Skid Row Housing Trust

Don't just walk by quickly, looking straight ahead. If you notice a person living on the street, don't pretend you don't. That's what Victor Rodriguez chose to say to a group gathered downtown one evening last week to hear from people who once were homeless and who know how it feels not to be seen. Rodriguez, 52, now lives in the Dewey Hotel Apartments, operated by the Skid Row Housing Trust, which develops and manages affordable housing in an effort to provide homes for the homeless.

The developer of a skid row apartment building that houses recovering alcoholics and drug addicts said Friday he would appeal a zoning decision that denied a beer and wine permit for a restaurant planned for the ground floor of the complex. Mike Alvidrez, executive director of Skid Row Housing Trust, said the planned restaurant, a former food truck called Great Balls on Tires, could not open with its present business plan unless it gets the permit to operate on the ground floor of the six-story New Genesis Apartments.

Two community-based housing groups have been chosen for Great Western Bank's annual Housing Awards. Neighborhood Housing Services of Los Angeles and the Skid Row Housing Trust will receive grants of $50,000 each to support low-income housing efforts. They were among five nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive awards announced Thursday.

In a victory for skid row advocates, the city has rejected beer and wine sales at a restaurant on the ground floor of an apartment complex that houses recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. The Skid Row Housing Trust, which runs the 106-unit New Genesis Apartments at 5th and Main streets, had argued the permit was crucial to the financial health of the complex. The apartments are rented to artists and low-income people as well as the homeless, who receive counseling and substance abuse treatment on the site.

We appreciate your article detailing the life-threatening conditions at the Rossmore Hotel and the fines paid by its owner, Ernest Doizaki ("Violations at Hotel Net $13,000 Fine," July 25). However, the article quotes Doizaki's attorney's inaccurate account that the violations were a result of delays in the sale of the Rossmore to Skid Row Housing trust, and that the violations only began after negotiations with the trust had commenced. First, the violations were cited by building inspectors between October and December, 1992, and the purchase agreement was not executed until February, 1993.

Congratulations to Steve Lopez for bringing the community's attention to issues around the revitalization of the neighborhood in "A Skid Row Bistro Sounds Pretty Good, Despite Reservations" (Sept. 6). However, if the area around 4th and Main streets became the exclusive domain of the poor, it was because everyone else abandoned it. Now that we are all anxious to experience downtown again, this does not have to be at the expense of the folks who live there. More than 3,000 single-room housing units in the area are begging for rehabilitation.

The Community Redevelopment Agency approved a $1.1-million loan Thursday to help a nonprofit agency buy a dilapidated Skid Row hotel and develop a low-income housing complex at the site. The loan, which must be approved by the City Council, would permit the Skid Row Housing Trust to purchase the Olympia Hotel, demolish the blighted three-story building and design a 48-unit housing complex.

The Inner City Law Center, a skid row-based legal services organization, presented an award Thursday night to attorney Robert Carlson for his work with the homeless and indigent. Carlson, a partner in the business law department of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, became the first recipient of the Katharine Krause Award, named after the former executive director of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles who died last year.

Re "Bucking responsibility," editorial, May 15 The Times ignored a few facts underlying last week's unanimous City Council vote to enact a moratorium on the demolition or conversion of the city's residential hotels. The Times claims that this action hurts "private citizens" who can't cash in on the downtown gentrification frenzy. What about the 13,500 low-cost hotel residents (also private citizens) for whom a small room at a relatively high rent is the housing of last resort? Nonprofit organizations have already preserved thousands of units in formerly decrepit residential hotels in downtown and elsewhere in the city to make them available to our fellow citizens who are low-income, disabled and formerly homeless.

Los Angeles' largest downtown residential developer Monday donated $1.5 million that will allow the Skid Row Housing Trust to complete 115 efficiency apartments for the homeless mentally ill. The donation by Sonny Astani will enable the completion of the Abbey Apartments on San Pedro Street.

A sleek apartment complex opened Thursday in the heart of skid row, offering what backers hope will be a beacon for the neighborhood's homeless residents and a portal to an increasingly revitalized east side of downtown Los Angeles. The $28-million Gateways Apartments, at the corner of 5th and San Pedro streets, has amenities such as an open-air atrium, solar panels and a smoking lounge with its own filtration system. The eye-catching design contrasts sharply with the more institutional facades of the nearby homeless shelters.

