the greater city of Los Angeles. By
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty four, Caltrans built twenty three miles of the
Speaker 4: twenty seven and a half mile freeway route, demolishing hundreds
Speaker 4: of houses on the east side, But right before the
Speaker 4: construction reached at Serno, the project was halted because of
Speaker 4: community backlash from the neighboring suburbs. While the agency waited
Speaker 4: for construction to be approved by the legislature, Caltrans began
Speaker 4: renting the homes it had purchased. At the point that
Speaker 4: Michelle's mom was looking to rent a home in inl Serno,
Speaker 4: the construction had been in a legal limbo for over
Speaker 4: a decade. She filled out an Apple location for the
Speaker 4: Affordable Rent program, and when she found out she'd been accepted,
Speaker 4: a Coltran's employee gave her a tour of the houses
Speaker 4: in Asino. Michelle still remembers what it was like to
Speaker 4: walk through the neighborhood for the first time.
Speaker 6: No bars on the window. That's the first thing I
Speaker 6: think my brother and I noticed, just walking through and
Speaker 6: seeing grass. There were people sitting on their porches. Nobody
Speaker 6: sat on their porches where I grew up.
Speaker 4: After the tour, Michelle's parents picked out the house they
Speaker 4: liked best, a two bedroom on Sheffield Avenue.
Speaker 6: Moving to the Sheffield House was actually like an amazing
Speaker 6: dream because I was getting my own room. We had
Speaker 6: a living room, we had a separate dining room, and
Speaker 6: then we had a fenced yard. It was like we
Speaker 6: hit the jackpot.
Speaker 4: Michelle remembers walking through the house with her brother the
Speaker 4: day her family moved in. She recalls how a little
Speaker 4: narrow area by the kitchen caught their attention.
Speaker 6: We were like, oh my gosh, what is this for?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 6: My dad was like, it's for a washer and dryer,
Speaker 6: and we're like, oh my god, does that mean we
Speaker 6: don't have to go to the laundromat anymore. I think
Speaker 6: that was my brother and my dream.
Speaker 4: But soon their honeymoon phase came to an end.
Speaker 6: What we started noticing is when bigger things would break,
Speaker 6: something with the electricity, something with the water. My parents
Speaker 6: weren't getting the response you're supposed to get when you're
Speaker 6: in a rental, and the sentiment was echoed through many houses.
Speaker 6: They're like, Oh, don't even bother calling because they'll either
Speaker 6: take a month to fix it, or they won't get
Speaker 6: fixed at all, or they're going to tell you they
Speaker 6: lost your report.
Speaker 4: As the months went on, the family noticed there was
Speaker 4: no ventilation in the kitchen. There was a leak in
Speaker 4: the plumbing, the garage door didn't open, the phone jacks broke.
Speaker 4: Michelle says, they tried to file a report.
Speaker 6: Each time they're like, oh, well, you have to call
Speaker 6: this number, call that number, leave a message, and that
Speaker 6: would go on for like a couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: Michelle was only a teenager back then, but it was
Speaker 4: becoming clear that something was wrong.
Speaker 6: I mean, bottom line, Caltrans they were slim lords. They
Speaker 6: did not know how to be landlords. There were business
Speaker 6: people working in a government office.
Speaker 4: Then one day, when Michelle was in high school in
Speaker 4: the early nineties, she went to debate club and the
Speaker 4: topic was Caltrans versus the neighborhood in the battle to
Speaker 4: build the seven to ten freeway. It was that day
Speaker 4: that she understood why her landlords were a transportation agency.
Speaker 6: I started learning in school about the Caltrans' homes and
Speaker 6: about the seven to ten extension freeway debate and the
Speaker 6: fight between the neighborhood, and I'm like, wait, that's my neighborhood.
Speaker 6: I didn't know that.
Speaker 4: The two sides went something like this. Caltrans wanted to
Speaker 4: finish the freeway because the residential areas along the seven
Speaker 4: ten were booming and traffic was worse than evers of
Speaker 4: Etceerino South Pasadena and Pasadena didn't want a highway running
Speaker 4: through their neighborhood. For the debate, Michelle took the side
Speaker 4: of those against the extension and argued that destroying people's
Speaker 4: homes was too high a price for improving the flow
Speaker 4: of traffic. What Michelle didn't realize until that day was
Speaker 4: that this debate was not only happening in her classroom,
Speaker 4: it was also happening in the state government, because Caltrans
Speaker 4: was still fighting in court to continue building the Seven ten.
