Read and Weep Dept.: The Eastsider L.A. has a wrenching little update on the civic land grab that was the school district's seizure of homes in an Alvarado Boulvard-Marathon Street neighborhood. The blog reports on the rapid grading of land that was once a community of working class homes — for an elementary school that will probably now be privately operated.

The Eastsider spoke to Jesus Villanueva, who'd live in one such house with his family for 26 years.

“When district employees came calling to buy their home,” the blog reports, “the Villanuevas were told the property they were being forced to sell under the threat of eminent domain would be used for a public school. Not only did his family have to buy a new home at the peak of the real estate market, Villanueva says his family now face the prospect of paying higher property taxes to pay for the bonds the district used to build the new public schools.”

“We are worse off,” Villanueva told the Eastsider.

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