The Tenant Association

Oct 15 2024 19 ep. 27 mins 17
The Tenant Association Podcast artwork

The Tenant Association is about tenants who came together and fought back against their landlord. It’s a story about neighbors; elderly, young, immigrant, working class renters. Many of them are Latino and Asian and had lived for decades in an apartment complex in LA’s Chinatown, until they got a rent increase that was basically an eviction notice… and decided to fight to stay in their homes. They’ve become a political force to be reckoned with, and changed what we think is possible for renters in Los Angeles. The tenants of Hillside Villa have been fighting for six years, and they’re not done. This is the story of the Hillside Villa Tenant Association, from Los Angeles Public Press.

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4: It's Not Over

Oct 15 2024 39 mins  
After months of waiting for eminent domain to move forward, the tenants find out that the housing department negotiated a secret deal with their landlord. What the tenants did next, and where things stand now… on the final episode of this series. (Spoiler alert: it’s not over).

3: Eminent Domain

Oct 01 2024 26 mins  
If you heard just one thing about Hillside Villa before listening to this podcast, you probably heard about May 27th, 2022. The day that LA City Council voted on buying Hillside Villa through eminent domain. It was a huge deal. It felt like the tenants had won. But the real story is much more complicated than that. This week, eminent domain’s long legacy of displacement, a nation

2: How to Form a Tenant Union

Sep 24 2024 30 mins  
So you want to build a tenant association, but don’t know how? Sometimes it takes just one person to get things going. At Hillside Villa, that person was Luisa Ramirez. We’re gonna show you, step by step, how Luisa and her neighbors built their tenant association. How they held their first meeting right under management’s nose; how they successfully lobbied their council memb

1: A Ticking Time Bomb

Sep 17 2024 24 mins  
Welcome to Hillside Villa, an apartment complex overlooking Chinatown where the rent stayed affordable while the rest of the neighborhood changed around it. For decades, it was a place where working-class Angelenos could raise their kids and live in community with their neighbors. And then, one day in 2018, all that was threatened. Because their landlord served the tenants with ren

Introducing… the Tenant Association

Sep 10 2024 2 mins  
This is The Tenant Association, a new podcast series from LA Public Press. It’s about neighbors in an apartment complex in Chinatown, who got a rent increase that was basically an eviction notice… and organized against their landlord instead. They’ve become a political force to be reckoned with, and changed what we think is possible for renters in LA. The tenants of Hillside

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