I drove through East LA earlier this year. I guess "artsy" means poor. Now, most metros have the gentrified blocks and that's probably what she's talking about. I saw some serious scary tranny hookers hanging at the Fatburger while heading into Santa Monica. 
So the dynamic there is that most of those SFR have been owned by the same families since the 80’s/90’s. They were pretty inexpensive at the time, and are now balls deep in equity and a lot are owned outright. This last couple years, a lot of the families have sold their run down east la houses and moved to giant track homes in the antelope valley, inland empire, Fontana etc.
The hardworking Mexican immigrant families that bought that east la house and made out well on, then moved their family to these outside areas. A lot of them happen to have shitbag gangster sons and transport their problems to areas that used to be good.
Affluent white people, tech nerds, Asians etc then buy these east la houses that have been quick flipped by investors (calcatta quartz, white cabinets, luxury vinyl flooring etc same shit every time) and voila, decent area.
