{"id":83004,"date":"2017-12-08T20:52:48","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T20:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/portrait\/francisco\/"},"modified":"2017-12-08T20:52:48","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T20:52:48","slug":"francisco","status":"publish","type":"portrait","link":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/portrait\/francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

Francisco is a longtime resident of Koreatown. He works at El Centro Del Pueblo<\/a> in Echo Park as a behavioral health educator. He has been a free tax prep and community beautification volunteer with <\/em>KYCC, and recently came to us for help for housing assistance after receiving hateful and homophobic threats from his landlord.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Where is your hometown?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Puebla, Mexico<\/a>. I came to L.A. 20 years ago. I lived off Pico Boulevard in West L.A. for around 20 years, and then I moved to the east side of Koreatown.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you live or work in Koreatown? <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I used to volunteer cleaning streets and sometimes painting the walls [with KYCC’s Environmental Services<\/a>] in Koreatown. Currently, I work with El Centro Del Pueblo<\/a>, a nonprofit in Echo Park. I work with behavioral health educators serving different communities \u2014 the homeless, elderly, LGBTQ and youth at different high schools\u2014reducing risk behaviors for HIV and STDs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first time I got to know KYCC was through the tax program, VITA<\/a>, six or seven years ago. I had no idea about the specifics, but I went to get help with my taxes and I\u2019ve gone every year since. The program brought a lot of refunds back to help my family in Mexico. <\/span><\/p>\n

KYCC gave me counseling and helped me find housing. My first landlord was homophobic \u2014 he told me he wouldn\u2019t accept my rent anymore, threw a rock at my window and called me and my partner bad words. Believe me\u2014when you look at someone with so much hate in their face, it’s a look you’ll never forget. This situation is going to affect me for the rest of my life. We looked in different areas for other apartments but we had problems because we have two small dogs. Thanks to counseling from KYCC\u2019s program, we were able to move within 30 days to move and I\u2019ve been in my new house since July 30.<\/span><\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on Koreatown? <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Koreatown is excellent. I\u2019ve always liked this area because the people are educated and they are good neighbors \u2014 they always say hi. It\u2019s different because, in other places I\u2019ve lived, people don\u2019t say \u2018hi\u2019 or \u2018good morning\u2019 to each other. <\/span><\/p>\n

The neighbors are also very diverse \u2014 African American, Korean, Japanese, Chinese \u2014 a woman in the elevator told me she was Japanese, Hispanic and American! This area is close to my work and a quiet area to walk my dogs. The most important thing is that Koreatown is safe. <\/span><\/p>\n

Where is your favorite place in Koreatown? <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I love the Koreatown Galleria<\/a> on Olympic. There\u2019s no specific store, I just like walking around. I also love that there is an It’s Boba Time<\/a> very close to me, on Western and 8th. My favorite is mango tea with boba. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Francisco is a longtime resident of Koreatown. He works at El Centro Del Pueblo in Echo Park as a behavioral health educator. He has been a free tax prep and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-83004","portrait","type-portrait","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portrait\/83004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portrait"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portrait"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portrait\/83004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kyccla.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}