The warnings became a reality.<\/p>\n
When the dome opened last year, it became the centerpiece of preparations for Los Angeles\u2019 third Olympic Games, anchoring a cluster with SoFi Stadium and the LA Forum. For city leaders, the new entertainment district and the $7 billion Olympic Games<\/a> offer a spotlight for waves of investment. For thousands of Black renters and homeowners, they signal another chapter in a long cycle of rising rents, displacement, and environmental burdens.<\/p>\n \u201cOur city got sold out,\u201d said Dixon, a lawyer and community activist. \u201cInglewood residents \u2014 Black residents \u2014 are the casualties here.\u201d<\/p>\n Black Inglewood residents trying to hold on feel stuck on the losing end of a sprawling deal between some of the world\u2019s most powerful people. Six years since a deal was struck to build the dome, the arena\u2019s political and financial backers find themselves entangled in a sprawling federal fraud investigation \u2014 one that stretches from a $2.3 billion international tree-planting scheme, through the corridors of California\u2019s political power, and all the way to the billionaire owner\u2019s suite. The reverberations threaten not just the Black community trying to hold on, but also ripple out to the world\u2019s stage, ensnaring a presidential hopeful, an NBA superstar, and the lead-up to the second-most-watched event globally.<\/p>\n The most profound impacts of the Intuit Dome\u2019s rise can be found in daily life. Traffic gridlock and relentless event schedules have made routine activities, from grocery shopping and evening strolls to visiting elderly relatives confined to their homes, feel like navigating a maze, residents said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur city got sold out. Inglewood residents \u2014 Black residents \u2014 are the casualties here.\u201d<\/p>\n Fre\u2019Drisha Dixon, lawyer and Inglewood community activist<\/p>\n Local businesses that once thrived on community support now face dwindling foot traffic, as game days and concerts divert visitors directly to corporate chains near the arena, bypassing the small shops and restaurants that are an integral part of Inglewood\u2019s cultural heritage.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou see folks waiting in line for hours to get into events, leaving trash everywhere,\u201d Dixon said, \u201cbut there is no money trickling down into the local businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n Lawrence Scott, the former owner of Scottle\u2019s Gumbo and Grill, agrees. Last year, he described how, just a month after the Inglewood Entertainment District opened, the building his restaurant was located in was sold and he was forced out.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf they hadn\u2019t opened the stadium, I\u2019d still be there, I know that for a fact,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n This cycle was accelerated in 2019, when Gov. Gavin Newsom \u2014 who has received over $1 million<\/a> in campaign donations from the Ballmer family, the owners of the Intuit Dome \u2014 fast-tracked the arena\u2019s environmental review. The move mirrored a similar shortcut for SoFi Stadium<\/a>. The governor shortened the public comment windows and shielded developers from lawsuits over air, noise, and carbon impacts.\u00a0<\/p>\n To quiet critics, Steve Ballmer, the 10th-richest person in the world, and city officials pointed to social investments, including new EV charging stations, 1,000 new trees, and a high-profile carbon offset partnership with the fintech company Aspiration. However, that company is now under federal investigation for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, accused of failing to deliver its promised offsets.<\/p>\n Investigators are also scrutinizing allegations<\/a> that the Clippers funneled $28 million through Aspiration for a no-show endorsement deal with star Kawhi Leonard.<\/p>\n Black residents said the pledges to \u201cmake Inglewood more green<\/a>\u201d feel hollow now.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur businesses and schools are closing, our people are leaving, and nothing about that feels sustainable,\u201d Dixon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Governor Newsom\u2019s office acknowledged a request for comment but did not offer a response, and the city of Inglewood and the LA Clippers did not respond to any requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Inglewood has been at a crossroads before<\/p>\n Inglewood had been here before, and successfully beat back<\/a> Walmart when the community was much more uniformed. In the early 2000s, the city blocked Walmart\u2019s plans for a massive supercenter on the 60-acre site that is now SoFi Stadium. It was one of the nation\u2019s most prominent local rejections of big-box retail expansion, and served as inspiration nationwide.