Homeless Count Drops Below 700

News Brief
(courtesy of LA Downtown News)

The Central Division's latest homeless count turned up just 698 people living on Downtown streets - the lowest number since the count began last year. In September 2006, officers counted more than 1,800 homeless in the area. Overall crime is down 36% and on one day in February no crimes were reported at all in the Downtown area, said Capt. Andy Smith of the Central Division. So far, 2007 has seen one murder, which has been solved, compared to three murders by this time in 2006, Smith said. "Officers are finding it less necessary to make arrests," Smith said. "But we still have a ways to go, we still have 700 people we need to help and get into a shelter." A "heat map" showing the changing concentration of homeless in Downtown, created by mapmaking company Cartifact, is on view at homeless.cartifact.com.


Camping: Homeless people on Sunset Blvd. sidewalk camp. The practice has been banned downtown.
photo courtesy of LAT

Also read our previous entry about how the Homeless are moving away from Downtown LA over here.

Documentary: Skid Row

A penetrating documentary on Skid Row in Los Angeles where the filmmaker, Gerry Straub, spent 6 months among the homeless and forgotten.

Three-Eleven

Collaboration. At Love LA, that's one of our favorite buzz words.


On March 11, Love LA launched a new endeavor in collaboration with YNEM's HPM (Healthcare Professionals Ministry)and the LA Mission Community Clinic. With the support of many prayers the week before and some group planning, the collaborative effort came together well in the end.

A big thanks to: HPM, LA Mission Community Clinic, Union Rescue Mission, Central City Community Church of the Nazarene, Love LA congregant volunteers, Love LA YNEM volunteers, the many who prayed for us, and most of all, thank you Jesus.

Some images of that Sunday afternoon.
(all photos courtesy of anthony k.)

















This is only the beginning...

Homeless housing | Creative solutions

Skid Row Housing Trust and Michael Maltzan's firm have brought a measure of optimism to the relationship between architecture and the city's homeless problem.


(Rainbow Apartments, located on San Pedro between 6th and 7th St)

By Christopher Hawthorne
Times Staff Writer
March 6, 2007

One afternoon last week, it was covered with plans and cardboard models of the New Carver Apartments, a drum-shaped, six-story building that will be constructed over the next year and a half in downtown L.A. Carver, which will hold 100 efficiency apartments on a site in the shadow of the 10 Freeway, a few blocks southeast of the L.A. Convention Center, is the second project Maltzan has designed for the Skid Row Housing Trust. The first was the Rainbow Apartments, an 89-unit building that opened in November on San Pedro Street, in skid row.
The distance separating the two sites — just two miles — belies the difficulty of the current effort to move the homeless beyond the circumscribed boundaries of skid row. As downtown continues its fitful evolution, with projects such as Frank Gehry's pair of towers on Grand Avenue moving toward realization, the pressure to "solve" that neighborhood's homeless problem, or at least disperse it, will grow only more intense.
Perhaps most surprising, in purely architectural terms it is among the most compelling projects in Maltzan's busy office, where the projects underway include a commission from JPL in Pasadena, a state historic park near Chinatown (with Hargreaves Associates) and a house for Michael Ovitz. It suggests that once the budget gets tight enough, architecture in its most basic sense — the straightforward arrangement of space and light — is really the only thing that can allow this kind of project to succeed.

Read the full article over here.
To check out future Skid Row Housing Trust property developments:
visit Skid Row Housing Trust- Map of Properties

This Sunday

From 1:30-3:30pm, HPM (Healthcare Professional Ministry) from YNEM and LA Mission Community Clinic will be joining Love LA. With this new endeavor, please keep this joint collaboration in your prayers.

Love LA will still meet at its regular time.