While some may be celebrating the upcoming USC Discovery and Translational Hub, a proposed seven-story, multi-disciplinary research facility on the Health Sciences Campus, Pamela Agustin-Anguiano, the director of the Eastside Leadership for Equitable and Accountable Development Strategies, has been fighting for “community benefit concessions”  for the last year.

The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-1 to approve the DTH last month, just one day after an appeal to the facility’s development from three community organizations — Eastside LEADS, Service Employees International Union Local 721 and USC Forward — was unanimously rejected by the Los Angeles Planning and Land Use Management Committee. 

“Who is this new project in the community set to benefit?” Agustin-Anguiano said. “Is it set to benefit existing residents [and] existing youth, or is it set to benefit the attraction of a new demographic to a community?”

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The proposed 201,292-square-foot facility would contain a lecture hall, a grab-and-go cafe, a biorepository, a medical chemistry core lab and an array of research spaces, which could accommodate more than 84 researchers. 

In the appeal sent in June, the three organizations claimed the project would accelerate housing challenges caused by displacement and gentrification in the surrounding neighborhoods by enabling enrollment and staff growth without proportional on-campus housing. The appeal argued the University’s continued growth forces long-standing community residents to compete with USC employees and students for housing and community parking.

There are currently 14,000 staff and 4,600 students at HSC. However, Currie Hall, the only on-campus housing facility at HSC, holds 178 residential units, requiring the majority of the students and professionals to seek off-campus housing. A report included in the case’s council file projected approximately 800 new research and support staff will occupy the facility over a 10-year period.

“[Community members] in the vicinity of the project site breathe the air, suffer traffic congestion, lack of housing and suffer other environmental impacts of the project unless it is properly analyzed and mitigated,” USC Forward, a community coalition focused on affordable housing, wrote in the appeal.

These housing challenges particularly affect residents in Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights, where reported homeownership rates are below 26%. According to Zillow, the average home value in Boyle Heights has increased by $327,695 since 2017.

In a statement to the Daily Trojan, the University wrote the DTH would not be an expansion since it would be built within the existing HSC campus boundaries. This would mean the facility would not require the destruction of additional housing. 

“The USC Discovery and Translational Hub is a transformational medical hub focused on innovative health research and delivering life-saving treatments directly to communities historically impacted by unacceptable health disparities,” the University wrote. “DTH is supported by more than 70 community organizations and labor unions from the Eastside and across Los Angeles — representing thousands of residents.”

The University also noted a study conducted by Kosmont Companies, a real estate advisory firm, which found that the facility was not likely to “cause or contribute to the gentrification of the immediate neighborhoods adjacent to the project, nor likely result in indirect displacement through major rent increases.”

Before the City Council voted to approve the DTH, Councilmember Kevin de León delivered a statement on the proposed facility, focusing on the development’s community commitments and the potential benefits from research. 

According to the Department of City Planning, initial high-priority research areas include various forms of cancer, Alzheimer’s, mental health, blindness and deafness, obesity and diabetes, infectious diseases, and heart disease. 

“This is going to be a premiere research center on the USC [HSC in Council District 14],” De León said at the City Council meeting. “What’s often lost in the whole negotiations and the debates of community benefits is the actual purpose and objective of this research facility. It’s a good community benefits agreement.”

The project’s community commitments include a project labor agreement with local hires, providing health careers training for 250 community members and expanding the University’s college preparation initiative for students in surrounding schools.

Agustin-Anguiano said Eastside LEADS believes the project’s community commitments were insufficient. 

“[This is] a weak package that really doesn’t address indirect displacement, that [doesn’t] address the high cost of housing for students and workers and the community and existing residents in the community,” Agustin-Anguiano said.

In its rejection to the appeal, the Planning and Land Use Management Committee added a condition requiring USC to provide at least one annual health fair that provides free or low-cost preventative services for the local community. Before calling for the vote, Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson acknowledged the resident’s concerns about the project’s impact.

“It does not have to go down the way it has gone down in other places,” Harris-Dawson said at the PLUM committee meeting. “There are good models all over the country, which I’ve discussed with representatives of the University. We have the opportunity to do it better and, in fact, do it right with this project.”

Concerns over the University’s impact on the surrounding neighborhoods are not new. Last November, approximately 100 Eastside community members gathered at Pershing Square to march against the development of the DTH.

Agustin-Anguiano said Eastside LEADS had been in communication with the University’s office of Government and Community Relations since 2017 to discuss community benefits and the impact of projects at HSC, but these discussions “were not fruitful.”

The University wrote in its statement that over the past year, the University had contacted Eastside LEADS 13 times to discuss the DTH. However, communication from Eastside LEADS was sporadic, with months passing without a reply or refusals to meet. 

Agustin-Anguiano said the Eastside LEADS will continue to challenge the project.

“The Eastside of L.A. is facing a big wave of interest by investors,” Agustin-Anguiano said. “Our target is to advocate for the people that are usually the ones being priced out or pushed out from their homes.”