All Quiet on the Eastern Front

According to LA Downtown News, they document at least 150 various projects currently happening within the downtown area. "More than 40 condominium projects and about 30 apartment complexes are either under construction, in the planning stage or recently opened."
For a full list of projects, read over here.

But the obvious- All is quiet on the Eastern Front.



Cartifact has a map of the various projects that are in development in the Downtown LA area.
To check out the rest of the map, visit here.

Perhaps the only visible or remote projects are these, on the Eastside:
(text below provided by Downtown News)

Donald T. Sterling Homeless Center
Real estate mogul and Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald T. Sterling announced in April that he had purchased land at the corner of Sixth and Wall streets in Skid Row. Sterling said he intended to move forward with a $50 million homeless center. According to the most recent information available, partners and service providers are still being sought and no specific plan has been submitted to the city. Sterling has said he wants the building to include a medical and legal center as well as a homeless court. Yet to be built.

Inner-City Arts
Construction on a $9 million complex for the Skid Row nonprofit has begun, with demolition of an existing warehouse in August and initial construction in September, said Sharyn Church, deputy director of Inner-City Arts. Plans by architect Michael Maltzan for the facility at 720 S. Kohler St. include space for a new ceramics complex, a library and a $3 million community theater; the latter will create costume and set design shops and a green room, and will enable Inner-City Arts to significantly increase its drama program. It will also provide a venue for student and professional theatrical and musical productions. Santa Monica-based landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power is overseeing a children's garden.

James M. Wood Apartments
The Single Room Occupancy Housing Corp. has secured funding for a $14 million, 53-unit development to house low-income, mentally ill tenants at 514 S. San Julian St. in Central City East. The non-profit developer expects to break ground in November, said SRO Housing Corp. Director of Planning and Housing Development Joseph Corcoran, and complete the building by March 2009.

Homeless Karoake- Available online on PBS

a short film documentary by Iris Rose Ichishita
Producer, Director, Writer

While I was involved with the Alpha Course at Skid Row last year on Friday nights, one of the big attractions that brought people together down at Skid Row was the Karoake nights at Central City Community Church of the Nazarene.
Every Wednesday nights.
I met Tony while I was at the Alpha Course there, but never realized his back story til now.
The short film isn't that long, but worth checking out.


the corner of 6th and san pedro- home of central city community church of the nazarene


og


tony and his wife

Watch the short film over here.

Homeless Karoake site

Skid row hoops in L.A.

OG, one of our congregant leaders at Love LA, has for sometime been organizing on a grassroots level- a skid row basketball league...and it finally made news...


When Union Rescue Mission and Midnight Mission play their big matchup, no one talks about the home advantage, but most appreciate a little escape from everyday life
by Kurt Streeter
LA Times
October 14, 2007

You are a power forward and a crack addict. A point guard and a meth head. A center, but you can't stay away from booze and weed and women.

You spend most of your time in a crowded downtown homeless shelter on a shadowy stretch of hard streets and hard times. If you're lucky, you live in the shelter. Every day is the same: classes, work, therapy, rules.

How do you get some happiness? How do you forget your troubles and reach back to the way you used to be, if only for an hour and a half? By playing on a team of transients in a league of last chances -- L.A.'s skid row basketball conference.

Read the full article over here.

------------------------------

And from Blogtown site--



Manuel Compito (aka OG Man) writes:

SKIDROW 3on3 STREETBALL LEAGUE has been a miracle from it's "very inception" (March of 2007). We are in our second season (in one year)..that's amazing.Most of the missions say that they have "basketball teams" (which are unaccessible to the hundreds of men that do not want to go into a program "just to play basketball"). If there has been a 'league or a conference"...it never had a name prior to the creation of the Skidrow 3on3 Streetball League. The community simply called it "the no-name league".

We know that missions have connections and "millions of dollars" and can afford to pay for the type of press that can come out in the sports page about a "single" match-up. And for the need to "divert their donors or future "donors" from the efforts and growth of the Skidrow 3on3 Streetball League that type of press coverage is necessary.

But there is "room" in America and certainly on Skidrow for as many Leagues or Conferences that it will take to get the attention of men, women and children to encourage them to "find methods by which to make their lives better".

The Skidrow 3on3 Streetball League was not created "to get a little happiness or forget your problems for an hour and a half" but rather to motive the men (the fans) to believe in themselves. The prove to themselves that "this community" can create something of their own.

