LAPD’s MISSION: Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) creates performances and multidisciplinary artworks that connect the experience of people living in poverty to the social forces that shape their lives and communities.  LAPD’s works express the realities, hopes, dreams and rights of people who live and work in L.A.’s Skid Row.

LAPD’s VISION: LAPD makes artistic work to change the narrative about Skid Row and people living in poverty.  In doing so, LAPD aims to create a community of compassion, change individual lives and inspire the next generation of artists.

LAPD’s HISTORY: The Los Angeles Poverty Department has been working in LA’s Skid Row since 1985, hosting free performance workshops and creating art.  LAPD was the first theater company run for and by homeless people in the nation, as well as the first arts program of any kind for homeless people in Los Angeles.
Our original goals remain the same: to create community in Skid Row and to amplify the voices of the people who live in Skid Row, in order to share the lived experience of our company and community members with the larger city of Los Angeles and the nation.