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Community Coalition

FREE THE LAND

For decades, South Los Angeles residents have called on the city and county to free the land.  Transforming land use through nuisance abatement, economic development, and access to public spaces has been a core campaign demand since the founding of the organization.  We want to provide safe places to eat, sleep, work, and play, small businesses, green spaces, great schools, good jobs, healthy food, clean streets, and community events. A community where a working-class family can buy a home, raise their children, and grow old.

Figueroa Corridor

In October of 2023, over 300 community residents, youth, parents, organizations marched to bring attention to the issue and call on public officials to “Free the Land!”   The residents are calling city and county officials to:

  1. Free the Land by closing the motels that are profiting from the sex trafficking, violence and addiction.
  2. Build a robust continuum of care capable of rescuing the hundreds of Black and brown women and trans women that have been trafficked.
  3. Purchase and transform the land into community assets that provide high quality food, small business space, housing, child care, senior services, and green space.

Community Coalition continues to organize community residents which have identified additional neighborhoods in South Los Angeles that are also impacted by negative land uses, sex trafficking and divestment.   South LA residents will ‘Reclaim, Reimagine and Revitalize” our neighborhoods block by block by instituting community based solutions to create vibrant communities.

Vermont Corridor Organizing Project

As South LA continues to face the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic’s economic downturn, the current housing crisis, and ongoing waves of displacement, community residents call for investments in neighborhood corridors centered in economic and racial equity. To counter homelessness, economic divestment, and land speculation disproportionately impacting families of color, we will center South LA residents in a community-led visioning process that elevates community ownership of land, housing, commercial space, and essential resources as a critical strategy to build permanent power for Black and Brown South LA residents.      

Vermont Avenue, with its long history of blight and chronic divestment, is identified as a corridor that can undergo a community-led transformation that transforms its built environment and strengthens its local economy, all while ensuring local residents benefit from each investment the most. To do so, Community Coalition organizes a base of residents that engages with the broader community, local small businesses, community leaders, community based organizations, and public servants to inform the transformation of our streets, land, businesses, local workforce, and ownership of our own community.

History of Land Use Work

Transforming land has been a demand of Community Coalition members since day one.   Community Coalition’s first survey, with over 10,000 respondents, identified the liquor store as the number one problem impacting the quality of life of South LA residents.

 Since then, Community Coalition members have been on a mission to free the land.  Studies document what we have learned through our nuisance abatement work: crime decreases dramatically when lawless businesses are closed.

Between 1992 and 2022, the Community Coalition has had many land use victories. CoCo has:

  • Change state law requiring the involvement of community residents in zoning decisions
  • Prevented four new liquor stores and one new motel from coming into South LA
  • Placed corrective conditions on 21 problem liquor stores, motels, recycling centers, and bars
  • Closed down 11 liquor stores, motels, and a bar (seven liquor stores, three motels)
  • Supported conversion of over 48 former liquor stores and motels (44 from civil unrest) into other businesses, affordable housing, and social service agencies.
  • Participated in more than 240 hearings zoning hearings
  • Involved 38,878 people in signing petitions