Speaker 6: I brought that home to my mom, and she wasn't
Speaker 6: familiar that we would be evicted maybe soon for this
Speaker 6: freeway extension.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: It was kind of eye opening to even some of
Speaker 6: the neighbors are like no, like this isn't going to happen.
Speaker 4: In her neighborhood of mostly low income Mexican American and
Speaker 4: immigrant families, Michelle realized that many of her neighbors didn't
Speaker 4: know that Caltrans was still planning to move forward with
Speaker 4: the freeway project.
Speaker 6: Sadly, a lot of older people that lived in the neighborhood.
Speaker 6: It was parents who were not highly educated and couldn't read,
Speaker 6: so their kids were the ones reading things.
Speaker 4: Because Michelle's mom couldn't read very well, she didn't know
Speaker 4: that the housing contract she signed gave Caltrand's the legal
Speaker 4: power to evict the family if the seven to ten
Speaker 4: extension was approved. Michelle wondered if there was a way
Speaker 4: to ensure that they would be able to stay in
Speaker 4: their home.
Speaker 6: So I wrote the assembly member at the time, and
Speaker 6: he wrote me back and he informed me of some
Speaker 6: marches and he thanked me too for volunteering my time
Speaker 6: to fight against this freeway extension. The first rally we
Speaker 6: went to it was in South Pasadena. We started marching
Speaker 6: down the streets and people started joining with just signs
Speaker 6: that had like the seven to ten and the line
Speaker 6: across it. It was very empowering.
Speaker 4: Looking around the rally, Michelle was surprised to see that
Speaker 4: she and her friends were some of the only Latinos
Speaker 4: and also some of the only cal Trans tenants.
Speaker 6: There was a lot of Caucasian people from the more
Speaker 6: pricier houses up in South Pass because the homeowners around
Speaker 6: there didn't want a freeway, you know, for them, it's
Speaker 6: going to bring down their housing prices.
Speaker 4: Michelle was beginning to understand One of the biggest reasons
Speaker 4: as Sereno hadn't been bulldozed was because the residents in
Speaker 4: South Pasadena and Pasadena knew that if construction went through
Speaker 4: as Serino, their communities would be next. And even though
Speaker 4: as Serno would be the most impacted by the extension,
Speaker 4: it was the interests of wealthier homeowners that carried the
Speaker 4: most weight and that really left a mark on Michelle.
Speaker 6: I feel it helped me in really deciding what I
Speaker 6: wanted to major in in college, because I wanted to
Speaker 6: help people like my parents, like my neighbors. And I
Speaker 6: do believe that Caltrans know that the people that they
Speaker 6: ran into in the eighties nineties, they were low income
Speaker 6: families who were looking for a better life for their kids,
Speaker 6: and they took advantage of that.
Speaker 1: Coming up on Latino USA, El Serno's battle with Caltrans continued,
Speaker 1: stay with us, not hey, We're back, And before the break,
Speaker 1: we were listening to the story of Michelle Chavez. Her
Speaker 1: family was renting a house from the California Department of Transportation.
Speaker 1: Since she was a teenager, Michelle had been advocating for
Speaker 1: her family, protesting the construction of a freeway that threatened
Speaker 1: to demolish her entire street. But this was only the
Speaker 1: beginning of her family's fight to stay in their home.
Speaker 1: Back now to producer Juja Rocha.
Speaker 4: After seeing the disparities her community faced, Michelle left ear
Speaker 4: said I Know in nineteen ninety one to study political science.
Speaker 4: She went on to work in local guy and in
Speaker 4: two thousand and seven she moved to Washington State, where
Speaker 4: she lives today. Although she no longer lived in Los Angeles,
Speaker 4: Michelle never stopped helping her mom fill out the cal
Speaker 4: Trans paperwork. Then, in twenty twelve, Michelle got a desperate call.
Speaker 4: Her mom had received a notice that she needed to
Speaker 4: reapply for the Affordable Rent program, otherwise her rent would
Speaker 4: be raised.
Speaker 6: She would send in the affordable rent application and then
Speaker 6: they would say, we're missing some information. It was denied.
