‘We Do Not Want Criminals in Our Motel or Neighborhood’

My father died when I was 6. My mother, Yu-Ling Liu, immigrated to the United States from Taiwan in 1983, hoping to purchase a business and bring my sister and myself to the United States. A few months later, she used our savings to purchase and remodel the Nity-Nite Motel in South Los Angeles and soon we were able to join her. My mother enrolled us in school and we thought that my mother’s and our American dream had become a reality. In fact, it has turned into a horrible nightmare.

Our motel is in a high-crime area of Los Angeles, and we were victims of robbery, assault and racial discrimination. On one occasion, a man who was refused an hourly room rental shot at my mother. Fortunately, she was standing behind a counter where a bulletproof window had been installed. Whenever we called the police, they took hours to come or they ignored our calls. When they did come, my family and our employees were always treated rudely, like we were the criminals.

Beginning in early 1994, an LAPD detective told us we had to shut down the motel for months and fire our manager, who he said was a “pimp.” This detective boasted that he had already closed down a nearby motel. To avoid closing, we fired the manager, who we knew was not a pimp, changed the name of the motel and made security changes. We later learned that this detective had made several misrepresentations and had not “shut down” the other motel.

Later that year, the city’s zoning administration began “nuisance-revocation” proceedings against our motel and five other motels along South Figueroa Street, claiming that we were responsible for prostitution, drug dealing, public drinking, public urination and defecation and other criminal activities in the area. During administrative hearings, none of the witnesses were sworn in or allowed to be cross-examined, and each of the police officers and other witnesses testified the exact same way against all six motels, oftentimes confusing one motel for another.

The zoning administrator ruled that all six motels were “public nuisances” and required that we all hire security guards, install video cameras, pay steep fines, meet with the LAPD vice unit each month, hire managers who speak fluent English, put up signs notifying all potential tenants of the fact that the motel was found to be a nuisance, put up barricades “securing” the property, eliminate the use of public telephones and more.

There are 38 motels along South Figueroa Street, only six of them Chinese-owned, including my mother’s. Five of the six motels that the city chose to target are Chinese-owned, and no nuisance proceedings have been brought against any Caucasian- or African American-owned motels along South Figueroa.

In February, the Commission on Human Relations urged the city’s zoning administration to “undertake an investigation to ensure that there has not been an unfair targeting of businesses owned by certain ethnic groups, either due to prejudices of area property owners or to those of any of the officials involved in the process.” There has been no investigation.

The police repeatedly knock on our tenants’ doors, disturbing them at all hours of the day and demanding to see and question any women who may be present. Many of our customers, including long-term tenants, complained about how they were being mistreated by the police and have left for this reason alone.

Now, it is unusual for us to have more than two of our units rented. Yet the police, our councilwoman and groups including the Coalition for Substance Abuse still falsely accuse us and blame us for the crime in the neighborhood. My mother is getting older, weaker, angrier and sadder. One day, she told me that she will shoot herself if the city forces her to shut down her motel. I am hoping someone out there will listen to our pleas. We are not the criminals. We do not want criminals in our motel or in our neighborhood.

Police and community groups should stop blaming us and take responsibility for their own inability to control crime and poverty in Los Angeles.