Marchers in downtown LA demand more affordable housing, lower caps on rental units

About 1,000 marchers protested rising rents, evictions and a lack of affordable housing through the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, Sept. 28.

Starting at Pershing Square, they marched by the SB Lofts apartment complex on Spring Street, and then to the Oceanwide Plaza, aka the “Graffiti Towers,” the vacant, unfinished towers that were covered in colorful graffiti in February after the developer went bankrupt. Protest organizers are asking the city of Los Angeles to purchase the buildings and use them for affordable housing.

Also, workers from the LA Live! area joined the marchers at that point and asked for caps on rental increases and a raise in the minimum wage.

Organizers said they had originally expected 2,000 people to participate.

Some of the groups who were expected to participate included Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (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.

Los Angeles City Council members Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman and Hugo Soto-Martinez spoke at the rally.

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,” said Estuardo Mazariegos, co-organizer and co-director of ACCE Los Angeles.

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, he said.