Hoa Binh Plaza businesses have provided essential services like cultural foods, groceries, jobs, and telecommunications for 30 years. For months, Hoa Binh business tenants, neighbors, community organizers and advocates have tried to save the plaza from demolition by gentrifiers and luxury developers.

The Southeast Asian refugee business owners of South Philly’s Hoa Binh Plaza are facing immediate eviction. Our members helped raise over $5,500 for the Hoa Binh legal defense fund and with this money, a legal team negotiated a contract for them to stay until April 30, 2020. We were informed that a Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) hearing would occur on April 14, 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the hearing that would have allowed business owners to further make their case.

The Emergency Housing Protection Act is a bill that can support Hoa Binh businesses right now. Tell Philly’s Council Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development, and Homelessness to vote for The Emergency Housing Protection Act.

This bill will extend eviction moratoriums to 60 days after the end of the COVID-19 crisis. We need to pass this bill to support Black and Brown residential and commercial tenants from housing displacement during this pandemic. Philadelphia ranks 4th amongst large cities in annual evictions.

We need all members of the housing committee to get on board and we need you to let them know you support these bills!

Right now Black people are fighting for a better and more just future for all of us in more ways than one. In this moment of Black Lives Matter and Black uprising, we stand in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives. We must redefine what is being called looting as an individual act. If we are to define looting: it is the act of stealing during a general disturbance.

Gentrification and developers are the true looters of our neighborhoods and cities. Developers demolish community spaces of economically disturbed and disenfranchised communities and suck whatever profit they can make by throwing aside and displacing long-term tenants.

Hoa Binh businesses, and many Black and Brown owned businesses, are on the brink of being evicted during COVID-19. Philadelphia’s immigrant and low-income communities are already suffering from unprecedented economic and health impacts from the pandemic.

Call out the real looters of our neighborhoods! Will you help us pass the Emergency Housing Protection Act?

The once vibrant and bustling Hoa Binh Plaza center is now deserted, filled with packing boxes, and equipment disheveled because of looters like Streamline. Gentrifiers and luxury developers are the ones stealing wealth from our neighborhoods.

Co-sponsors:

VietLead