Ong on Lack of Socioeconomic Mobility in South L.A.

CNK Director Paul Ong was featured in a Los Angeles Times article about long-standing barriers to socioeconomic mobility in South Los Angeles. For decades, residents of South Los Angeles have faced a lack of employment opportunities, housing and labor discrimination, and subpar education access.

“If you look overall and compare it over a half-century, it’s rather depressing that we have not made the progress that people have hoped for,” Ong said, noting a particular lack of significant improvements in public education.

Now, an influx of new commercial and residential development is threatening to displace current residents of the area. Ong’s research found that the racial disparities in income among South L.A. households are even starker than in the rest of L.A. County. White households in South L.A. had a median income of $84,000, compared with $48,000 for Latino households and $36,000 for Black households.

Read the Los Angeles Time article here: South L.A. was promised a resurrection after 1992. The new boom could leave many behind