Speaker 6: Your rent's going up. And then my mom would send
Speaker 6: in again and then they're like, well, we never received
Speaker 6: your paperwork.
Speaker 4: Michelle's family wasn't alone in struggling with the bureaucracy of
Speaker 4: the application. In twenty thirteen, a collective calling itself United
Speaker 4: cal Trans Tenants came together to help residents navigate the
Speaker 4: agency's dysfunctional housing program. One of the lead organizers Iroerto Flores.
Speaker 4: He runs a community center in Esserno called East Cafe,
Speaker 4: and despite its name, it's not a hip coffee shop,
Speaker 4: it's actually a Sapatista inspired cultural center, an activist hub.
Speaker 7: We set up the east Side Cafe maybe eighteen years ago.
Speaker 7: Is a space that developed out of the inspiration from
Speaker 7: the Sapatistas to create sustainable structures so that the communities
Speaker 7: can be much more involved in constructing their own future.
Speaker 4: Roberto himself was a Caltrans tenant who had been forced
Speaker 4: out by the rent increases. He and other organizers were
Speaker 4: holding workshops at the east Side Cafe to help their
Speaker 4: neighbors with the affordable rent applications. Roberto told me that
Speaker 4: just a few months before Michelle's mom started receiving these notices,
Speaker 4: Caltrans was being audited for possible mismanagement of public money
Speaker 4: after a tenant noticed an invoice for a roof repair
Speaker 4: that cost one hundred and three thousand dollars. The audit
Speaker 4: found that Caltrans was mismanaging the money spent on repairs.
Speaker 4: They were spending almost ten million more dollars in maintaining
Speaker 4: the homes than they were actually collecting in rent.
Speaker 7: There was obvious corruption going on in the Caltrans' maintenance structure.
Speaker 4: On top of that, they hadn't verified the income of
Speaker 4: the tenants on the affordable rent program in years, but
Speaker 4: Caltrans put the burden of the lost revenue on the
Speaker 4: tenants by making residents continually reapply for the affordable rent program.
Speaker 4: If their application was denied, Caltrans would increase their rent.
Speaker 7: They made things so complicated that their own agents didn't
Speaker 7: know how to fill out these forums or help people out,
Speaker 7: and so there were years of delays where people were
Speaker 7: forced to pay market rents when they should be paying
Speaker 7: affordable and market rents that were going up at ten
Speaker 7: percent every six months. All these things piled up and
Speaker 7: led to people leaving an evictions.
Speaker 4: It was clear to Roberto that Caltrans was trying to
Speaker 4: force people out, but the question was what incentive did
Speaker 4: Caltrans have to vacate the properties. When I asked him,
Speaker 4: he told me that Caltrans never wanted to be landlords,
Speaker 4: and their end goal was to demolish the houses.
Speaker 7: They were going to prepare the corridor for a freeway,
Speaker 7: so they preferred to deal with empty houses than with
Speaker 7: tenants that were increasingly demanding rights.
Speaker 4: Years passed and more and more Caltrans tenants began to
Speaker 4: leave their homes because of the rent hikes. At this point,
Speaker 4: Caltrans was still fighting to build the extension. Then, in
Speaker 4: November of twenty eighteen, after a sixty year legal battle,
Speaker 4: the state of California finally ruled the car couldn't build
Speaker 4: the freeway.
Speaker 8: It was a major milestone today in the now defunct
Speaker 8: plan to extend the seven to ten freeway. Cowtrans just
Speaker 8: sold the first of hundreds of homes that were purchased
Speaker 8: decades ago in preparation for the project, which is now
Speaker 8: never going to see the light of day.
Speaker 4: Now the Coltrans wasn't going to build the freeway, the
Speaker 4: agency said they would begin to sell the homes.
Speaker 6: They still made empty promises. They started making it seem like,
Speaker 6: in the next two years, all these houses will be
Speaker 6: sol and you residents who've been living in them for
Speaker 6: more than two years, you get first DIBs.
Speaker 4: The promise that Michelle's family and many others in INCIDENTA
Speaker 4: were given was actually more than a promise. Back in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy nine, the California legislature passed a bill known
Speaker 4: as the ROBERTI Law. It found that highway construction contributed
Speaker 4: to a shortage of affordable housing, so when a state
Speaker 4: agency like Caltrans no longer planned to use the homes
Speaker 4: for construction, it legally had to offer the property to
Speaker 4: low and moderate income tenants at an affordable price. In theory,
Speaker 4: this meant that Michelle's mom could actually purchase the home
Speaker 4: that she'd lived in for decades.