Officials released the results of a pilot program Tuesday described as the Match.com of homeless services, designed to get the sickest, most endangered people off the streets and sidewalks of skid row for good. The 100-day project brought 20 government and nonprofit agencies together to build a computerized data-gathering and management system to quickly place hard-core sidewalk dwellers in housing with medical, rehab and social services. Under the new system, case managers seek out long-term homeless people under bridges and down back alleys and score them on their mental and physical disabilities, how often they visit emergency rooms or jails, and their general medical condition.

With condo buildings sprouting from vacant lots and talk of lifting height restrictions on its high-rises, Hollywood offers one of the best illustrations of Los Angeles' push toward population density. In the heart of this quickly changing neighborhood, in an appropriately tiny storefront gallery, two exhibitions show the direction of L.A. through studies of micro apartments and multifamily apartments. "How Small Is Too Small" and "By-Right/By-Design," running until Aug. 4 at the WuHo Gallery, examine a future that, the exhibits propose, is already partially here.

The Skid Row Housing Trust has spent decades revitalizing abandoned buildings and hotels in downtown Los Angeles' most destitute neighborhood to serve as shelter for the city's chronically homeless. But for its latest housing project, the trust abandoned its usual technique for a seemingly elementary construction concept. A 102-unit, $20.5-million complex is being built by stacking pre-outfitted apartments atop one another in a Lego-like fashion, limiting construction costs and fast-forwarding the project timeline.

Don't just walk by quickly, looking straight ahead. If you notice a person living on the street, don't pretend you don't. That's what Victor Rodriguez chose to say to a group gathered downtown one evening last week to hear from people who once were homeless and who know how it feels not to be seen. Rodriguez, 52, now lives in the Dewey Hotel Apartments, operated by the Skid Row Housing Trust, which develops and manages affordable housing in an effort to provide homes for the homeless.

Ruben Reyes is making himself at home in his new apartment on San Pedro Street in downtown L.A., setting out his phone and his CDs, planning to shop for food and cleaning supplies. After years on the streets — including San Pedro — as well as in shelters and in prison, and after just one night in the Charles Cobb Apartments, Reyes, 31, says he "feels like a king." "It's nice, it's gorgeous," he said, sitting on the bed — a bed designed, along with the nightstand and dresser, to fit the small apartment and to be durable, but also to be as appealing furniture designed for people with money to spend.

The developer of a skid row apartment building that houses recovering alcoholics and drug addicts said Friday he would appeal a zoning decision that denied a beer and wine permit for a restaurant planned for the ground floor of the complex. Mike Alvidrez, executive director of Skid Row Housing Trust, said the planned restaurant, a former food truck called Great Balls on Tires, could not open with its present business plan unless it gets the permit to operate on the ground floor of the six-story New Genesis Apartments.

Officials released the results of a pilot program Tuesday described as the Match.com of homeless services, designed to get the sickest, most endangered people off the streets and sidewalks of skid row for good. The 100-day project brought 20 government and nonprofit agencies together to build a computerized data-gathering and management system to quickly place hard-core sidewalk dwellers in housing with medical, rehab and social services. Under the new system, case managers seek out long-term homeless people under bridges and down back alleys and score them on their mental and physical disabilities, how often they visit emergency rooms or jails, and their general medical condition.

It's the day before the grand opening of the Abbey Apartments, where 113 formerly homeless men and women will try to rebuild 113 broken lives. Mike Alvidrez, executive director of the Skid Row Housing Trust, swings through the sunny courtyard, shows off the TV lounge, then climbs to the fifth floor sun deck where striped patio umbrellas sway in the afternoon breeze. In the distance: a panorama of the downtown L.A. skyline that would make most loft dwellers envious. But the tour isn't over.

Earlier this month, about two dozen Los Angeles County workers spent several nights walking skid row at 4 a.m., waking people who slept on the streets to ask them who they were and how they were doing. The answers helped create a registry of skid row street residents; the county and the city now promise to use that data to put the 50 most vulnerable in permanent homes with the healthcare, drug treatment, mental health services and counseling they need.