Chinatown’s elders are being priced out of their traditional neighborhood
Her housing case manager,
"I'm happy to be surrounded by friends," Tang, 71, said in Taishanese, through an interpreter.
The cheapest room that Chin, who works at the nonprofit
In the construction-crane capital of America for three years running, low-income seniors are being priced out of a neighborhood with deep cultural and historic significance.
The past five years have seen a dramatic increase in private development in
The International Special Review District Board, which regulates construction in the neighborhood, received only three new-construction applications from 2008 to 2012 -- a streetcar-maintenance facility and two affordable-housing projects.
Since 2013, there have been 16 new-project applications, the majority being mixed-use apartment buildings by private developers. That's about 130 stories of new development, according to
Most of those applications were filed before the
The 16 applications don't include projects that haven't been filed yet -- such as development plans for the site of the beloved Bush Garden restaurant and karaoke bar -- or several projects in Little Saigon, which only came under the board's purview this January.
As metro
If low-income residents want to stay there, their options are typically limited to modest SRO units while waiting for a rare opening in senior housing. Chin's clients wait up to 10 years for senior housing, which has low turnover. "Once you're in, you stay until you pass away," she said.
SRO hotels housed transient laborers a century ago, and the narrow rooms and shared bathroom facilities have since become long-term housing for low-income individuals.
There are about 600 residents who live in them, according to a preliminary study by InterIm, the neighborhood's housing and community-development agency. But these cheap rentals are disappearing as the buildings are sold for redevelopment as market-rate housing.
"It's kind of a feeding frenzy for outside speculative developers to come in," said
"It's familiar"
Because affordable-housing rates are pegged to
The majority of households in the
The ability to navigate their neighborhood comfortably -- to converse in their mother tongue with health-care providers, hairdressers and friends -- is a high priority for many seniors in
"It's familiar,"
Although Chen, 68, finds comfort in traditional cooking, she only boils vegetables and eggs because she doesn't want to dirty the communal kitchen in her building. "Chinese food needs hot oil and big fire," she said.
If Chen wants to stay in the neighborhood, she has to go without a kitchen of her own for several more years. In her SRO room, a sink is sandwiched between a mini-fridge and her bed. "There's nothing you can do but wait."
For Chen, America is a place where people come from "wu hu si hai" -- a Chinese saying that translates to "all corners of the world" -- and this neighborhood shouldn't be any different. "I hope anyone can live here," she said.
Renovation too expensive
While SRO buildings aren't ideal living situations, they are often the best available option. But their stock is being depleted, too.
"It's incredibly bleak," said
She attributes the turnover of SRO hotels to a rental-registration and -inspection ordinance passed by the
Many building owners cannot afford to bring the rooms up to the new standards, Wong said. "You're looking at a price tag of
This past July,
Leading up to the vote, neighborhood groups advocated for better anti-displacement measures to accompany the ordinance, voicing fears that the upzone would force out longtime residents like Tang and Chen.
Since the vote, the
"We're talking about an extremely marginalized community. Once you lose that, it's irreplaceable," coalition member
While critics see the upzone as a threat to the neighborhood's character and affordability, the city defends the policy.
The city expects that most residential high-rise developers will pay into a fund rather than build affordable housing on site, but so far no projects have gotten to the stage of making that decision, Alvarado said.
She said that the payments could be reinvested in
"Without resources like MHA, we would not be able to make those investments," she said.
An additional 527 units are under development, although less than one in five of those units will be at the lower income threshold, according to the city.
A studio for those earning 60 percent of the area's median income is about
Tight budgets
From her third-floor office in the Chinatown International District, Chin sometimes catches sight of Tang enjoying summer days at
When meeting Chin on a recent afternoon, Tang brought a small plastic bag with a few documents in English she could not understand. "I'll look it them before we meet next week," Chin told Tang.
Chin, a former accountant who picked up Taishanese to communicate with her many clients from the southern part of
Previously a chef in delis and Chinese restaurants, Wu said he is mindful of saving money because of rent increases. They pay about
"The rent increases and our income doesn't. It gets very scary," Wu said.
He is careful to place the cheapest vegetables into his grocery basket and rarely eats out. Dim Sum King, where buns are
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