Speaker 6: My mom's like, Wow, I'm a little nervous, you know,
Speaker 6: I hoping I'll be able to purchase this house because
Speaker 6: we've never been a homeowner.
Speaker 4: The problem was that in order to one day buy
Speaker 4: your house, you had to stay in your house. But
Speaker 4: residents were being forced out by rent hikes and complicated applications,
Speaker 4: and even tenants who could pay their rent weren't receiving
Speaker 4: sale offers from the agency.
Speaker 9: There are one hundred and three vacant homes in Elserino,
Speaker 9: Pasadena and South Pasadena, as the need for affordable housing
Speaker 9: in La is on the rise, ACCOUNTRANS representative said homes
Speaker 9: have remained vacant partly because the cost to maintain and
Speaker 9: rent them would have cost more than the revenue collected.
Speaker 4: When tenants moved out or passed away. The houses were
Speaker 4: boarded up. Today, there are dozens of homes on Sheffield
Speaker 4: Avenue with signs that read warning state property trespassing, loitering
Speaker 4: forbidden by law.
Speaker 6: When I would go home every year, I mean, you
Speaker 6: could go down my mom's block and maybe ten properties
Speaker 6: on her block alone are vacant. This is just one
Speaker 6: piece of Sheffield.
Speaker 4: Michelle's childhood neighborhood was becoming a ghost town.
Speaker 6: I didn't realize what my parents went through until I
Speaker 6: started fighting for them. Until my dad was just getting
Speaker 6: too sick, and he's like I'm done, you know, I
Speaker 6: just I can't, and my mom was busy taking care
Speaker 6: of him.
Speaker 4: Michelle's dad had been having health complications for years, and
Speaker 4: then in twenty eighteen, he passed away. At a moment
Speaker 4: when Michelle's mom was grieving the loss of her husband,
Speaker 4: she also started receiving notices that she had to once
Speaker 4: again reapply for the Affordable rent program. Michelle's mom went
Speaker 4: to one of the United Caltrans Tendants workshops at the
Speaker 4: east Side Cafe, where she met Roberto.
Speaker 7: I remember miss Montoya coming in after her husband had
Speaker 7: passed and asking us for help.
Speaker 4: Proerto helped Michelle's mom properly fill out the application, but
Speaker 4: the same scenario played out.
Speaker 6: He sent it in and they said they didn't get it,
Speaker 6: sent it in again, said they never received it. Months later,
Speaker 6: they said that my mom's rent was being raised again
Speaker 6: and if she wanted to try and get affordable rent,
Speaker 6: that she had to fill out an application.
Speaker 4: After decades of fighting to stay in their home, Michelle
Speaker 4: started to convince her mom to move out and live
Speaker 4: with her brother Jamie.
Speaker 6: We started telling her, I don't think it's safe for
Speaker 6: you to stay in this house the way they're treating you,
Speaker 6: the way they're always losing the paperwork for the affordable rent,
Speaker 6: and my mom it was very difficult for her because
Speaker 6: she feels my dad's spirit in that home. She started
Speaker 6: crying because she's like, you know, he's not going to
Speaker 6: leave this house, and we're like, mom, he's going to
Speaker 6: be wherever you are.
Speaker 4: Finally, Michelle's mom agreed, and Michelle went back to her
Speaker 4: childhood home to help her mother move out.
Speaker 6: So my mom sat in the empty living room and
Speaker 6: she started crying, and then we all started crying, you know.
Speaker 6: And my brother he's a jokester, and he's like, look mom,
Speaker 6: and he opened a fresh apple pie, and my dad
Speaker 6: loved fresh apple pie, and he's like, okay, Fred, in
Speaker 6: order for you to have a piece of this apple pie,
Speaker 6: you got to come with us.
Speaker 10: You know. We were just all cried and hugged her.
Speaker 4: After thirty four years on Sheffield Avenue, Michelle's mom left
Speaker 4: the Caltrans house, giving up her dream of one day
Speaker 4: owning a home.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 6: It just went through the house one last time and
Speaker 6: we took one last picture on the porch. My mom
Speaker 6: used to be a feisty little lady back in her day.
