Gina Fields talks almost wistfully about one her favorite activities growing up in “The Jungle,” the part of South L.A. that most Angelenos now know as rapidly gentrifying Baldwin Village.

“I used to walk through Leimert Park as a kid to Audubon Middle School and look at the houses and be like, ‘One day, I’m gonna buy that.’”

After years of traveling and renting apartments in New York and San Francisco, Fields managed to do just that. “Being able to fulfill that dream and buy property in Leimert Park as an African American was huge,” she told me.

But Fields, who serves as chair of the Empowerment Congress West Neighborhood Development Council these days, is becoming ever-more convinced that other Black people won’t have the same opportunity.