After months of waiting for eminent domain to move forward, the tenants find out that the housing department negotiated a secret deal with their landlord. What the tenants did next, and where things stand now… on the final episode of this series. (Spoiler alert: it’s not over).

If you heard just one thing about Hillside Villa before listening to this podcast, you probably heard about May 27th, 2022. The day that LA City Council voted on buying Hillside Villa through eminent domain. It was a huge deal. It felt like the tenants had won. But the real story is much more complicated than that. This week, eminent domain’s long legacy of displacement, a national affordable housing crisis, and the tenants’ innovative campaign to turn eminent domain on its head.

So you want to build a tenant association, but don’t know how? Sometimes it takes just one person to get things going. At Hillside Villa, that person was Luisa Ramirez. We’re gonna show you, step by step, how Luisa and her neighbors built their tenant association. How they held their first meeting right under management’s nose; how they successfully lobbied their council member; and how they paid an early-morning wake-up call to their landlord in Malibu... after he refused to sign a deal that would save their housing.

Welcome to Hillside Villa, an apartment complex overlooking Chinatown where the rent stayed affordable while the rest of the neighborhood changed around it. For decades, it was a place where working-class Angelenos could raise their kids and live in community with their neighbors. And then, one day in 2018, all that was threatened. Because their landlord served the tenants with rent increases that were basically eviction notices.

Note: At the start of this episode, we incorrectly identified the receptacle used for the tenants' action as a trash can. It's actually a special bin used to burn offerings. We have updated the episode to reflect that correction.

This is The Tenant Association, a new podcast series from LA Public Press. It’s about neighbors in an apartment complex in Chinatown, who got a rent increase that was basically an eviction notice… and organized against their landlord instead. They’ve become a political force to be reckoned with, and changed what we think is possible for renters in LA. The tenants of Hillside Villa have been fighting for six years, and they’re not done. This is the story of the Hillside Villa Tenant Association, told over four episodes, starting next week (September 17th).

Most Sunday nights, Jamel will make a nice meal for himself and Daisy, and they’ll sit down to watch the football together.

Daisy is his best friend – a 14-year-old beagle.

Right now, Jamel and Daisy are living in a semi-converted garage. Jamel's looking for a better and more stable place to live – but he’s been turned away from housing because he refuses to be separated from Daisy.

Over the last few months, Jamel has been keeping an audio diary for LA Public Press, to give us a sense of what day-to-day life is like for him and Daisy. Reporter Clare Wiley collaborated with Jamel to bring us this snapshot of his life with Daisy.

Plus, a first preview of what we've been working on: one investigation told over four episodes. Our first mini-season, out this summer!

The notorious former city council member Jose Huizar has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for taking millions in bribes from developers, selling out Boyle Heights, downtown LA, and the rest of his district. We went on a field trip to the sentencing, and this week on the show — we’re taking you there. With recordings and analysis from LAPP’s own Nancy Meza, Phoenix Tso, Elizabeth Chou, Mariah Castañeda and Carla Green.

Plus, an exciting update about the future of Smogland Radio.

For more on everything that happened with Huizar and the corruption scandal, check out The Sellout (https://open.spotify.com/episode/00LZg3ekj35JznS2Ny7lXj?si=cbe3927de8824031), an investigative podcast that was hosted by audience director Mariah Castañeda, produced by audio director Carla Green, and featured extensive interviews with Smogland Radio’s own host and executive producer, Nancy Meza.

You can find the wild appendix that Huizar and his lawyers filed with the court, including pages of text messages from Huizar’s former aide George Esparza, here (https://ia601308.us.archive.org/3/items/jose-huizar-appendix-a-gov.uscourts.cacd.-790267.1228.19/Jose%20Huizar%20APPENDIX%20A%20gov.uscourts.cacd.790267.1228.19.pdf). Thanks to Kim Cooper and Richard Schave of Esotouric Tours, who uploaded the file.

This week, we’ve got the second edition of Renter’s Hotline, our tenant advice segment. This time, Dominique called in about an issue that her dad is having at his apartment building in Paramount, where the landlord keeps raising the rent on Dominique’s father and other tenants with housing vouchers. She got advice from lawyer Gina Hong and organizer Chris Estrada from the Los Angeles Center for Community Law and Action. Plus, a dispatch from team Shampoolio at a MacArthur Park mutual aid event last week.

Disclaimer: Information in this episode isn’t a substitute for legal advice — please seek out a lawyer if you’re facing a legal issue. You can find some tenant legal clinics at lapublicpress.org/renters.