Still, some of the displacement problems are systemic: market-based economies have largely not figured out how to attract investment to low-income communities without displacing many of the people who have long lived there.

This displacement can be devastating for people who have lived in a neighborhood for decades, who know its bus routes, and who depend on their neighbors for company and help. CCED volunteers brought me to 651 Broadway, a single-room-occupancy building in the middle of Chinatown, where the rent is about $300 a month. Dozens of elderly Chinese people live there, in tiny rooms with a dingy shared kitchen and a communal bathroom where mold grows on the ceiling.

But the people I talked to said they didn’t want to leave; the shabby apartments were located in a neighborhood where they could speak in their own language, buy their own native food, and see their friends. Jun Ha Yu spoke to me from his tiny room. He knows Chinatown intimately: It’s where he goes to the bank and visits the Social Security office, where he can interact with friends and shop owners despite his limited English, where he can buy the type of food he likes to cook. He can easily access downtown Los Angeles and public transit, which is especially useful since he doesn’t drive. If Yu had to move to another neighborhood in car-centric Los Angeles, he’d lose all that.

Chinatowns can help ease the transition for first-generation immigrants, Leong told me, regardless of whether they live in the area. They also serve as hubs for people who want to preserve a common culture. Frances Huynh, another CCED volunteer, told me that she remembers taking the bus to Chinatown as a child from her home in the San Gabriel Valley to eat familiar food and see family and friends.

The developments in Chinatowns may appear to preserve some of this culture, but the new restaurants and apartments are sometimes so expensive that they are no longer accessible to the people who created the community in the first place. In Los Angeles, for instance, the Blossom Plaza apartment complex has red lanterns hanging in the courtyard, which allows Brookfield Properties, which owns the building, to advertise “the look you want in a Chinatown LA apartment.” But even the Blossom Plaza apartments that are set aside as “affordable” may be too expensive for current Chinatown residents; a studio for one person is targeted at people with an income of $20,350, while the median household income in Chinatown is $19,500. Residents of 651 Broadway told me that some of the stores they had depended on are getting pushed out, including two low-cost grocery stores. Instead, there are boba tea shops, art galleries, a wine bar, and a much-heralded new Asian fusion restaurant that features a $144 steak. The neighborhoods may still look like Chinatowns, Leong said, but are really just “Disneyfied” versions of the neighborhoods they once were.