Invisible Elephant in an Urban Jungle
Juan Moreno
Margarita Hill
March 2021
Skidrow Housing Trust is a homeless aid organization that has had major success in Skidrow. For this project I will being using their methodology of helping the homeless as well as aligning my design to their repertoire of projects.
The last portion primarily focuses on the needs for the episodic homeless with the transitional housing. Here the homeless have access to counseling services and community art center, as well as showers, restrooms, and temporary storage units.
Los Angeles is an infamous city that serves as one of the main tourist destinations when visiting California. What is rarely noted about Los Angeles is its growing homeless issue. Within the Los Angeles county area there are over 83,000 homeless individuals, many of which are concentrated in a single area known as Skidrow. Skidrow only accounts for 0.001% of the county’s land, but it contains nearly 3% of the county’s total homeless population. The homeless residents of Skidrow often find themselves in a lifestyle that is fragmented physically, socially, or mentally. This project will hope to create a space that will address the needs and opportunities of aid for this disenfranchised community of Los Angeles.
ABOUT ME
I grew up in the North East Los Angeles area where I have witnessed the continual growth of the homeless community. The conversations I have had with the homeless have mostly been interesting. The stories range from building surf boards with scrapped plywood or harvesting parakeet eggs from 20-foot trees, these types of interactions always reminded that the homeless are like everyone else. Using my senior project as the medium I wanted to envision a communal space where stigmatization behind homelessness was not existent.