When the American Hotel converted into a tourist hotel, its long-term residents lost not just their affordable housing but the creative community that long thrived in the iconic building.
This story was produced in partnership with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, and is part of a three-part series.
Jaime Colindres’ third-floor room at the American Hotel in Los Angeles was tiny, but in it he painted expansive scenes of the American West on salvaged pieces of wood. Guitar sounds filled the halls, and neighbors kept their doors open. Some residents landed there when the city’s ruthless rental market slammed its doors on them, but they quickly soaked up the creative soul that creaked and hummed, rattled and swelled through the battered hotel.
That was 10 years ago.
The American is now a boutique tourist hotel in L.A.’s downtown Arts District. Nearly all of its longtime residents have been replaced. But the culprit is not gentrification. It’s the city’s failure to enforce its own laws to preserve affordable housing.