Speaker 6: She's like, fuck you, Caltrans, you know, and like flip
Speaker 6: the camera.
Speaker 4: In February of twenty twenty, the house that Michelle grew
Speaker 4: up in was left vacant. When I reached out to
Speaker 4: Caltrans for comment about the staggering vacancies in Encerino, they
Speaker 4: put me in touch with Eric Menhivad. He's a public
Speaker 4: information officer at the agency. I asked him what Caltrans
Speaker 4: plans to do with the houses they own.
Speaker 11: We are very aware that there is a housing crisis
Speaker 11: throughout California. Our goal is to sell these homes and
Speaker 11: provide a pathway for first time homeowner shit for our
Speaker 11: tenants and the affordable Sales program will very much play
Speaker 11: a large role in meeting.
Speaker 4: The school Menhiwad gave me cal Trans's official statement that
Speaker 4: they intend to sell the homes to the families that
Speaker 4: have been living in them. Throughout our interview, I struggle
Speaker 4: to reconcile the agency's official statements with their actions which
Speaker 4: have driven out hundreds of tenants, making them ineligible to
Speaker 4: purchase their homes. And then at the end of our interview, Eric.
Speaker 11: Told me this, Ultimately, when these homes are ready to
Speaker 11: be sold, Caltrans is obligated to make lender required repairs
Speaker 11: once selling a property to a current tenant who participates
Speaker 11: in the Affordable Sales program. So if that home needs
Speaker 11: a new roof and the lender requires us to repair it, well,
Speaker 11: we will do it.
Speaker 4: I was beginning to understand that in order for Caltrans
Speaker 4: to sell the homes, the agency would have to reckon
Speaker 4: with their decades long neglect. So instead of paying for
Speaker 4: costly repairs, is holding onto the properties even if they're
Speaker 4: falling apart. With the vacancy rate rising in the neighborhood,
Speaker 4: tenants wanted to find a way to hold Caltrans accountable
Speaker 4: and force them to do something about all these empty homes.
Speaker 4: One of those tenants was Angela Flores. She's the daughter
Speaker 4: of Roberta Flores, who we heard from earlier. Angela and
Speaker 4: her father were cal Trans tenants since nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 4: and they've been working with the neighborhood for years, holding
Speaker 4: workshops to help tenants fill out affordable housing applications, mobilizing
Speaker 4: community members to disrupt evictions, and by twenty nineteen they
Speaker 4: were fed up.
Speaker 12: Me and my dad thought we got to do something
Speaker 12: about this. We got to shake them up a little, like,
Speaker 12: what do we got to do?
Speaker 3: How do we got to protest them?
Speaker 4: To Angela, it was shocking that you could walk a
Speaker 4: few minutes from a street of empty homes onto Huntington
Speaker 4: Drive at Satano's main street, where dozens of unhoused people
Speaker 4: were sleeping in tents they pitched on the meridian. Angela
Speaker 4: wanted to do something to get Caltrans's attention and force
Speaker 4: them to negotiate.
Speaker 12: We went ahead and started thinking more and more about
Speaker 12: the possibility of occupying a few houses.
Speaker 4: Then, in November of twenty nineteen, Moms for Housing, a
Speaker 4: group of unhoused mothers from the Bay Area, made national
Speaker 4: headlines and caught Angela's attention.
Speaker 2: And men called Moms for Housing are reclaiming vacant homes
Speaker 2: so that homeless women can live in them. The group
Speaker 2: wants to take back properties owned by investors that are
Speaker 2: vacant in neighborhoods where the mothers grew up but can't
Speaker 2: afford to live there.
Speaker 4: By occupying vacant homes, Moms for Housing was pointing out
Speaker 4: that the housing crisis is not actually about a shortage
Speaker 4: of homes.
Speaker 13: We have a crisis.
Speaker 6: Come on, it is an epidemic.
Speaker 13: People are dying housing is.
