Los Angeles, CA
Housing | 2025
Tracking neighborhood displacement pressures and collecting oral histories to inform community organizing and antidisplacement strategies.
Recent high-end housing development is contributing to intense displacement in the Historic Filipinotown (HiFi) neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. HiFi is predominantly home to Latino residents, maintains a sizable Filipino community, and is where legacy organizations like Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA) have engaged with youth and families to support community economic development for decades. To mitigate neighborhood displacement, SIPA is working on a joint project with design and community development organization Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) that will equip residents to advocate for data-informed antidisplacement strategies in HiFi, preserving affordable opportunities to live in the neighborhood.
KDI will create maps of displacement risk factors, such as evictions and property changes of ownership, to be shared with HiFi residents at a community workshop. Alongside these data, SIPA will organize antidisplacement trainings in partnership with City Council District 13 and the LA Housing Department to engage community and youth leaders. Youth leaders will also gather oral histories of HiFi residents’ community ties and experiences with displacement. These project components will form the basis for the Community Anti-Displacement Network, through which residents will collaborate with city officials to track displacement pressures and support the city’s efforts to evaluate recently enacted tenant protections.
This project seeks to create a partnership between the HiFi community and the City of Los Angeles that will strengthen collective capacity to combat neighborhood displacement. By building community trust and connecting HiFi residents to government decisionmaking and data collection, SIPA and KDI will set a foundation for ongoing community involvement in Historic Filipinotown antidisplacement strategies, serving as a model for data-driven, grassroots antidisplacement planning in cities across the country.