From the outside, Chinatown’s Ai Hoa Supermarket doesn’t look like much. Its signs are faded, and the windows’ reflective covering are peeling with age. However, the single door entrance leads into a crowded and bustling market, with shelves packed with Chinese and Vietnamese goods— mung bean noodles, Vita Soy drinks, shelves full of soy and fish sauces, an abundant produce section stocked with Thai chilis, bamboo shoots and bunches of hearty greens.

“You ask me how deep is my love” plays in Chinese over the speakers. The famous ballad by Teresa Ting, one of Asia’s most influential singers, resonates with the customers at Ai Hoa, many of whom are locals who have been coming here for years—decades even. When the Hang family opened the market in 1979, it was one the first in LA’s Chinatown founded by Vietnamese war refugees, according to Phuong Nguyen, assistant professor of U.S. history at Cal State University, Monterey Bay.

One by one the local markets shut their doors—most recently the G&G market closed in September. Now Ai Hoa is the last grocery market in Chinatown, and soon, it, too, will be leaving. Ahn Ngo and her husband, Huy Hang, owners of the store, are relocating to El Monte to make way for new developments in Chinatown, which would leave the neighborhood with no full-service grocery stores.

“Most people begged me to stay,” Hang said. “But there’s no way we can stay with all the rent hikes.” Hang says that after 40 years, the supermarket has become the heart of Chinatown and residents’ daily routines. Without a market here, “they would have to drive all the way to 626 area code to just buy Asian groceries.”

For LA’s Chinatown, the shift from a traditional ethnic enclave to a more modern city, has resulted in the loss of some of its most basic amenities. Some call this the revitalization of Chinatown, but this process of introducing market rate developments has inevitably resulted in increasing rent and the displacement of some of the city’s older storeowners and residents. Some owners have simply moved to different cities and, in some cases, children of family businesses have chosen different paths. But the cosmetic and cultural transformation of Chinatown has also brought in a new kind of clientele, as the existing community struggles to keep their own social fabric alive.

Andrew Leong, professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, said the disappearance of a market like Ai Hoa is “part and parcel of gentrification.” He also explained why the loss will affect more than just convenience. “Once you lose out on that kind of grocery store phenomenon, you’re beginning to have the first steps towards erosion on a daily basis of your cultural identity.”

Linda Hang, the owner’s daughter, says the cost of operating the market became unmanageable. The rent on the space has escalated, as has the fee for an adjacent parking lot for customers—the lot alone is now $5,000 a month. When the family started requiring a minimum $10 purchase for customers who parked there, some patrons balked.

“Some of the customers only need a few ingredients and it’s not even $10, so they refuse to buy $10 and they would get upset and say, ‘I’m never coming back’,” Hang said.

In 2018, Tom Gilmore, the developer known for kick-starting downtown LA’s redevelopment boom, took over the parcel of land that Ai Hoa sits on. Though the news hasn’t been confirmed by Gilmore Associates, members of the advocacy group Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (CCED) say that the company is planning on building a luxury hotel on the space.

“It is also our continued hope to provide Chinatown with a quality local market, whether it is Ai Hoa or another similar style, serving the needs of the Chinatown community,” read a statement from Gilmore Associates.

New developments have slowly made their way into Chinatown in the past decade. The Far East Plaza has become a bustling joint for hip eateries such as Baohaus, LASA and Howlin’ Rays, jumpstarted by Roy Choi’s Chego, which has left after six years.

Though it’s not clear why the restaurant left, Choi alluded to the change the neighborhood has experienced in an Instagram post, “When we moved to Chinatown six years ago, I saw a vision of empty plazas at night filled with people and a harmony of Chinatown families mixing with next- gen merchants where no one got displaced and all boats would rise. Not sure if it all-the-way happened as poetically as I saw in my third, but I think it came close, hopefully with not too much distress to the OG residents.”

Luxury high-rises Jia Apartments and Blossom Plaza, which opened in 2014 and 2016 respectively rent studio units for upwards of $1,500 a month. The neighborhood is also slated for a 725-unit apartment and retail complex near the Gold Line metro station called College Station.

“At one point in time, those particular areas were not desirable,” Leong said. ”But now there is an antithesis where people are coming back into town. We’re seeing a concentration of those vertical, luxury high rises that’s happening throughout all Chinatowns.”

Jan Lin, professor of sociology at Occidental College and author of multiple books on Chinatown and gentrification, says that new developments such as restaurants and art galleries may “culturally revitalize economically transitioning neighborhoods,” but these “food scenes and arts scenes are often associated with a commercial gentrification process that accompanies or precedes residential gentrification.” However, Lin believes it could indirectly affect displacement “through rising rents and property values.”

