This op-ed was authored by Colin Hernandez, a local resident and candidate for the California State Assembly in District 51. The piece highlights the affordability crisis in Los Angeles and the importance of acting now to ensure future generations can afford to live and build their lives here.

My family has called California home for nine generations. Today, I see people who have spent their entire lives here asking a question that should concern all of us: Can I still afford to stay?

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, but my family’s history here stretches back generations. My great-grandfather, Carlos Antonio Carrillo, served as governor of Alta California. His brother, my great-uncle José Antonio Carrillo, served as mayor of Los Angeles and later fought on the Mexican side during the Mexican-American War.

I share that history because it reminds me that every generation inherits a responsibility to make Los Angeles livable for the people who come next.

Right now, we are falling short of that responsibility.

Affordability is no longer just a financial struggle. It is becoming a crisis of belonging. When skyrocketing costs push longtime renters out of communities like Mar Vista, Palms, Venice, and West Los Angeles, young people can no longer afford to stay near the neighborhoods that raised them, while the teachers, service workers, artists, and healthcare workers who keep our communities running are forced farther away.

For most, the soaring cost of living forces impossible choices: abandoning the dream of buying a home, skipping essential medical care, or delaying having a family. From groceries and healthcare to childcare and rent, the basic necessities of life simply cost more. A hard-earned raise no longer means getting ahead; it means trying to keep up with escalating bills. The squeeze is hardest on our seniors, who are living on fixed incomes and watching the financial stability they spent decades building erode under today’s housing and medical costs.

This crisis doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We cannot solve our city’s biggest challenges without economic relief that addresses these pressures together, not one at a time.

The consequences reach beyond any one household. When the cost of living pushes people out, we lose more than residents. We lose the relationships, institutions, and local character that make a neighborhood feel like home.

I don’t expect Los Angeles to look the way it did when I was growing up, let alone the way it did generations ago. But I do believe the people who make our neighborhoods what they are should have a fair shot at staying in them.

Nine generations of my family have had the chance to build a life here. The next generation deserves the same.