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LA Opens Taxpayer-Funded Luxury Homeless Shelter

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  June 24, 2024 8:30 AM

Los Angeles taxpayers have forked over $165 million for a luxury homeless shelter that includes skyline views.

The 19-story building, which has 228 studies and 50 one-bedroom units, is part of a three-building project to support homeless adults, the Los Angeles Times reports. Each unit costs about $600,000. 

The Weingart Center Tower also features a host of amenities. 

Besides a floor of offices for case workers, conference rooms and property managers, the tower boasts a gym, an art room, a soundproofed music room, a computer room/library, a TV lounge, six common balconies, four of them with dog runs, and a ground floor cafe with a two-story glass wall facing a courtyard.

The music and art rooms were included to facilitate programming by outside organizations. [...]

Each room — 228 studios and 50 one-bedroom apartments — has its own TV, and the cafe will also bring residents together on movie nights. [...]

The concept is to have a campus that is inward focused — encouraging its 700 or so residents, when all three buildings are completed, to isolate from the influences outside, while also bringing a flavor of the Westside to the rest of Skid Row. (Los Angeles Times)

Financing for the project largely came from Proposition HHH, a supportive-housing program voters approved in 2016.

“I see the tower as providing a great need, a great housing need in Skid Row and a design that says poor residents are worthy,” Pete White, executive director of the Skid Row advocacy group Los Angeles Community Action Network, told the LA Times.

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