Leslie Hernandez has lived in Hillside Villa apartments for almost thirty years. She moved into the 124-unit building in Los Angeles’s Chinatown with her parents and her older sister in 1991, when she was six years old. The building was still relatively new when the family moved in, and because of public subsidies that the developers received when building it, it was subject to requirements to keep about half of the units affordable for low-income families. Hernandez’s family lived in one of the market-rate units, but used a Housing Choice Voucher to be able to afford the rent. Her parents have both since passed away, and her sister has moved out, but she still lives in the same two-bedroom apartment she grew up in. Some of her neighbors have become like family.
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