As Inglewood Progresses, Some Miss the “Old” Inglewood
The Fabulous Forum. SoFi Stadium. The future Intuit Dome. Before that, there was the Hollywood Park Racetrack, and there’s still the Hollywood Park Casino. Inglewood residents are no stranger to living in a bustling city, one that’s been known as “The City of Champions” since 1932. To some, Inglewood may look like a success story — a city with a questionable past that has changed and grown through the years for the better.
However, there’s always two sides to every story. There’s been more than a few issues that many residents have begun to encounter, including rapidly raising rents, old businesses being pushed out for newer ones, and changes being made to the city that seem to only be made to cater to newcomers.
Mayor Butts and some members of the community argue that all the attractions and traffic coming through the city is the reason for the increase in property value. As mentioned in one article from LAist, the “new” Inglewood may be a good thing for homeowners. In the article, Mayor Butts stated that property value for homeowners of over five years has seen an increase of 200–300 percent. He also said the city’s rent increase cap of 3 percent is lower than the state’s, which is at five percent.
However, that protection for renters is relatively recent, and still not enough for some. One Los Angeles Times article interviewed a couple Inglewood residents about their feelings concerning the rent increase back in 2019, before SoFi Stadium was even completed. One woman talked about how her rent increased by over $1000. Another man discussed how he was evicted after living in the building for almost a decade.
The woman who spoke with the LA Times discussed how the rent increase made her feel like she was being pushed out. This is a problem, especially when one considers many Inglewood natives are Black and brown. In fact, according to the Census Reporter, 50 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic, while 40 percent is Black.
If they’re the ones being pushed out of the city despite living there for years while potentially being “replaced” by those who can afford the rising housing costs, is this simply gentrification hiding behind the idea of a “new” Inglewood?
For my project, I want to focus on the every-day Inglewood resident or business owner. For the majority of the articles I found that wrote about Inglewood, the topic mainly surrounded the Super Bowl and all the positives it was bringing to the city. It highlighted happy business owners, the mayor, and members of the community who praised the changing city. While some articles did highlight members who weren’t as excited, there was less of a focus on them, or their words were immediately countered by a quote from the mayor.
Other articles got both sides of the story like the LAist article, but even then, one source was the mayor, and the other was a member of an activist group.
So far, I’ve talked to people uninvolved on a political or activist level in the city. I want my questions to pull out the experience of the average person in the city of Inglewood, whether it’s a positive or negative one. Even if the person is indifferent, I still want to know why they feel the way they do.
My questions:
- Do all the new establishments that have been brought to the city benefit or hurt you and your family personally, and how do they do this?
- Did you prefer the city before or after the major changes within the last decade, and why?
- How have these recent changes within the city impacted your day to day life? (i.e. impacting your daily commute, where you work/shop/send your kids to school/go out for fun).
From the responses I’ve gathered so far, people have mixed feelings about the new additions. Although Yazmin Castro-Moreno works at SoFi Stadium, she recognizes the downsides of the stadium and the incoming arena. Driving to the shopping center that used to be a five minute drive from her house is now a much longer, hectic drive due to traffic. Now, her mom usually does her shopping in the area that she works, which is right by The Grove.
I plan to conduct this project through photos of the people I speak with, and include excerpts of the experiences they share beside their photos. I want to do a project similar to Cicero Independiente. I want to carry out this project in an article form so I can include outside information, but still let their experiences carry the story.
Contributions from the Census Reporter, Cicero Independiente, LAist, LA Taco, Los Angeles Times and The City of Inglewood.
