1000 Homes Press Release
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 22, 2009
For Information:
Jack Skelley Roddan Paolucci Roddan
www.RoddanPaolucci.com
310-791-2759
Los Angeles, CA - ULI Los Angeles, a district council of the Urban Land Institute, has announced a unique design and development competition to help solve homelessness in Los Angeles County. The 1,000 Homes competition is part of ULI Los Angeles' ongoing 1,000 Homes program devoted to helping the region create more Permanent Supportive Housing - a particular type of mixed-use development. The program has chosen four teams of graduate students and young development professionals to compete for the best project.
The four teams will present their project proposals June 5th at 5:00 pm at the UCLA Anderson School of Management Korn Hall.
Each of the four teams represents a public-entity client. The clients are: City of Pasadena, City of Pomona, Hollywood Entertainment District, and Department of Veterans Affairs. The competition presentation is open to the public and additional information is available at www.uli-la.org. Partnering with ULI Los Angeles in the program are Westside Urban Forum, Shelter Partnership, Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), and UCLA Ziman Center.
"Cost-effective, practical solutions, which will ultimately reduce the need for public spending on homelessness, do exist," says Shahrouz Golshani, Co-Chair of 1,000 Homes. "1,000 Homes is quite unique in that it offers fresh ideas from young people on how to overcome resistance to creating Permanent Supportive Housing and move projects through development."
Most experts agree that to reduce the numbers of chronically homeless people, the best solution is Permanent Supportive Housing. This unique type of "mixed-use" development combines subsidized housing with social services - including case management, healthcare and counseling for mental illness and addiction disease. This gives the chronically homeless the ability to break through the cycles of poor job skills, and mental and physical disabilities.
"Creating more Permanent Supportive Housing now will help stop the drain on other public resources in the future," says Golshani. "1,000 Homes builds consensus around the need for Permanent Supportive Housing by providing city governments the tools they need to help solve chronic homelessness in their communities."
The four 1,000 Homes design and development teams are matched with the four clients who deal with homelessness daily. Each team has designed a Permanent Supportive Housing project based on the specific economic, social, and political dynamics of that client's area. Their project includes a recommended site and architectural design that would be acceptable to the community.
"The majority of Los Angeles County's approximately 70,000 homeless individuals experience homelessness for a relatively brief period of time," says Anya Baum Davis, Co-Chair of the 1,000 Homes Committee. "However, approximately 10% of this group - the chronically homeless - are best helped with Permanent Supportive Housing. We're working with developers already building this product type to build even more of it region-wide, not just in pockets such as Hollywood, Downtown, or Santa Monica."
Says ULI Los Angeles Executive Director Katherine Perez, "The entire country region needs a strategy that recognizes the tremendous costs that the taxpayers and the government bear by leaving their chronic homeless populations on the streets. These costs include emergency room visits, stays in hospital and mental wards, and interactions with law enforcement. It actually costs as much to house a chronically homeless individual in permanent supportive housing as it does to allow that person to remain on the streets."
