Skip to main content
search
0
Skid Row Now and 2040

Skid Row Now and 2040

In response to the DTLA2040 Community Plan, a coalition of Skid Row community members and groups have created a coalition: Skid Row Now & 2040. Over the past 5 years, the coalition engaged with the Department of City Planning and created a Vision Paper for the Skid Row community, and additional ideas for funding housing that will get people off the streets and into housing. Visit the Skid Row Now & 2040 Facebook page
Project pages: The BACK 9, Golf and Zoning Policy in Los Angeles and How to House 7,000 People In Skid Row.

You can download our updated Vision Document here.
You can sign our online petition here.
Vision Document graphic: the short list.
Skid Row Now & 2040’s response to the DTLA2040 community plan: 9 talking points.
And our talking points for the City Panning Commission’s hearing: Public Comment toolkit
In 2015 we started this process, working with Theresa Hwang, and created an Our Skid Row community designed map

As a result, the Department of City Planning created a special zone where only affordable housing with extremely low and deeply low-income levels can be built: the i X 1 zone. But the zone doesn’t cover all of Skid Row, it squeezes affordable housing into the blocks East of San Pedro: between Alameda and 5th and 7th street. We want the expansion of the i X 1 zone to the existing Skid Row neighborhood boundaries: from Main to Alameda, and from 3rd to 7th street.

Watch the Public Comments we submitted at the Public Hearing for the DTLA 2040 Community Plan draft.

The Department of City Planning presented the DTLA2040 community plan to the City Planning Commission on June 17, 2021. The next Public Hearing will be on August 26
We are inviting you to submit a public comment in support of our Skid Row Now & 2040 Vision by emailing cpc@lacity.org
Here are some talking points for your public comment: Public Comment toolkit

Community advocates from The Catholic Worker, The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and The Community Design Center, frustrated by the wholesale displacement of Bunker Hill residents, organized and presented the “Blue Book” plan, one that saved the single room occupancy hotels and committed resources to renovating and augmenting this housing and locating social services in the area.

A group of engaged Women in Skid Row (WISR) wrote an letter and submitted an Amicus Brief in response to the lawsuit against the City and County of Los Angeles by Judge Carter and the LA Alliance for Human Rights.
May 25, 2021.

The Honorable Judge David O. Carter, LA Human Rights Alliance, and the City and County of Los Angeles:
We represent a collective of advocates for the unhoused people of Skid Row, and we are extremely troubled by the consequences for our community should the Court’s injunction be implemented. Despite purporting to be an attempt to combat the circumstances created by historical racism, displacement, and houselessness, especially for bodies of color, this injunction reads like the blueprint for white supremacy and systemic racism. Read the entire letter here.

In the wake of the clear-cutting of historic Bunker Hill in 1955, Skid Row was headed for a similar “redevelopment,” under a proposed general development plan known as the “Silver Book.” Community advocates from The Catholic Worker, The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and The Community Design Center, frustrated by the wholesale displacement of Bunker Hill residents, organized and presented an alternative plan, one that saved the single room occupancy hotels and committed resources to renovating and augmenting this housing and locating social services in the area.
This plan, known as “The Blue Book,” was adopted by the City Council, with a majority of votes, some concerned with providing housing and others simply concerned with keeping displaced Skid Row people from coming to their neighborhoods. The framers of the plan argued that it was cheaper to save and renovate Skid Row housing than to try to build it elsewhere, as new construction would be more costly and face local resistance.