<\/p>\n At the time, the Los Angeles affiliate of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. said Inglewood\u2019s successful fight showed what was possible as billion-dollar corporations attempted to bypass regulations. \u201cIt will become the battle royal for all of organized labor in the United States,\u201d the union said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Grassroots coalitions of residents, church groups, labor unions, and small-business owners mobilized against the supercenter, fearing it would undercut local businesses, depress wages, and contribute to traffic congestion, much like the stadiums have. In 2004, voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot initiative that would have allowed Walmart to bypass city oversight, thanks to strategic outreach, door-to-door campaigns, and the alliances.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw the forces of gentrification as a threat to our community\u2019s well-being every bit as dangerous as gangs and drugs,\u201d wrote<\/a> Inglewood resident Erin Aubry Kaplan in 2023 about the city\u2019s battle against gentrification.<\/p>\n But with the neighborhood change, residents told Capital B, so has the fight.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite this earlier success, Inglewood\u2019s community activists were unable to block the much larger and more politically connected Inglewood Entertainment District. Several factors contributed to this outcome: City and state officials touted the district\u2019s promises of massive economic investment, job creation, and tax revenue, while influential sports and real estate interests, led by billionaire developers, enlisted powerful lobbying support. Unlike the Walmart fight, the local government directly negotiated concessions with the developers.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a result, concerns about rising costs, displacement, and congestion were outweighed by government and business promises of progress.<\/p>\n In the decade since the entertainment district was pitched, the city of 100,000 has lost more than 11,000 Black residents<\/a>, while gaining residents of every other race. The white population in particular has jumped by 60%. Across LA County, the disappearance of Black residents isn\u2019t unique to Inglewood<\/a>, but it is double the county\u2019s displacement rate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Simultaneously, median household incomes around the district have climbed from $56,000 to $71,000 since the first shovels hit dirt for the Intuit Dome. In 2019, two-bedroom rents in an apartment complex next door to the arena jumped from $1,145 to $2,725.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe issue with all this is: Who is it for?\u201d Alexis Aceves, a member of the Lennox-Inglewood Tenants Union, told Capital B before the dome was built. \u201cAll of these changes and investments are supposedly \u2018revitalizing\u2019 the city, but it has just ended up being worse for all of us here.\u201d<\/p>\n A $100 million climate deal, and greenwashing accusations<\/p>\n In 2019, as the Intuit Dome\u2019s permits were being fast-tracked, Inglewood Mayor James Butts proudly boasted<\/a> that without his work to bring the stadiums to the community, the city would remain \u201cdevoid of hope with no aspiration for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n The stadiums, which are the most expensive ever built for their respective<\/a> sports<\/a>, were pitched as a catalyst for rebirth. Still, few communities bear the cost of \u201cgreen\u201d and entertainment spectacles like Inglewood, where residents have long accused elected officials, arena owners, and the Olympic committee of \u201cgreenwashing<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Greenwashing is when companies exaggerate or misrepresent their environmental credentials or the environmental benefits of their products, often through the use of misleading claims or marketing tactics. Carbon offsets often find themselves at the center of these allegations.<\/p>\n Offsets are when companies that are major environmental polluters pay middlemen to plant trees in faraway forests to make up for their local emissions. The trees are planted to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but they are only effective if the trees survive to maturity and are not cut down or destroyed.<\/p>\n As part of the Intuit Dome\u2019s climate plan, the Clippers struck a headline-grabbing deal with Aspiration, agreeing to pay the fintech firm and its celebrity backers more than $100 million over two decades to supply carbon credits and feature the Aspiration logo on jerseys and in the arena.<\/p>\n But beneath these promises, federal investigators discovered a web of misconduct<\/a>. Aspiration was accused of misrepresenting the quality of its carbon offsets, selling credits from projects that never materialized or failed to provide verified climate benefits. Lawsuits claimed that tens of millions of dollars that Aspiration supposedly dedicated to reforestation were spent on projects with no climate impact or missing documentation.<\/p>\n Even before the fraud was made public, one community group wrote<\/a> that the partnership with Aspiration in Inglewood exemplified the \u201cart of bamboozle.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a separate $28 million \u201cendorsement\u201d with star Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard is now under NBA scrutiny<\/a> for the possibility that offset funding was used as a loophole to pay players extra, skirting the league\u2019s strict salary cap rules.