CRM - Empowering Leaders - Communidad Cambria

Comunidad Cambria

After the 1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles, conditions in the Cambria Apartments deteriorated. Tenants, concerned about safety, met in the home of InnerChange staff to consider their options. Eventually a group of tenant leaders contacted the Legal Aid Foundation, and the City of Los Angeles took the landlord to court.

Despite being convicted on forty counts of building neglect, the landlord made no repairs and the tenants began a rent strike. The landlord responded by abandoning the building, leaving the tenants to arrange trash pickup and payment of utilities.

A local non-profit, Inquilinos Unidos, assisted with the tenant organizing and made contact with developers and housing department officials who proposed that the tenants form a nonprofit corporation to purchase the building. Throughout this time, InnerChange staff living in the building participated as tenants.

We believe that five years of prayer and relationship-building were an essential foundation for this project.

In 1994, Comunidad Cambria was incorporated, purchased the Cambria Apartments, and evicted the gang members and drug dealers who were squatting in the building. Plans for renovation of the building were drawn and the tenants relocated during three years of construction.

By this time, InnerChange staff Paul Smith had been elected one of the tenant leaders and served as a “bridge” between the tenants and the technical advisors, financial partners, and government officials. After completion of the project in 1998, Paul moved into a consulting role to set up operating systems and train the tenant board in management of the building.