Hollywood Director Lays A Needed Smackdown When Interviewer Suggests Gentrification Is Good

One of the greatest directors of all time puts his magnifying glass to his old neighborhood to see why it barely resembles the blocks he built his career writing about.

If you can listen to all 11 minutes, I recommend it! If not, here are my favorite moments:

0:17 — Spike begins to rev up.

1:45 — It's Christopher Columbus Syndrome.

3:35 — You can't just change the culture (favorite argument).

6:25 — He asks the realest question of the city.

Capital One

Capital One Impact Initiative

Veterans across the country are struggling to find stable housing. This affordable housing community is ensuring Los Angeles vets have a place to call home.

Courtesy of Creative Commons

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After years of service as a military nurse in the naval Marine Corps, Los Angeles, California-resident Rhonda Jackson became one of the 37,000 retired veterans in the U.S. who are currently experiencing homelessness — roughly eight percent of the entire homeless population.

"I was living in a one-bedroom apartment with no heat for two years," Jackson said. "The Department of Veterans Affairs was doing everything they could to help but I was not in a good situation."

One day in 2019, Jackson felt a sudden sense of hope for a better living arrangement when she caught wind of the ongoing construction of Veteran's Village in Carson, California — a 51-unit affordable housing development with one, two and three-bedroom apartments and supportive services to residents through a partnership with U.S.VETS.

Her feelings of hope quickly blossomed into a vision for her future when she learned that Veteran's Village was taking applications for residents to move in later that year after construction was complete.

"I was entered into a lottery and I just said to myself, 'Okay, this is going to work out,'" Jackson said. "The next thing I knew, I had won the lottery — in more ways than one."

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