Speaker 4: They According to twenty seventeen census data, there are approximate
Speaker 4: one hundred thousand vacant homes in the city of Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: That's nearly twice the number needed to house the estimated
Speaker 4: sixty thousand people that are homeless in the city. Part
Speaker 4: of the problem is real estate speculation. As cities begin
Speaker 4: to gentrify, developers buy up properties and keep them vacant
Speaker 4: until rent prices and the surrounding area go up. But
Speaker 4: with six public agencies such as Caltrans and the Los
Speaker 4: Angeles School District collectively owning over fourteen thousand vacant properties
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles, it's clear that public institutions are also
Speaker 4: contributing to the housing crisis. Angela wanted to bring the
Speaker 4: strategy that Moms for Housing was putting in action to INCIDENTO.
Speaker 12: I was in my bedroom and I was looking on Facebook,
Speaker 12: and then I saw the article on the Moms for
Speaker 12: Housing in San Francisco, and immediately I thought, this is it.
Speaker 4: Feeling inspired by the movement, Angela shared the Moms for
Speaker 4: Housing ste on her Facebook page.
Speaker 12: I said, I've had it with all of this. Who's
Speaker 12: down to do something like this? And I didn't hear
Speaker 12: from anyone except Martha.
Speaker 4: That Martha is Marta Escudo, who we heard from at
Speaker 4: the beginning of the story. At that moment, Martha and
Speaker 4: her two daughters didn't have a stable place to live.
Speaker 3: When I first heard about Moms for Housing, we were
Speaker 3: at a friend's house. We were sleeping on the floor.
Speaker 3: We were living off of our bags pretty much.
Speaker 4: Martha lived in the East Side neighborhood of Boyle Heights
Speaker 4: until twenty sixteen. She's the primary caretaker of her two daughters,
Speaker 4: and I was working as a case manager at a
Speaker 4: maternal and child wellness clinic at the time. One of
Speaker 4: the things she remembers most about her job was a
Speaker 4: feeling of helplessness as she saw the way that not
Speaker 4: having housing impacted the mental and physical health of mothers
Speaker 4: who came into the clinic.
Speaker 3: These women were suffering a lot, and I couldn't help them,
Speaker 3: and it was like causing me burnout. I couldn't even
Speaker 3: sleep at night sometimes knowing that these women and their
Speaker 3: kids were on the streets or in the cars or
Speaker 3: in shelters.
Speaker 4: Exhausted from her job, Martha needed a change of pace.
Speaker 4: She had always dreamed of showing her daughters a different
Speaker 4: way of life, away from the stress of the city.
Speaker 4: So even though Martha was born and raised in la
Speaker 4: she made a big decision and left the US.
Speaker 3: We always wanted to get out of the US for
Speaker 3: a little bit and sure our daughters what it was
Speaker 3: to live somewhere else, And we have friends in Chile,
Speaker 3: so we figured that'd be the best place.
Speaker 4: But when Martha came back to the US just two
Speaker 4: years later, she says rents and boil heights had tripled.
Speaker 3: Coming back was actually really traumatizing. We couldn't find affordable housing,
Speaker 3: we couldn't find jobs.
Speaker 4: In just two years, Martha found herself facing those same
Speaker 4: struggles that she saw countless mothers at the clinic and do,
Speaker 4: and as a mom, housing was more than just a
Speaker 4: roof over Martha's head. It was about the health and
Speaker 4: education of her daughters too.
Speaker 3: It was really obstructing my daughter's learning. I'm a homeschooling mom.
Speaker 3: It's just not adequate with having children. They really do
Speaker 3: need their own space.
Speaker 4: After eighteen months of living out of a suitcase and
Speaker 4: going from sofa to sofa at her friend's apartments, Marta
Speaker 4: was ready to take matters into her own hands.
Speaker 3: When I saw a mom for housing and I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: these women are badass, their moms, they have kids, and
Speaker 3: then they took over these homes like they're really fearless,
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, you know, if they could
Speaker 3: do it, I could do it. And around that same time,
Speaker 3: a Khila Flotas from the Eastside Cafe put something out
Speaker 3: that she would like to do something as that mom
Speaker 3: for housing did, and I reached out to her and
Speaker 3: she let me know about these houses and Elcadento that
Speaker 3: have been abandoned by Caltrans for so many years.
Speaker 4: Martha was immediately on board, but Angela says when she
Speaker 4: encouraged her neighbors, and they said eno to take up
Speaker 4: the strategy. They were reluctant other tenants, they weren't saying much,
Speaker 4: and the kind of feedback that we got was like, well,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure because I don't want to get arrested
Speaker 4: or I don't have my papers. The stakes were high.
