Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories

York & Fig: Where are they now?

We return to Highland Park for the second episode of the gentrification podcast.

What happens to people who get displaced when a neighborhood undergoes that transformation? About a year ago, Marketplace’s Wealth & Poverty team did something unusual — we set up a “pop-up” bureau in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The goal was get a street’s-eye view of the changes happening there, as hip new bars and shops replaced old businesses, as longtime residents sold their homes to young couples.

This summer, we are revisiting Highland Park in a three-part podcast to see how the neighborhood continues to evolve.

This episode features the story of one particular place in Highland Park. We visited the building in 2014, a crumbling brick structure with a residential hotel for low-income men on the top floor and mom-and-pop vendors selling discounted goods on the bottom floor.

We also visited our old storefront on the corner of York Boulevard and Figueroa Street. It’s now a high-end clothing boutique, as you can see below:

Photo credits: Rafael Cardenas


Some of the music in this podcast is by the band Artichoke, our neighbors in Highland Park.

Related Topics

Collections: