A small tight-knit community grew inside an abandoned building in LA's Korea town last year.

The building was derelict with dusty, wire-exposed walls, but the people who found shelter there, they felt lucky.

In a city where unhoused people have had to set up encampments wherever they can, in parks, on sidewalks,

beneath freeway overpasses.

This old building in Korea Town offered a real sense of home.

I love to cook, you know, I love to cook dinner, breakfast, dinner, and here I can do that.

But the people who lived there knew their community couldn't last.

Yeah. But the people who lived there knew their community couldn't last. I'm Gustavaryano. You're listening to The Times, Daily News from the LA Times.

It's Thursday, March 3rd, 2022.

My L.A. Times colleague, Jamie Ding, is a reporting fellow with the inaugural class of the Los Angeles Times Fellowship.

She was doing some reporting in Korea Town and came across what some may have seen as an urban blight, but this is why you do journalism.

Jamie looked closer and found a parable about LA's housing and homeless crisis.

Jamie, welcome to the Times.

Thanks for having me.

So this community that you encountered really started with a man named Alex Sejah Torres.

What's his story?

So Alex came to the United States from Guatemala in 2009 with his sister and mother, but his father stayed behind.

And so he started going to school.

He was only 12 years old, and he didn't know any English.

And at this point, there wasn't really much stability in his life.

He told me he moved around a lot.

So he was constantly switching schools, moving from, you know, Lafayette Elementary in Long Beach to

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