Speaker 4: Even though Moms for Housing had garnered widespread support, they
Speaker 4: were also met with brutal force when the police were
Speaker 4: summoned to a victim in January of twenty twenty.
Speaker 13: In a pre dawn rate, heavily armed sheriff Stampanese moved
Speaker 13: in on the vacant home where women and children had
Speaker 13: been living illegally. Four people were arrested after a fifty
Speaker 13: day standoff.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to live.
Speaker 13: I'm trying to get my kids.
Speaker 5: Are you sentimated?
Speaker 4: Marta knew that what she was planning to do was illegal,
Speaker 4: but it was a risk she was willing to take.
Speaker 3: I had a lot of fears, Okay, what if my
Speaker 3: daughters get taken away from me? But also I want
Speaker 3: them to be healthy and have their own homes. So
Speaker 3: I needed to take that risk, knowing that I couldn't
Speaker 3: do it alone, and That's why it was really important
Speaker 3: for me to establish who am I going to connect
Speaker 3: with to help me.
Speaker 4: To support people like Martha on the front lines. A
Speaker 4: coalition was forming, and with the help of two advocacy organizations,
Speaker 4: more and more people were joining the movement. By February
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty, they were having almost daily meetings at
Speaker 4: the East Side Cafe.
Speaker 3: They were letting us know the history of these houses
Speaker 3: and how Caltrans has neglected them and abandoned them. And
Speaker 3: to me, it was so mind blowing because I know
Speaker 3: there's a housing crisis.
Speaker 4: Marta and the other people who wanted to occupy these
Speaker 4: houses declared themselves the reclaimers. Some reclaimers were former Caltrans
Speaker 4: tendants who had been living on the street after they'd
Speaker 4: been evicted. Others were mothers like Martha who were urgently
Speaker 4: looking to provide housing for their families. They were getting
Speaker 4: ready to occupy the houses in March, and then COVID
Speaker 4: nineteen hit.
Speaker 3: We had already planned to do the take on Friday,
Speaker 3: March thirteenth, but then COVID came and people were like,
Speaker 3: should we still do it? Is it dangerous to do it?
Speaker 3: Around this time, a lot of us were like, no,
Speaker 3: this is even more urgent. We need to do it
Speaker 3: now because we wanted to keep our family safe.
Speaker 4: Although Marta had known the other reclaimers for less than
Speaker 4: a couple months, she had to trust that they had
Speaker 4: her back, that they had her daughter's back. On March thirteenth,
Speaker 4: Martha was getting ready to put the strategy in motion.
Speaker 4: For the first time. She and another reclaimer were able
Speaker 4: to open the door to an empty house on Berkshire Avenue,
Speaker 4: but only a few hours after they got into the house,
Speaker 4: they heard someone at the door.
Speaker 3: Cal Chance still had the keys and they were able
Speaker 3: to unlock it, and Caltrans with the police, were able
Speaker 3: to walk in then pull us out, and we just
Speaker 3: went voluntarily like there wasn't any resistance. And then the
Speaker 3: girls were crying and shaky, and they thought that I
Speaker 3: was going to get in trouble.
Speaker 4: In that terrifying moment, the other reclaimers immediately came to
Speaker 4: comfort the girls. The coalition had organized a team of
Speaker 4: legal observers who were able to document the actions of
Speaker 4: law enforcement and de escalate the situation. In the end,
Speaker 4: the officer chose not to arrest Martha.
Speaker 3: That's when I was like, oh cool, Like I can
Speaker 3: trust these people, you know, I can do this again.
Speaker 4: After getting kicked out by the police, Martha immediately went
Speaker 4: back to the Eastside Cafe and they began to plan
Speaker 4: how they could occupy another house.
Speaker 3: We you know, talked about what had gone on that night,
Speaker 3: and then we just really were urgent to find another home.
Speaker 3: We were running out of options.
Speaker 4: But there was still one option left because Angela and
Speaker 4: Roberto had a backup plan.
Speaker 12: My dad had said, if in the case it doesn't
Speaker 12: go down and worse comes to worse, we have a
Speaker 12: key to one of the houses.
Speaker 4: That key was the key to Michelle's old house on
Speaker 4: Sheffield Avenue. The house had been left vacant since February
Speaker 4: when Michelle's mom moved out.