<\/p>\n By 2025, Aspiration collapsed into bankruptcy as lawsuits and federal probes mounted. With the company\u2019s promises and funds evaporating, neither the trees nor the promised climate relief ever appeared, leaving Inglewood with rising pollution, residents said.<\/p>\n Aspiration\u2019s co-founder, Joe Sanberg, was a major Democratic donor, contributing over $1 million to Democratic candidates, including Governor Newsom, in the past decade, according to OpenSecrets donation records<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even before the arenas were constructed, the community living directly around them was found to be exposed to more environmental burdens than 96% of the state. And nearly 9 out of 10 residents<\/a> viewed \u201ctraffic-related air pollution from cars\u201d as a major problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n The partnership did in fact lead to at least some trees being planted in Inglewood, according to the city. On paper, a thousand saplings might erase 10 to 15 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, but just one Clippers home game can pump more than 100 metric tons of CO\u2082<\/a> into the air, simply from the sea of cars that flood Inglewood\u2019s streets.<\/p>\n Fushcia-Ann Hoover, a researcher focused on green infrastructure planning in cities, sees the pattern all too clearly. These projects, she said, \u201cbring amenities and investment but leave the people behind \u2014 especially those already burdened by pollution and displacement.\u201d<\/p>\n Hoover warned that green infrastructure investments often spark \u201cgreen gentrification,\u201d attracting wealthier newcomers and driving displacement while failing to protect existing residents. The surge of new amenities and transit lines brings rising rents and housing insecurity, rather than relief or prosperity, for the community intended to benefit.<\/p>\n \u201cWith most offset programs, there isn\u2019t a requirement that the benefit stays local,\u201d she explained. \u201cThe challenge comes not just in whether companies carry through what they say they\u2019re doing, but in the fact that you are damaging a community that isn\u2019t going to receive the benefit of those credits.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement released in September, the Clippers said the Ballmer family is \u201cfocused on sustainability, which is why Intuit Dome was designed to be a carbon-neutral building from its inception. Our development agreements for the arena included mandates to buy carbon credits.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSome of those commitments were built into the sponsorship deal with Aspiration \u2014 totally separate of the investment in the company \u2014 and we made payments to Aspiration until the company was unable to fulfill their responsibilities,\u201d the statement went on. \u201cThe effort reflects Steve wanting to set a positive example and raise awareness of the growing and important role of voluntary carbon markets. Unfortunately he was duped on the investment and some parts of this agreement, as were many other investors and employees.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless of what the arena owners and city officials intended, what residents have experienced in Inglewood \u201cis a fundamental justice failure,\u201d Hoover said.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the state\u2019s health department, since 2019, 2 out of 3 people that die in the neighborhood directly around the stadiums are Black, but Black people now only make up 1 out of 3 people living in the ZIP code. At the same time, asthma-related hospitalizations in that community have risen to roughly twice the California average.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite repeated requests, the LA Clippers, the city of Inglewood, and Newsom\u2019s office did not respond to questions regarding their efforts to address worsening air pollution and rising health burdens in stadium-adjacent neighborhoods, the rapid displacement of Black residents and increases in local housing costs, the credibility of \u201cgreen\u201d claims after their offset partner faced federal fraud charges, and what steps are being taken to guarantee transparency and community involvement going forward.<\/p>\n \u201cThe majority of Inglewood residents are not utilizing that \u2018entertainment district,\u2019 and unfortunately because of it, the average Black family will no longer be able to buy a house in Inglewood,\u201d said Yolanda Davis, a lifelong Inglewood resident. Davis fears her 23-year-old daughter won\u2019t be able to grow old in her community. Already, Davis was displaced once since the stadiums were built after a corporate housing company bought her former apartment complex and raised the rent.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe billionaires already had their money when they came, they don\u2019t need or deserve Inglewood\u2019s money,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThey don\u2019t care about us; that is supposed to be our elected officials\u2019 jobs, but they don\u2019t seem to care, either.