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Every other week Laurel LaMont walks one block from her Temecula apartment to City Hall to make the case for a new model for low income housing.
She and her organization, Upward Community, have been calling on the city to create a community land trust, a nonprofit that buys land, then rents or sells homes to low- and moderate income residents.
But first, LaMont has a more pressing issue; she’s fighting her own eviction from an affordable apartment after her earnings rose above the building’s threshold for subsidized housing.
LaMont’s vision — and her own dilemma — show how the statewide housing crisis has made home ownership, and even rent, unaffordable to many working people.
“For all of time we’ve always had a lesser earning workforce that keeps your community going — your grocers, your baristas, janitors and cooks,” said LaMont, who works at Trader Joe’s. “These are permanent jobs, and we deserve to live in a community we serve.”