Gentrification and 'The Slums of Beverly Hills'

In 1998, when Slums of Beverly Hills was released, I lived in West Los Angeles, relatively near (in LA terms, at least) Beverly Hills. It’s a comedic “coming of age” story about a girl whose kooky and "economically deficient" family moves to an apartment at the outer edge of Beverly Hills, “for the good schools,” as her father says.

At the time the movie came out, one of my friends actually lived in a rent controlled apartment in the so-called "slums" of Beverly Hills and described her cluster of apartments as inhabited by an eclectic mix of folks–seniors, some UCLA students, some Hollywood aspirants/burnouts, and a mix of immigrant families (mostly Russian and Latino, to her eyes and ear). So, even though I never saw the movie, the notion of “slums” in Beverly Hills has stuck with me.

Over the years, as various policy-wonk and think-tank types and even the President have said that your zip code should not determine your destiny–typically in the context of the health and economic mobility of low-income people who live in low-income zip codes–I’ve always wondered about the destinies of low-income folks from places like Beverly Hills.   And it’s come to stand as a shorthand in my mind that, even in one of the most famous and toniest of zip codes, 90210, there is hidden economic diversity.