Hang has helped run Ai Hoa for almost ten years, covering the night shift as her parents get older. Her uncle and brother share the day shift. She says she feels “really sad for the community, especially the elderly and those with no transportation.”

As a way of commemorating Ai Hoa and raising awareness about the closing of Chinatown’s last full-service grocery store, CCED organized a going away party. Photos of Hang and her family posing with long-time customers and employees were strung around the market.

There’s a photo of Jun Ha Yu, who’s lived in Chinatown for decades, showing off a bag of bean sprouts and a photo of longtime customer Amy Mar proudly holding up a fresh fish.

Through a translator, Mar said that she doesn’t know where to shop now and may have to rely on her kids to go shopping for her. “Most people that rely on these essential amenities don’t have a place to go,” Mar said. “Most folks are elderly and disabled.”

For many, Ai Hoa’s departure is the loss of a community hub. Susie Sue, who has lived in Chinatown for the past 20 years, says she visits Ai Hoa almost every other day. “I love the people here,” Sue said. ”They treat you like family.”

Hang says her mom is torn about the situation. “She cries about it every day,” Hang said. “She doesn’t want to leave, but they left us no choice but to leave.”

Rising Housing Prices Push Out Long-Time Residents

The new developments highlight tensions within the Asian community as well, said Frances Huynh, a member of the CCED. "With the influx of these young, upwardly mobile Asian American entrepreneurs, I’m always wondering who gets the profit and capitalizes on cultures and foods that the existing working class community in Chinatown has depended on and fostered for so long,” Huynh said.

Simon Chourr and Dimanche Ly are deeply rooted in the Chinatown community. Chourr, who came to Los Angeles in 1984 as a refugee from Cambodia has lived in Chinatown for most of his life. He started his family here in 2002 with his wife Dimanche Ly and their two kids— a son in high school and a daughter in elementary. They live in a cramped three-bedroom apartment that goes for a little over $1,200 a month, which is less than half the market rate for a one-bedroom apartment (about $2,499 according to Rent Jungle). Their living room walls are filled with pictures of Chourr and Dimanche’s wedding photos, taken in Cambodia. Toys are strewn on the floor in front of the TV. The three of us squeeze into a bedroom, the door partially blocked by the end of a bedframe.

When I ask Chourr when he started living in Chinatown, he starts by telling me his journey from Cambodia. He talks about the harrowing conditions under the Khmer Rouge and how difficult it was to find food to eat, which lead to the death of his mother and older sister. Eventually, after staying in Morong Bataan, a Cambodian refugee camp in the Philippines, Chourr was granted the opportunity to resettle in Los Angeles in 1984.

Since then, Chourr and his family have lived in one neighborhood: Chinatown. His first job was at a jewelry repair shop. Ly is currently the sole breadwinner of the family, earning a modest wage as an in-home caretaker for the elderly in the neighborhood, while Chourr rests for health reasons. She says it’s hard,, and that it would be even harder if she had to move somewhere else.

“When I come here 10 years ago, I come and walk into Chinatown,” Ly said. If “I need to go, it’s not easy for me.”

Chourr and Ly’s apartment is included in the Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO), otherwise known as a rent-controlled building. Rent controlled units are built before October 1978 and offer tenants stronger protections against evictions than non-rent-controlled units. Some of those protections include rent increase caps between three and eight percent, depending on the Consumer Price Index. These rent increases can only occur every 12 months. Also, landlords can only evict tenants for reasons listed under the ordinance and are required to give tenants compensation when they do evict them (for no-fault evictions). One form of compensation is cash for keys—an ordinance in which the landlord offers tenants money to voluntarily move out.

Although rent-controlled housing offers more protections for tenants, it does not protect them from what may happen if owners decide to take the building off the housing market. The Ellis Act, a law passed in 1985, allows landlords to take their housing off the rental market, thereby allowing them to evict tenants (with compensation such as cash for keys).

The law was originally created with the intention of protecting mom and pop landlords, but it has also been taken advantage of by developers in some instances. These instances are highlighted in the LA Times article written by Ben Poston and Andrew Khouri: “Many of the recent evictions have been carried out by developers who have purchased the buildings with the intention of demolishing them to construct pricier housing. At least 51% of the L.A. properties removed under the Ellis Act in 2013 had been purchased within the previous year.”

Landlords filed Ellis Act declarations for more than 7,000 rent-controlled units in the past 5 years in the City of Los Angeles (and more than 1,000 units in the past year), according to the Coalition for Economic Survival’s anti-eviction mapping project.

