In just four days, 85-year-old Columba Torralba and her family could be homeless.
They’ve lived in the same two-bedroom apartment on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in Boyle Heights for more than 30 years, next door to their Mexican restaurant, El Apetito. They pay about $3,000 for the restaurant space and about $900 in rent for their two-bedroom apartment — a deal in a city where the average two bedroom goes for nearly $3,000.
They remember when Cesar Chavez Avenue was called Brooklyn Avenue, and they still call it that sometimes, because old habits are hard to kick.
But Torralba and her daughter Rosa Garcia, along with Garcia’s two sons, Jose Parra, 39, and Anthony Parra, 32, are set to be kicked out of their apartment on Feb. 5. They’re considering other apartments that they don’t think they can afford. Garcia said she was even considering buying an RV to live in.
“I’m concerned about my mom. Where am I gonna put her?” Garcia said. “Sometimes I just cry … because I don’t know what we will do.”
The pending eviction is the culmination of a years-long battle between the family and Will Tiao, the owner of the property and a former Hollywood actor and director who was once an extra on “Sex and the City” and wrote, acted in and produced the film “Formosa Betrayed” before pivoting to real estate.
Tiao has put forward plans to demolish the two buildings and three rent-controlled units to build a six-story housing structure with 50 residential units and ground floor commercial space.
The fight over the properties on Cesar Chavez has raised troubling questions about the housing crisis in Los Angeles, and how to address it.
Tiao’s tenants claim they are the victims of gentrification while Tiao argues that the project is one of many needed to ease the city’s housing shortage. It’s a particularly poignant conflict in this Boyle Heights neighborhood, where immigrant street vendors and mariachi musicians ply their livelihoods on the sidewalk and new businesses bring economic vitality — but threaten also to change the character of the community.
Rosa Garcia said she first knew something was wrong when she saw men in the parking lot of El Apetito digging. She used to work in construction, so she knew what that meant.
“I told my mom, ‘Oh my God, I think they’re going to build something here,’” she said.
That was back in 2021, when Tiao and his company, Tiao Properties, first applied to redevelop the lots near the intersection of Cesar Chavez and Chicago Street. Tiao, 52, bought the property in 2020.
Losing the restaurant terrified Garcia. She said she has invested more than $100,000 into the space and that if the family loses it, they will lose everything.
The city considered Tiao’s project and found that it met all regulations and approved it in August 2023.
The Planning Department said the project would contribute “to the revitalization of Cesar Chavez Avenue,” bringing more foot traffic and business.
Tiao argued that the development, which would create many more apartments than currently exist at the property, would help Los Angeles meet its housing production goals during a housing crisis. The five units reserved for extremely low-income households would provide more affordable housing than the current three units on the property, the planning department found.
But the community fought back.
Viva Padilla, who ran a bookstore called Re/Arte Centro Librario on the ground floor of one of Tiao’s buildings on Cesar Chavez, filed an appeal of the decision to allow the project to move forward, citing 25 reasons the development should not be allowed. Among the many arguments, Padilla said the proposed development did not provide enough affordable housing to an impoverished neighborhood and would not provide play space for children who moved in.
“Tiao Corporation wants to build a monstrous six-story market-rate housing complex on Cesar Chavez Avenue,” read a petition to save the complex. “Disgustingly, this building will only have five (5) affordable units and 45 market-rate units, which is a slap in the face to our community whose working-class residents have been historically marginalized and fighting against displacement, gentrification and unemployment.”
The appeal went before the East Los Angeles Area Planning Commission in early 2024.
A crowd gathered for the planning commission’s three meetings. At the final meeting in March 2024, audience members held signs in Spanish reading “No a la gentrificacion” and “No al desplazamientos.”
“I’d like you to stop the gentrification,” resident Fausta Ortiz said to the commission, according to the Boyle Heights Beat.
Few appeared to support the project.
One businesswoman, Maria Del Carmen Salas, who opened the restaurant across the street, La Parilla, in 1978, said she supported the new development in a letter to the planning commission.
“In addition to providing the housing units for our Boyle Heights residents, the development will further beautify the historic neighborhood, and provide economic improvement for our community,” wrote Del Carmen Salas, who opened her restaurant in 1978.
A Planning Department representative told the commission that, because the development complied with the law, approving the appeal could open the city up to legal liability.
