The Chicago Experiment

(From the article, Mixing It Up, by Evan George, Downtown LA News)

What Happened When Mixed-Income Housing Replaced the Projects

Imagine if the L.A. Housing Authority, working with developers, demolished every single low-income housing project in Downtown Los Angeles to replace them with mid-rise lofts for both high-income young professionals and Skid Row residents alike. That's essentially what Chicago has done.

Nearly a decade ago, Chicago officials elected to abolish the de facto segregation of rich and poor that subsidized housing projects had created in its metro area. One particularly infamous complex, Cabrini-Green, housed more than 2,000 of the city's poorest residents. Massive low-rent tenements like it had, over decades, become entrenched havens for crime and legacies of poverty.

Read the full article about how Downtown LA Projects are putting low-income and affluent residents in the same building:
Mixing It Up.

On Saturday, November 17, 2007, an estimated 5,000 people will participate in a non-competitive 5K family walk called HomeWalk to help to raise awareness and resources to prevent and end homelessness in Los Angeles County. This event is being organized by United Way of Greater Los Angeles in partnership with the Fannie Mae Foundation.

More than a walk around the block, HomeWalk will work to connect families and individuals to the issue by illustrating the many faces of homelessness and empowering the community in its response. (text from HomeWalk LA site)

To get involved, visit here.

CRA Launches $50 Million SRO Grab

Agency Would Buy and Hand Over Seven Low-Income Hotels to Local Providers

by Evan George
LA Downtown News
September 3, 2007

The Community Redevelopment Agency has begun a low-profile but sweeping plan that would use more than $50 million to buy seven dilapidated low-income hotels and put them in the hands of experienced operators. It would transform more than 1,300 rooms, making it one of the biggest moves in low-income housing in decades.

On Aug. 23, at a little-publicized special meeting, the CRA Board of Commissioners approved the plan aimed at loaning city grant money to local nonprofits to help them buy, and eventually rehabilitate, some of the most affordable and shabbily maintained residences on Skid Row.

Those projects, deemed by city officials to be crucial in battling homelessness, would otherwise be difficult to acquire for cash-strapped housing providers, backers said.

The unusual move, which still requires City Council approval, targets seven hotels, many of them single room occupancy buildings: the Ford, the Leland, the King Edward, the Baltimore, the Madison, the Rosslyn and the Huntington. The latter is one of the most crime-plagued buildings in Downtown Los Angeles, according to the LAPD.

Read the full article over here.