One must understand that the Skidrow 3on3 Streetball League belongs to the "community" not some "particular" service provider. There's nothing wrong with playing on the mission's teams...nothing at all. (Some of our league members play on missions teams..that's probably why they win), but again Skidrow 3on3 Streetball League is 'MORE THAN JUST A GAME"! It's about (1) gang intervention (2)recovery (3)life skills development (4)mentorship (5) community development (6)employment and business venture development (7)self-help (8)partnership.

Skidrow 3on3 Streetball League builds character, empowers the men and women of the league. It creates a "winning attitude" towards life. We simply use the game of basketball to do all this.

OG Man (Commissioner)

Check out the blogtown entry over here.

Survey finds homeless numbers drop countywide but are up on skid row

By Susannah Rosenblatt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 12, 2007



The number of homeless people living in Los Angeles County on a given night has dropped significantly in the last two years, but more people are concentrated in downtown Los Angeles' skid row, according to a survey by a city-county agency.

Countywide, the number of homeless dropped from 88,000 in 2005 to 74,000 this year, according to a federally required biennial report of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The 5,100 people sleeping on skid row represent a 40% jump from 2005.

"It still indicates a tremendous amount needs to be done," said Orlando Ward, spokesman for the Midnight Mission on skid row.

Read the full article over here.

Results of the 2007 Homeless Count Report, check it out over here.

County's homeless initiative hits skids, heads in a different direction

Excerpts taken from the LA Times Article.

By Susannah Rosenblatt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 7, 2007

City officials launched similarly ambitious plans to reduce homelessness, with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spending $150 million over the last three years to develop affordable housing with accessible social services. But while the city's year-old police crackdown on the sidewalks of skid row has sharply reduced crime in the downtown area, it has also pushed people farther from the aid centers concentrated there...

"Many of these are pilot projects," Sheehan (the county deputy chief executive who has coordinated much of the county's homeless prevention work) said. "When you haven't done it before and you don't have a cookie cutter to apply, it makes it very difficult."

The city and county recently began collaborating more closely to move homeless people off the streets; in the past, city-county communication focused more on defusing crises rather than planning for the future, Ollague said.

"We made a mistake in thinking that it was going to be easy once the money was identified," Long said. "The hard part is to come up with the ideas."

In spite of the delays, advocates for the homeless prefer the thoughtful approach: "Should funding just be thrown out there onto the streets in the hopes that it'll do some good? No," said Tanya Tull, president and founder of Beyond Shelter, a Los Angeles nonprofit that helps connect people with permanent housing.

Tull gives the county high marks for "focusing time, energy and much-needed money" on what was long an invisible issue. But, echoing the worry of homeless prevention organizations around the region, she said $100 million is just "a drop in the bucket to what is needed."

Read the full article over here.

Bratton concedes Skid Row migration

(photo courtesy of Al Seib / LAT)

By Duke Helfand
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 3, 2007

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton acknowledged today that an aggressive public safety initiative to clean up downtown's Skid Row has lowered crime but shifted some of the district's homeless and mentally ill residents to other parts of the city.

"Is there some displacement? Certainly," Bratton said at a news conference where he and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa touted the drop in crime. "But what's wrong with that in some respects?

"Why should one square mile of the city be impacted by something that's effectively a countywide problem? So if there is displacement, all well and good. Other people can see some of what ... the misfortunate people that have had to live in Skid Row have been experiencing."

Read the full article over here.

Study: Skid Row crackdown only effective in short term

BY RICK ORLOV
LA Daily News, Staff Writer
09/24/2007

A year after the LAPD flooded Skid Row with dozens of officers to crack down on crime, a study has found that crime in the area plunged 40 percent but the city has failed to develop any long-term solutions.

The UCLA study also found higher crime in communities adjacent to the nearly one-square-mile Skid Row area, as well as an increase in the number of transients in other parts of the city.

It also found that monthly arrests averaged more than 750, with more than half minor drug offenses. Of the 1,000 citations issued month, the majority were for such infractions as loitering and jaywalking.

"There are a high number of citations being issued, but people can't afford to pay the fines and are sent to jail," said Gary Blasi, a law professor who conducted the months-long study with his students.

"And even though it gets them out of Skid Row for the short term, they will come back and, because of their criminal record, they aren't eligible for housing or welfare.

"We don't see the other support programs that are needed to deal with the problem of homelessness. Other cities are developing coordinated policies to get people off the streets that we don't see here."

Launched a year ago this week, the Safer Cities Initiative was designed to tackle Los Angeles' estimated 40,000 homeless, many of them downtown, with 50 extra officers on Skid Row and additional services.

While officials and business leaders who work in and around the area have hailed it as a renaissance, those who live on the streets say it has led to the criminalization of the homeless.

Read the full article over here.
The LA TImes has a similiar article about this study, read the full article over here.