When the real estate agency Rosano Partners acquired Chourr and Ly’s apartment complex, they and the rest of the tenants in the 16-unit building , received notices for a cash for keys deal of around $20,000. However, with help from CCED, they were able to secure a deal of $50,000 per unit. Chourr and his family were offered $60,000 for their 3-bedroom unit but turned down the offer. Tenants are not required to accept the deal unless the building is being torn down, according to the ordinance rules. 

Ten units accepted the offer. Many of the renters had never had access to such a large lump sum, said Annie Shaw, a member of CCED, which has been working with the tenants of 770 ever since the cash for keys notices were sent. But Chourr and Ly knew it wouldn’t be enough to cover rent at market rate prices for more than a few years. "If I go somewhere else, I spend like how many months? It’s gone already, and after that I can be homeless,” Ly said. “I don’t have a house for my kid, you know, I don’t want to do that.” She doesn’t know what situation the other families are in, but she knows her salary alone wouldn’t be enough to survive if they have to move out.

Leong also points out that “for those people who are willing to sell out on their unit, we’re talking about the beginning of the destruction of a unified community.” Leong refers to the process of urban renewal where an urban area is redeveloped and generally wealthier individuals are encouraged to live in the area instead. “Once the tenants are forced out and scattered throughout the city, they no longer have that sense of community and belonging.”

For rent-controlled buildings, once a tenant vacates their unit, those units can be reset to market rate prices, after which rent stabilization kicks in again. This is formally known as vacancy decontrol. One common practice is, once the unit is empty, to renovate the apartment and sell it to someone who is willing to pay much higher prices for the space.

Though it’s unclear what 770’s landlord, Sagiv Rosano, will do to the complex, Sandy Zhou, another tenant of the building, says the newly-vacant apartments will undergo renovations.

The property manager for 770 declined to comment on what their future plans are for the development, but the remaining tenants are afraid that they will eventually be priced out of their homes.

“In Chinatown, which is a historically low-income, multiethnic immigrant neighborhood, gentrification prioritizes developers, folks and businesses that are considered more profitable at the expense of the working class who already exist in the community,” says Huynh.

Like most of the tenants fighting displacement in Chinatown and all over L.A., Chourr and Ly’s lives revolve around their local neighborhood. Their kids go to Castelar Elementary and Downtown Magnet High School, respectively a six- and 16-minute walk from their home. Their relatives also live nearby in other complexes. Ly says she ventures out of Chinatown maybe once every couple of months, but since there are grocery markets and other social services within Chinatown, there’s no need to spend gas money to go farther, though that may have to change once Ai Hoa moves out.

Ly says that ever since she moved to Chinatown in 2002, she’s been going to G&G Market and Ai Hoa. When asked where she’s going to shop now, Ly said “I don’t have no idea yet, I just feel sad.”

Chourr also notes the Cambodian population in the neighborhood. When he first came to L.A. in the 80s, being close to people from his home country who had fled similar circumstances made Chinatown the ideal place to live. Chourr realizes that the neighborhood is diversifying now, but he says it’s an “accepting place” and that he feels safe.

However, the unpredictable nature of their current situation has taken a toll on Chourr. He says that he and his wife often stay up contemplating their options if they are forced to move, resulting in sleepless nights. Then, Chourr says he started feeling unwell, “When I eat, it’s stuck in the chest.” After a couple of days dealing with chest pains, Chourr decided to go to the emergency room at the USC Medical Center, the closest hospital, and finds two clots that put him on the verge of a heart attack.

Ly attributes it to the stress and exhaustion of their situation. “When he thinks, [the pain] comes very fast. When he don’t think, it goes away for one or two days,” says Ly. Chourr says that he previously had high blood pressure, but never dealt with a heart problem this severe.

“To this day, in many ways, Chinatowns throughout the country serve as that sense of a safe haven,” says Leong, “this is where they get a sense of community and safety and identity. We need to empower people to make sure that the government is protecting renters who can’t afford to live in these luxury high rises.”

Huynh says that CCED will continue to support tenants and fight for a vision of Chinatown that encompasses working class people. Since Blossom Plaza and Jia Apartments opened, there has been explosive growth in residential housing projects such as the College Station Project. In order to insure that Chinatown remains an equitable neighborhood, CCED has lobbied for affordable housing units to be included in these new developments.

“Maybe the rich people coming. The poor people, we move out just like that,” said Ly. But their family hopes they can stay in Chinatown for the time being. “I cannot talk about the future because I don’t know the future yet. I just know right now my job is in Chinatown, that’s why I want to live in Chinatown.”