This article was originally published on Common Edge.
When Brenda Mendoza told an NPR reporter about her commute to work, she became the face of the housing crisis in Los Angeles today. Mendoza, a uniform attendant at a Marriott hotel, was living with her family in an apartment in Koreatown, where she had grown up, 10 minutes from her job. The landlord raised the rent, so she moved to a less costly place in Downey. When that rent also rose out of reach, she moved to Apple Valley, and now gets up at 3:30 a.m. to drive 100 miles to her job, dropping off her husband and son at their jobs on the way. She did not move to Apple Valley to invest in a house she could love. She simply found an equally unstable, but slightly more affordable, rental hours from her workplace.
