During a massive rally set for Saturday in downtown Los Angeles, thousands from community groups and labor unions will march to demand actions regarding rising rents by advocating for affordable housing, rent control and wage increases for blue-collar workers.
One of the more concrete ideas emanating from the 120 different organizations participating is for the City of Los Angeles to buy up and turn into affordable housing the vacant, half-finished Oceanwide Plaza towers, given the moniker “Graffiti Towers” after the buildings were marred by taggers in February.
The luxury apartment complex was left unfinished in 2019 after a Chinese investor went bankrupt.
Protesters are planning to rally at the dormant Oceanwide plaza skyscrapers across from the Crypto.com Arena on 11th Street in an effort to suggest what is becoming a not-so-uncommon practice: Turning vacant buildings into permanent housing for the homeless, while increasing the affordable housing stock.
Also, City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who will participate in Saturday’s march and speak at the beginning of the rally in Pershing Square, is interested in turning an abandoned jail in Lincoln Heights into affordable housing.
However, the buying of Oceanwide Plaza towers has not received much feedback from city leaders recently, but the groups wanted to “start the public conversation” as one idea to help people find permanent housing in a city of more than 40,000 unhoused individuals.
“It just takes a little risk. But it is a common sense idea,” said Estuardo Mazariegos, co-organizer of the rally and also co-director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Los Angeles. “Why not have those towers house the folks on the street?”
In February, the city spent $1.1 million to secure the vacant skyscraper towers, removing scaffolding and erecting security fencing. City Councilmember Kevin de León told the press in February that the city does not have $1 billion — the supposed value of the half-finished buildings — to buy them.
The towers with colorful graffiti covering at least 27 floors became an eyesore visible to a worldwide audience during the telecast of the Grammy Awards held at Crypto.com. The empty towers were noticeable from the outside of the famous arena and could be seen on national television and also by thousands of fans during Laker games.
Saturday’s rally is expected to draw 2,000 marchers, Mazariegos said.
Some of the groups that will be represented include ACCE, Community Power Collective, Keep LA Housed, Housing Vivienda Ahora!, Strategic Actions For A Just Economy (SAJE), Democratic Socialists of America, Los Angeles Eastside Leads, InnerCity Struggle, SEIU Local 721, Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and AFSCME 3299.
City Councilmembers Nithya Raman and Hugo Soto-Martinez are scheduled to speak at the rally.
The rally will start at Pershing Square and move to the towers. Protesters also will stop at the SB Lofts at 600 S. Spring Street, where tenants said water and power were interrupted and conditions were not livable. The protesters will deliver a letter to the management company supporting the tenants’ demands, Mazariegos said.
“This is an ongoing effort by the people of L.A. to show Los Angeles is a tenant town and a union town,” he said. Nearly two-thirds of Angelenos are renters, he said.
The group is lobbying for two proposed actions stalled in committees in City Hall.
One would revisit the formula for rent control in the city. A new proposal would be to lower the cap for raising rents to a 3% increase, he said.
Another is to raise wages for “tourist workers” to $30 an hour by 2028, when L.A. will host the Olympic Games. These include jobs at hotels in hospitality, at venues for concerts and sporting events and at LAX, he said. “They are the folks that greet the world and they can’t even live where they work,” Mazariegos said.
He said the coalition wants to raise wages for these workers so they can afford high rents but also pass city ordinances that keep rents from going any higher, while promoting affordable housing projects.
“We are advocating for these types of policies,” Mazariegos said. “If we don’t, then we are not being serious as a city in solving the housing and homeless crises.”
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