SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) The United States of America has not fully addressed governmental involvement in redlining, racial covenants, housing segregation, and other discriminatory housing practices experienced by Native, Latinx, Black, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities.
(b) Federal, state, and local governments have deliberately structured the availability of opportunities, implemented policies and practices, and assigned value based on race, physical characteristics, and national origin, which has and continues to perpetuate unjust disadvantages for Native, Latinx, Black, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities.
(c) Systemic discrimination based on race and ethnicity continues to hinder entire communities from realizing their full potential, as evidenced by segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929. Historical practices include state-sanctioned housing discrimination through redlining, and the enforcement of racially restrictive covenants. Additionally, there has been inequitable access to opportunities for social mobility and wealth creation due to poor access to care, health resources, and education for underrepresented communities of color.
(d) These historic inequities have resulted in the deprivation of marginalized communities from access to land and retention of their property rights, economic opportunities, and generational wealth.
(e) Against this backdrop of racially motivated policies, the
injustices in the City of Los Angeles (city) communities of La Loma, Bishop, and Palo Verde stand as a stark example, where residents were unjustly removed without proper compensation, epitomizing the ongoing struggle for equity and justice in housing and land rights.
(f) References to Chavez Ravine shall be made throughout this act, yet it is important to clarify that there was no singular “Chavez Ravine” neighborhood. Instead, there were three distinct neighborhoods—La Loma, Bishop, and Palo Verde—that have, over time, been collectively referred to in public discourse and historiography as Chavez Ravine. This act uses the term “Chavez Ravine” as a shorthand to represent the collective experience of all three neighborhoods, acknowledging the historical conflation of their identities.
(g) The Chavez Ravine neighborhood is approximately 315 acres and is in northeast Los Angeles.
Chavez Ravine housed more than 1,800 families and is an example of how racial discrimination against people of color reached crisis proportions and resulted in the forced displacement of estimated 3,800 individuals. The displacement of these residents has caused large, long-lasting disparities in housing, family stability, health, mental wellness, education, employment, economic development, public safety, and justice.
(h) Despite the perspectives of outsiders and City of Los Angeles officials, who often labeled the community as a “vacant shantytown,” “The Poor Man’s Shangri-La,” and an “eyesore,” these neighborhoods were, in fact, vibrant and cohesive communities, serving as a hub for homeownership and economic development and growth for people of color.
(i) In 1950, Chavez Ravine’s 315 acres were earmarked by the city as a prime location for redevelopment. The city condemned the
community land through the power of eminent domain for the purpose of constructing public housing. That same year, Chavez Ravine residents and property owners received letters from the city demanding the sale of their homes to make the land available for the proposed “Elysian Park project.” The city promised displaced families that they would have the opportunity to return to new homes in the newly redeveloped housing project.
(j) As a result of these intentional acts consistent with a racially motivated history of redlining and property seizure, by 1952, the community was a ghost town, and in the following years, the land would be sold below the market value or auctioned off against the will of the landowners. Churches, schools, and cemeteries were bulldozed and buried. The promises of new permanent housing would be abandoned, and land titles would never be returned to the original owners. By 1958, the Elysian Park Heights housing project had
unraveled, and the city conveyed the Chavez Ravine land to a private entity for an insignificant amount considering the land’s value. The private entity built a sports stadium and parking lot on the site.
(k) Chavez Ravine was wrongfully condemned land, and its residents were displaced and unjustly deprived of their constitutional right to own property. The fraudulent appropriation of land from private individuals on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin is against the public interest and denies individuals and communities the right to enjoyment, ownership, and inheritance of land, as well as the inalienable right to control one’s property.
(l) The government has a responsibility to prohibit and eliminate racial and ethnic discrimination in all forms and to ensure that all persons are entitled to security against forced removal from housing, harassment, and intimidation
by any entities that deprive individuals of their rights to self-determination and dignity on the basis of race.
(m) As set forth in precedential landmark legislation, Senate Bill 796 (Chapter 435 of the Statutes of 2021): “Government must act in the public’s interest to ensure that communities can fairly access justice and an effective remedy, including, when appropriate, the potential return, restitution, resettlement, rehabilitation, or compensation, for unlawful and race-based displacements.”
(n) Actions taken by the city disenfranchised more than 1,800 Angelino families, and approximately 3,800 individuals in the Chavez Ravine area. It is in the interest of the public, the State of California, the County of Los Angeles, and the city to create a task force to oversee and report on the investigation and assessed value of the lost housing and land, the compensation requirements
for displaced residents and landowners of Chavez Ravine, potential compensation for their descendants, the construction of a memorial to be erected on the Chavez Ravine site, and a private cause of action enforced for any parties not otherwise compensated through the administrative process.