Join Lucile Ave's Fight Against Gentrification
Tax deductible
✨ 2025 UPDATE: We’re shifting to a new GoFundMe! ✨
While we remain spiritual partners with BVCLT, we are now partnering with Union de Vecinos as our non-profit arm to purchase the building as an LLC. Moving forward, we ask folks to donate to our new GoFundMe:
We are the I Love Lucile Ave Tenants Association. In Spring 2023, our building went up for sale, and we successfully lobbied our landlord to enter into escrow with the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust (BVCLT - https://bvclt.org), a non-profit dedicated to the preservation of cooperatively owned low and middle income housing in Los Angeles.
After the recent state deficit & funding cuts eliminated the grants that would have gone towards this acquisition, we are asking your help to close the gap. We are currently at 35% of our $1.5 million dollar goal and, while we are seeking support from public and private grants, we need your help!
Will you donate $25 today to save our homes, create a hub for tenant organizing, and show how we can fight gentrification and displacement with the power of community?
Or, if you can't donate, please consider following or sharing us on social media right now! Spreading the word is absolutely essential to this project!
Or share a social media post right now! Here's a sample:
Help the I Love Lucile Ave Tenants Fight Gentrification! ✨❤️ gofundme.com/f/i-love-lucile-ave ☀️ Or donate by texting LUCILE to 53-555 or check out givebutter.com/ilovelucileave ✊ #AffordableHousing #losangeles #silverlake #koreatown #easthollywood #community #LATenants #lgbtqia
About the project
Acquiring and transitioning this building to a housing cooperative ownership model is an important project for the BVCLT to continue building a relationship with the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU - https://latenantsunion.org/en/) and the Koreatown local tenants unions. That way the residents that are organizing around habitability and eviction in their rental buildings (often run by slum lords) see the community land trust as a potential solution and viable vehicle for stability.
This building is owned by two brothers who inherited the building from their family. They need to sell the building and want to sell it to a community land trust that will maintain the current tenants and support a housing cooperative ownership model. The tenants in this building are all long-term tenants, more than half the building are LGBTQ+ tenants, and this is one of the few affordable rental buildings in Silver Lake. The building was originally built in 1908 on Bunker Hill, and when that area was demolished during the infamous 1960s "slum clearance" that saw the entire neighborhood leveled to the ground, this building was moved to its current site in south Silver Lake near Koreatown & East Hollywood.
The current 5 tenants have lived in the building for 106 years combined, and have been a part of creating LATU and VyBe, an LA tenants union local in Koreatown. Literally created out of the living room of one of the tenants in this building, VyBe continues to provide community mutual aid support today in the surrounding neighborhoods. Due to this independent organizing and deep connections in the community, the BVCLT is hoping to acquire this building, bring it into stability, and demonstrate a housing cooperative transition with a building organized by the tenants union.
Financials
- The building will cost the BVCLT $1.5 million to acquire.
- BVCLT estimates it can acquire $500K from debt services, to be repaid from Lucile Ave's rents and from future grants & fundraising by the Lucile Ave tenants.
- We have already raised $66,333 in pledges from three donors outside of GoFundMe! Wow!
- We are asking you to make a small donation of any amount. Or if you can't, please like and share our project on social media - it will help a lot!
- If you are interested in donating a larger amount or in setting up a tax deductible patient capital loan to complete this project, we would LOVE to hear from you! GoFundMe prevents us listing an email address, but you can message us via our Facebook Page or find our email there: I Love Lucile Ave TA on Facebook
Future fundraising
We see multifaceted grant possibilities for:
- Cultural + community programs
- Ecological conservation
- Capital projects
- Historic preservation
For example, we have been planting CA native plants for over 10 years at Lucile Ave -- local species such as white sage, ceanothus, California buckwheat, toyon, native milkweed, poppies and other wildflowers, and so many more. Not only do we directly support habitat for local pollinators such as bees and monarch butterflies, we also provide a highly visible example to the neighborhood and the hundreds of daily visitors to the park across the street, the Bellevue Recreation Center. We see opportunities to educate the community, outreach to the park about native plants, provide a site for education and native seed propagation & distribution, and so much more.
What if we fail to raise $1.5 million and acquire the building?
- This property will almost certainly be sold to a private developer who will Ellis Act the residents, demolish the building or flip the units, and charge a premium market rate per rebuilt unit. In other words, further gentrification is all but certain.
- The good news is, no matter what, your donation will make a difference! After repaying the BVCLT the $10K that has already been dispersed to the landlord as part of the escrow agreement, if the BVCLT cannot acquire the building, all further donations will be donated by the BVCLT to the Los Angeles Tenants Union (https://latenantsunion.org/) that fights for housing rights in Los Angeles!
Why this project, now? How does it help fight gentrification in Los Angeles?
- The BVCLT typically acquires larger slum lord buildings that house immigrant and working class tenants using public funds like grants. This building is smaller and in a more affluent neighborhood (though also in disrepair and with mostly low-income tenants), but with a highly visible location and ties to the founding of LATU, they negotiated a 9 month escrow in good faith with the landlord in January 2024. It is rare for a building acquisition to have the support of a landlord, and almost impossible to negotiate an extended escrow like ours. Since the governor killed the entire $500 million state fund in May that would have gone towards this $1.5 million acquisition, we are leveraging our extraordinarily long escrow to raise the funds from small donors through GoFundMe, while also seeking out larger donors and patient capital lenders to bring this project to completion as quickly as possible.
- This project will serve as a template for cooperative housing acquisition across the city. 70% of Angelenos are renters and there is currently immense interest in cooperative housing. Public funding for housing acquisition will return, and agencies and the community are watching us RIGHT NOW to see how it can be done in spite of the current state funding cuts... they are learning from our process, and they will leap forward in the years to come. And we want to be there as a resource when they're ready.
- It will continue to provide a gathering space for LATU events and community organizing, and expand on those functions.
- It will serve as a highly visible beacon of LATU activism in the neighborhood, which will scare predatory developers and landlords and literally help keep local rents in check, because we know they are targeting low income and non-English speaking tenants in this area with harassment and eviction. We envision a permanent LATU or housing rights mural across the street-facing side of the building as one example of this visibility.
- And finally, this project will outlive all the current tenants and preserve low income housing in the building for generations to come.
Summary
- This project will prevent elderly, gay tenants (who have been in Silver Lake since 1971) from falling into homelessness.
- It will maintain the multigenerational, cross-class, LGBTQ+ character of Silver Lake.
- It will serve as an example of housing cooperative acquisition in LA.
- It will further the goals of the LA Tenants Union, Koreatown locals such as VyBe, and provide a permanent space for continued organizing.
- It will visibly fight gentrification in south Silver Lake, Koreatown, & East Hollywood and cultivate a stronger base by standing in solidarity with poor and working-class tenants against speculative development.
- It will support cultural & community programs, native plant & habitat gardening, and historical preservation.
- It will create 4 permanent units of community owned, affordable housing for generations to come!
Co-organizers (4)
Andrew Lush
Organizer
Los Angeles, CA
Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust
Beneficiary
Alan Amaya
Co-organizer
Andrew Lush
Co-organizer
Chris Tyler
Co-organizer