Los Angeles
CNN
—
At 26, Ixchel Hernandez has become the defender and protector of her family’s modest apartment. In the two decades they’ve lived in their Los Angeles home, the family of four has successfully fought against multiple attempts aimed at pricing and, ultimately, forcing them out.
“We are human beings with the right to live in our home, and that’s just frankly what every person… in every home and [in] every building should know … they have the right to have their own space, to have their home,” Hernandez said.
But, across the country, affordable housing is becoming increasingly rare to find. The lack of housing inventory coupled with inflation and zoning inequalities have priced out most families, especially those who start with little-to-no capital of their own.
Ixchel’s parents moved to the United States from Mexico in hopes of giving her and her brother opportunities and a safe environment. Her father, Jose Hernandez, never wanted to give the family’s various landlords a reason to evict them over the years, and he dreamed of owning his own home one day.
“Thank God we never failed to pay our rent,” he said. But in order to keep up with rising rents, both parents worked and even opened up their home to another family for a brief time. Ixchel remembers six people crammed into their one-bedroom apartment.
“It shouldn’t have to be that way where you’re kind of fighting for space or you’re going to have to move so far out of LA to be able to have a home,” she said.
To purchase a house in more than 75% of the nation’s most populous cities, an average family needs to spend at least 30% of their annual income on housing. In cities like Miami, New York and Los Angeles, that number surges to more than 80% of an…
