[Hot Air] It started way back in 1958 when the state decided to build a freeway that would run directly between Long Beach in south LA County up to the Pasadena area in north LA County. Most of the freeway was built in the mid-1960s but there was a section just about four miles long that never got completed. It was the northernmost section that would connect the freeway (now called the I-710) to an east-west freeway called the 210 freeway.
Because the state planned to complete the freeway eventually, it started buying up property it would need to build it. But resistance to the construction continued and about 8 years ago the state finally conceded that it would never happen. This created an unusual situation where CALTRANS, the state's transportation agency, owned about 400 homes for which it was the landlord. For many years CALTRANS was renting out the homes at relatively discounted rates, but some homes remained empty and boarded up as the state considered selling them off.
And that's where things got interesting. In March 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, a group of activists calling themselves Reclaiming Our Homes started moving into the empty homes claiming them for themselves.
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