Netflix's Gentefied tried to work to appease gentrification concerns, but it still came under fire from locals

Los Angeles Times

Gentefied is an upcoming gentrification-tackling comedy based on a web series that's a play on the term “gentefication,” in which young, upwardly mobile Latinos move back or try to give back to their old neighborhoods. Gentefied filmed in Los Angeles' Boyle Heights, where Starz's Vida was protested in 2018. To avoid protests, the show worked with the working-class, heavily Latino enclave, including meetings with community members. “The minute we learned about the degree of activism going on in Boyle Heights, we were very intentional about trying to get to know people, talk to people as much as we could,” said co-creator Linda Yvette Chávez. “We went into it with letting people know like, ‘Hey, first of all we’re not here to speak for you all... The intention has always been telling a story that illuminates something most of us ignore.” Still, Gentefied came under fire from the anti-gentrification group Defend Boyle Heights, which suggested that the show's cast and crew were profiting from the the struggles of those trying to fight against changes to their neighborhood. "They cannot come into Boyle Heights and appropriate our struggle against gentrification and then claim love for the very community they are stealing from," the group wrote in a Facebook post. Veronica Polanco, the president of the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council and a longtime resident of the community, was among the locals who met with the show. “There’s always the concern of, ‘Are we going to be the joke? Are they going to get us right? Are they going to get the neighborhood right?’” says Polanco “Just from what I’ve seen from the trailer, so far, it does feel like it’s trying to be genuine to who we are as a community. Not only are they addressing the issues that are very prominent in our neighborhood, but they have [done] it with a sense of humor that we use when dealing with our everyday issues.”