Comic: Tenants Fight Eviction at The 100-Year-Old Ozawa House

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East Hollywood News Tenant Rights

Comic: Tenants Struggle Against Eviction at The 100-Year-Old Ozawa House

Many of the tenants have lived in Virgil Village for decades, and the Ozawa House also has a long history in the community.

Sam Nakahira

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May 13, 2022

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For a hundred years, Ozawa Boarding House has sheltered and served as an employment agency for Japanese immigrants, gardeners and laborers in East Hollywood. In the 1950s, the Virgil area became known as Madison/J-Flats. Many Japanese immigrants and Black Americans formed a diverse community because of redlining. Current residents are facing eviction. The new landlord will likely turn it into an Airbnb.

Some residents have lived here their entire lives. Current tenants are all single men without family support. Five were evicted by a cash-for-keys offer. Remaining seven tenants deal with all day construction and hazardous living conditions, with dust and particles being filtered throughout the air.

The Japanese seniors have health conditions, but the landlord ignores their protests and a stop-work order from the city. Groups like East Hollywood Tenants union, J-Town Action and Solidarity and residents of Virgil Village have stepped in to help their elderly neighbors.

Landlords continually use the cash-for-keys method to forcibly displace tenants of color. Many unhoused people who are subject to violent sweeps by LAHSA are fifty years and older. Many Ozawa House tenants are low income. The landlord also doesn't provide communications in Japanese and has kept them in the dark about renovation plans. Tenants continue to organize for themselves and their right to reside in a house with a long history of sheltering Japanese Americans.

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