More concern than excitement surrounds the Olympic Games in LA28

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Are you a sports fan and can’t wait for four years to pass and enjoy them in Los Angeles? Well, not everyone agrees.
At least two grassroots groups see the plan to host the Olympics in Los Angeles as fueling police militarization, housing displacement, gentrification and the strong possibility of financial burdens that will hamstring public budgets and slash social programs for decades.

One of them is NOlympics LA, a group formed in 2017 that points out that every Olympic host city since 1960 has spent more than planned, often leaving them with the bill for cost overruns. They are asking the city of Los Angeles to back out of the games.

“We will try to mitigate whatever harm comes as a result of this bid, such as displacement, destruction and no accountability. We believe there can be a movement to get L.A. out of this,” said Steven Louis, an organizer with NOlympics LA and a resident of West L.A. to the media last week.

NOlympics LA and the newly-formed Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Los Angeles chapter, cite some of the negative effects predicted for the 2028 games including homeless sweeps, traffic jams, and short-stay rentals taking over residential homes in low -income neighborhoods of Central L.A., South L.A., Exposition Park and the Westlake District.

“The city of Los Angeles is poised to throw a big global party, and we want to make sure that it includes and uplifts the community,” said Estuardo Mazariegos, ACCE L.A. co-director who represents about 12,000 residents and lives in South L.A. “We face displacement as a result of the Olympics. “We don’t want our community to be uprooted.”

Because the neighborhoods around Exposition Park will have numerous Olympic venues, they will be most impacted, ACCE said. That includes staging a diving competition in a local swimming pool near the L.A. Memorial Coliseum used by residents who say the LA28 organizing committee is taking their pool without asking them.

LA.’s games are estimated to cost about $6.9 billion and ACCE L.A. and NOLympics L.A. say that kind of money could be better put toward rental assistance for low-income tenants, building more affordable housing and providing additional park space.

ACCE is floating a proposal for LA28 to put a $1 surcharge on each ticket sold for events at nearby venues. “So that one dollar comes back to the neighborhood for affordable housing and more green spaces,” said Mazariegos at ACCE L.A.

Migrants and homeless people were cleared out of Paris during the Olympics. What does this mean for LA?