Housing justice advocates from AIDS Healthcare Foundation launched this week “GNTRIFIED,” the latest Los Angeles-area billboard campaign to spotlight inaction on the housing affordability crisis and the role gentrification plays in the spiraling homeless epidemic in L.A. and across the nation.
The new billboard, a California license plate inscribed with a shortened version of the word “Gentrified,” delivers a stark message as part of AHF and Housing Is A Human Right’s ongoing housing justice advocacy. The billboard license plate image includes the URL www.gentrificationsucks.org for more information.
While raising awareness, the GNTRIFIED billboards are also intended to point the finger at Los Angeles city and county officials and real estate developers who disproportionately approve and build luxury-housing developments, upending housing affordability for vast segments of the population in Southern California.
“The approval and construction of so many luxury developments fuel the rapid gentrification of neighborhoods throughout L.A., often at great human expense,” says Michael Weinstein, president of AHF. “Many developers raze existing rent-stabilized or rent-controlled housing units—and in the process, displace hundreds of low- and moderate-income tenants each year. Our elected officials, planning commissioners, and even developers must put a stop to green lighting so much luxury development.”
The GNTRIFIED billboard campaign, undertaken in conjunction with two AHF affiliate organizations (Housing Is A Human Right and Healthy Housing Foundation), will appear on more than 30 billboards and 100 bus bench ads throughout greater Los Angeles beginning this week.
GNTRIFIED follows a similar homeless and gentrification billboard and awareness campaign that AHF posted throughout Los Angeles in June. That campaign included two different messages: ‘Homelessness Kills’ and ‘Gentrification Sucks’.
The Los Angeles Times, which has thoroughly covered the homeless and housing affordability crises in both its news and editorial content over the past two years, reported recently that “on average, nearly three homeless people are dying daily in the county.”
In February, Housing Is A Human Right released the special report “The Garcetti-fication of Los Angeles: A Gentrification Cautionary Tale.” The sweeping investigation delves into government-sanctioned gentrification in L.A. The largely untold story is a must-read for the entire nation.