Speaker 12: I said, hey, Martha, I have the key to this house.
Speaker 12: Should we do it? She said, yes, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 4: On March fourteenth, just as the sun was beginning to rise,
Speaker 4: Martha and Angela were standing outside the house on Sheffield
Speaker 4: Avenue and.
Speaker 12: I didn't even know if the key was going to
Speaker 12: work or not, you know, like or if we were
Speaker 12: going to get in.
Speaker 3: I remember we were both really nervous.
Speaker 12: I got out the key and I was like, oh
Speaker 12: my god, like, I mean, all you have to do
Speaker 12: is twist and off, but like we were shaking.
Speaker 3: So we were like, okay, we could do this, like
Speaker 3: take a deep breath.
Speaker 12: So Martha was like, it's all right, calm down. She
Speaker 12: was the one calming me down. I opened the first door,
Speaker 12: and then we opened the wooden door, and once we
Speaker 12: were in, it was a big like, it was a
Speaker 12: big relief.
Speaker 3: And then my daughters came in and I was really
Speaker 3: tired and happy and overwhelmed and just like so many
Speaker 3: mixed feelings just being able to be inside the house.
Speaker 12: And right away the girls were like, I love this room.
Speaker 12: Oh it's beautiful. It's so beautiful. I'll never forget that.
Speaker 3: I just remember looking out the window and just saying,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna stay here and see what happened.
Speaker 4: The reclaimers were all over the news.
Speaker 11: Publicly owned houses that have been vacant for years are
Speaker 11: now becoming sheltered to the unhoused in El Serno, where
Speaker 11: they're reclaiming our homes.
Speaker 12: Movement is in full effect.
Speaker 4: Eventually, Michelle saw the news too.
Speaker 6: I saw the pictures of the little girls like at
Speaker 6: the window, and I'm like that was me. That was
Speaker 6: like thirteen year old me. That's why I think it
Speaker 6: was bittersweet. I'm happy for them, you know, I'm sad
Speaker 6: that my mom's doesn't have her own place. I'm sad
Speaker 6: that my dad is gone. You know, it's just all
Speaker 6: these little emotions. But you know, it's time to move on.
Speaker 6: It was safer for my mom to move on.
Speaker 4: It may no longer be Michelle's home, but she's happy
Speaker 4: that her old house can be a home to someone else.
Speaker 1: Our thanks to producer Jujia Rocha for bringing us that
Speaker 1: story in Since the story ran, Martha and twelve other
Speaker 1: reclaimers are living in the once vacant Caltrans homes. Through
Speaker 1: their civil disobedience, they were able to negotiate temporary housing
Speaker 1: with Caltrans and the City of Los Angeles. For now,
Speaker 1: the reclaimers are allowed to legally remain in their homes
Speaker 1: for at least two years under a transitional housing program,
Speaker 1: but their fight continues as they push for a more
Speaker 1: permanent solution. This episode originally aired in November of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and was produced by Julia Rocha and edited by
Speaker 1: Mitra Bonshahi with help from Sophia Palisa car. It was
Speaker 1: bigs by Julia Caruso. Fact checking for this episode by
Speaker 1: Amy Tardiff. The Latino USA team also includes Victoriestrada, Rinaldo,
Speaker 1: Leanos Junior, Andrea Lopez Crusado, Roni mad Marquez, Marta Martinez,
Speaker 1: Mike Sargent, Noursaudi, and Nancy Truquillo. Our co executive producer
Speaker 1: is Benni Lei Ramirez. Our director of Engineering is Stephanie Lebau.
Speaker 1: Additional engineering support by Gabriel Abiez and JJ Carubin. Our
Speaker 1: marketing manager is Luis Luna. Our theme music was composed
Speaker 1: by saying Erunos, I'm your host and executive producer MARIEO Posa.
Speaker 1: Join us again on our next episode. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: look for us on all of your social media and
Speaker 1: I'll see you there on Instagram. Remember note Bayes Nunka.
Speaker 1: A Star Proxima by.
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Speaker 4: building a strong state by improving the health of all Californians.
Speaker 4: The chan Zuckerberg Initiative and funding for Latino USA is
Speaker 4: coverage of a culture of Health is made possible in
Speaker 4: part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,