\u201d<\/p>\n The future of Inglewood\u2019s Black community<\/p>\n Mayor Butts, who has received nearly half a million dollars<\/a> in campaign contributions from Ballmer, has frequently emphasized the transformative significance of the Intuit Dome, describing it as the latest and greatest achievement in Inglewood\u2019s economic renaissance. With the city requiring that one-third of workers come from Inglewood, it has brought in millions in wages.\u00a0<\/p>\n These days, drives that once took Davis 20 minutes, take as long as an hour. \u201cI can make it work, but what about my neighbor who\u2019s 82, my neighbor who\u2019s disabled, and my neighbor who is on the bus?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Residents said perhaps most quietly devastating is the change in how people relate to their home: a lingering sense that the city they\u2019ve invested in for generations is now designed with others in mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n Steven Fisher, a 56-year-old lifelong resident, said it has even changed social norms. Recently, a neighborhood block party was disrupted by new residents who had \u201cfears and concerns\u201d about the party leading to violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n Inglewood\u2019s Black community had to fight for generations through racist home loan systems and the aftermath of the 1992 LA riots, which makes the community disruption even more devastating, Fisher said. \u201cWhen you have a people who had to fight so hard to establish a community, then you see when that community finally gains opportunity and it is not for you, that is exceptionally hard and hurtful.\u201d<\/p>\n This is seen deeply in the transformation of Inglewood\u2019s public schools since the development of SoFi Stadium and the Intuit Dome.<\/p>\n School closures have accelerated<\/a>: in the past year, six schools have been shut down, all in neighborhoods where Black and brown families have historically lived. Officials attribute them to declining enrollment and deteriorating infrastructure, such as a gas line rupture that left Morningside High without heat for a month. But some residents say it shows a lack of investment and support.\u00a0<\/p>\n Community activists warn<\/a> that these closures contribute to gentrification, with land being converted into \u201chousing that nobody in our community can even afford.\u201d Newer, wealthier residents largely avoid sending their children to Inglewood\u2019s public schools. Instead, these families tend to enroll their children in private schools or charter schools outside the city, contributing to a declining school population.<\/p>\n A nationwide study in 2022<\/a> found that school closures actively increase gentrification, and the impacts have been most profound in predominantly Black neighborhoods. The findings revealed that shutting down public schools undermined long-standing community anchors, opening the door for wealthier newcomers while accelerating property turnover and rising rents.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Exterior-01-Large.jpeg\")
Inglewood carries layers of Black history, from families who built tight\u2011knit neighborhoods during the Great Migration to generations who shaped its culture, churches, and music scene long before the world\u2019s most expensive sports arenas rose up around them. (Courtesy of Intuit Dome Communications Team)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/474097240_18473768596034588_4054311534116472764_n.jpg\")
Inglewood residents, teachers, and students protest outside SoFi Stadium after plans to close down local schools were announced. (Courtesy of Fre\u2019Drisha Dixon)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/lennox-tenants-union.jpg\")
Inglewood renters fight for rental protections amid rising rents. (Courtesy of the Lennox-Inglewood Tenants Union)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/juxtapose-gif-3.gif\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/230307_Intuit-Steel-Topout-17.jpg\")
Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer attends the Intuit Dome steel topping celebration in 2023. (Courtesy of the Los Angeles Clippers)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/230307_Intuit-Steel-Topout-54.jpg\")
Kawhi Leonard at the Intuit Dome steel topping celebration in 2023. (Courtesy of the Los Angeles Clippers)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/230406_Trees-87.jpg\")
When the projects were first announced, one community group accused the city of partaking in \u201cgreenwashing.\u201d In 2023, when the Los Angeles Clippers planted trees, the group called it \u201cthe art of bamboozle.\u201d (Courtesy of the Los Angeles Clippers)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Stadium-protest-housing-is-essential-1024x683.jpeg\")
Since 2020, residents across the city have staged protests outside new developments meant to attract new, wealthier residents. (Courtesy of Kemal Cilengir\/Lennox-Inglewood Tenants Union and NOlympicsLA)<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/schoolsnotstadiums.jpg\")
Since the 2016-2017 school year, when SoFi Stadium began construction, Inglewood\u2019s public school enrollment has dropped from 9,000 to 7,000. (Courtesy of Fre\u2019Drisha Dixon)<\/p>\n