A Netflix series tackles gentrification in Los Angeles. Some say it's part of the problem
LOS ANGELES - Netflix's new series "Gentefied" explores the gentrification battles that have roiled the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles in recent years. But the story of how the series came to be starts a few miles northwest, in East Hollywood.
Co-creator Marvin Lemus moved into a studio apartment there roughly five years ago, looking for a sense of home in the predominantly working-class Latino neighborhood after graduating from the Art Institute of California. The Mexican and Guatemalan American writer-director-producer hails from Bakersfield, where he felt like he never really belonged. But the comforts he found in East Hollywood couldn't obscure the fact that new businesses were sprouting up and more affluent people were moving into his apartment complex, replacing others priced out by rising rents and the higher cost of goods.
And he quickly found himself confronting his own part in the neighborhood's transformation.
"An elotero would come by every day - it felt so much like home in a way that I hadn't experienced in a while," Lemus says. "But I started to realize that even
