Neither Human Nor Ghost: Chinese Immigrants Scrape By In San Gabriel Valley’s Boarding Houses

Mississippians do that in French we met you Chisa don't tighten you some ple ha ha ha come on to another knee bet ha just true that Lisa she must he was one of you into the battle hey Dorian see our treat anyone sovereign open my name is Indra Wong in the last nine month I investigated the boarding house issue in the San Gabriel Valley area in the Chinese community and how by day the living situation is for those low skilled Chinese newly arrived immigrants workers we have our full story online on how is to calm for those of you who don't have time to read the full story here are the takeaways a boarding house can be at an apartment a condominium or a single-family house some people just have rent that from the landlords and then they sublease the spaces to other attendants and there can be up to 15 people we allow those tenants are low-skilled Chinese newly arrived immigrants workers they rely on boarding houses because they don't need to pay deposit and they can leave whenever they won't and the rent is super low it can be 10 to 15 dollars a night and they just pay on daily basis but the conditions of those supporting houses can be very dangerous roaches and mode are very common and when you have 3 to 5 people sharing a room violence can happen very often based on the data provided by the four cities in the San Gabriel Valley we looked into the opening past the five years over 650 boarding house cases [Music] based on the number I learned motor park has the most aborting House cases in the San Gabriel Valley area that's also reflected by what attendants told me when they arrived at LAX they were just to come directly to your motor park and he's like a well known area for Chinese immigrant workers I talked to their city officials and their previous mayor and now the council member of the city Peter Chan told me that he knows like the problem has been in the city for years they used to have 30 to 40 people in one boarding house and now it's more like 7 to 15 in his opinion the problem now it's under control and it's so much better if nobody reports at the boarding houses to the city the city is basically lighting on the goal since 2005 but the city called enforcement officials have inspected the building why I spent most of my time reporting no less than 30 times during my inspection in 2016 the city cited 85 violations in this apartment complex city didn't identify how many units were used as party houses are like in the list of violations you can see so many like units was ideal for excessive mattress also many pads in one bathroom this was the last of five visits from the city in that year in our visit they had fun boring house violations the total in fines paid $350 there is no other documentation showing that the city did the follow up inspection based on my most recent visit to the building at least 13 units appear to be being used as boarding houses so basically things look very similar to what authorities pointed out in 2016 a lot of the city's code enforcement officials told me that when it comes to the boarding house issue is very hard for them to identify and achieve just to do the inspection because it's an interior issue they rely on complaints from the neighbors so they have to gather enough evidence such as photos to really get in there otherwise they have to rely on attendance leaving him there to light them in even the city can really enter the beauty if they identify the issue they were justice and warning to the property owners second time inspection eva'dur if the owners don't attract the issue the fine will be $100 the maximum fine is $1,000 because the fine is really low a lot of the times are the landlords would rather just to pay the fine instead of doing the maintenance a lot of those people living in the boarding houses are undocumented the Chinese workers they are afraid to report on into the city because they might get kicked out or even get deported the housing crisis here in Los Angeles is very people working like those undocumented immigrant super cannot like really decent jobs they cannot pay decent housing and also like in San Gabriel Valley sees there is a no rent control people don't Dyer to complain because they told me that if they complain they have to leave and it's not a big problem for the landlord to find another tenant who is willing to pay the rent to stay there for people like that well they are stark in this live incineration if you want to learn more about the story the full story is on our website a s.com

Channel: LAist

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Id: lX0BPs803Y8

Length: 5min 26sec (326 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020