But that’s what the commission did.
“There is a history of our community being steamrolled by the Planning Department,” Avila-Hernandez said at the meeting, according to the Boyle Heights Beat.
The commission eventually voted 3-2 in favor of Padilla’s appeal of the project.
“We managed to get it stopped,” Padilla told The Times. “We managed to get the commissioners to be on our side on gentrification.”
Jonathan Zasloff, a land use professor at the UCLA School of Law, said the emotional power of seeing the current tenants pushed out of their home is easier to empathize with than what the loss of 50 units of housing means for the city.
“You can see and put a name and a picture on the family that is going to be displaced and severely injured by this. What you don’t see and you can’t put a picture and a name to are the five extra extremely-low-income families that would have come in,” he said in an interview with The Times.
Although the commission’s decision was a victory for the tenants, it raised new questions about gentrification and development.
Tiao filed suit against the city in June 2024, arguing that the commissioners committed a “blatant and knowing” violation of the state’s Housing Accountability Act, which was passed in 1982 and amended in 2024 to help spur development and address the state’s housing crisis.
Under the law, the commission could deny the project only if it posed a specific health or safety threat.
In its denial of the project, the commission argued that gentrification and displacement have health implications and that the project would “not improve the quality of life for those who live” in the area.
But the state disagreed, saying in a letter that gentrification impacts associated with the project didn’t satisfy the legal threshold necessary in order to deny the project’s development.
The judge in the case found that the arguments by the city regarding gentrification were subjective, not backed by specific evidence, and could be applicable to any development with market-rate apartments in any neighborhood facing gentrification concerns.
“While tenants who are evicted and displaced may have more difficulty securing their health and safety, evictions and displacement are not themselves inherently a health and safety issue,” wrote Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin in a Jan. 30, 2025 ruling. “While their concerns about potential displacement and gentrification may have been well-intentioned, the state has made abundantly clear that the production of new housing must be prioritized.”
Kin found that the East Los Angeles Area Planning Commission had acted in bad faith in the case and issued a judgment directing the city to approve Tiao’s project once again.
The city also settled the case with Tiao for more than $170,000.
Just days after the judge’s ruling, on Feb. 4, 2025, the Garcia family received their first notice to vacate their apartment.
Because of Torralba’s age, the family was allowed an extra year to leave the apartment. On Dec. 4, they received another letter informing them they had to be out by Feb. 5 of this year.
The notice informed the family that they will receive $25,700 in relocation assistance from Tiao, but if they fail to leave the property by Feb. 5, they would forfeit that money and be subject to “immediate eviction.”
Tiao declined to speak with The Times, but his attorney, Cynthia Juno, said $25,700 was the maximum they could give the Garcia family in relocation assistance.
“We understand why residents are concerned about displacement and rising costs in Boyle Heights,” said Juno in an email to The Times. “These are real pressures across Los Angeles and especially in neighborhoods with deep cultural roots.”
The “prolonged delays related to litigation” resulted in Tiao putting his plans on pause, Juno said.
“The investment group is reassessing whether the approved plan still makes sense and is considering alternative approaches, including a more affordability-focused or fully affordable housing project,” she said.
The Garcia family will not have to leave the restaurant, Juno said.
“These tenants have been fortunate to live and work in close proximity to their restaurant for many years. Now, they must find a new place to live but may continue restaurant operations,” she said.
Tiao is removing the current units from the rental market. The two other tenants in the building where Garcia and her mother and sons live have already left. One of those tenants used their relocation assistance money as a down payment on a home, Juno said.
As January dragged on, the Garcia family began to pack their things. They removed family photos from the wall, leaving clean squares framed by the dust and memories of decades past.
The apartment is far from perfect. Rats enter the kitchen through holes in the wall that have not been fixed. Still, Torralba sat in her bedroom crying as she looked through photos of her family from over the years.
Garcia’s younger brother, David, who also lived in the apartment with the family, was killed in a shooting in 2023.
Parra says what he’ll miss most about the apartment are the memories of his uncle.
But there was not much time to sulk.
Garcia and her mother were off to look at a one-bedroom apartment. They still have no place to live starting Feb. 5.
The post A “Sex and the City” extra wanted to build a housing complex. He must evict a Boyle Heights family first appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
