In downtown Los Angeles, a high-rise structure intended to accommodate the homeless enjoyed a grand opening ceremony on Wednesday.
The Weingart Tower is a 19-story building with 278 apartments. It’s going to be L.A.’s largest permanent assistance housing project and is meant to assist those who are now homeless on Skid Row.
Mayor Karen Bass declared during the event on Wednesday that “Skid Row is a community. It’s not just throw-away people. It is a community, and to bring that community together in beautiful housing like this is what everybody deserves.”
Along with an extensive list of amenities that includes a gym, art room, music room, computer room, and library, the building will have an entire level dedicated to offices for case workers. Residents will have access to a café and six shared balconies.
Even if it’s regarded as inexpensive housing, building a project of this kind is nevertheless expensive. Taxpayers are covering the roughly $600,000 cost of each unit.
The $165 million project is permanently funded by Proposition HHH, which was voted by a resounding majority of voters in 2016. State housing money and $56 million in state tax credits are also being given to the new tower.
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The Weingart Center’s president and CEO, Kevin Murray, stated that maintaining tenant engagement is the main objective.
“As many things that we can put inside the building so that you don’t have the chaos that you sometimes see outside the building where people are moving to and from so, you can do just about anything you want within this building, and it’s a regular apartment.”
Attending the launch on Wednesday gave future homeowners a first look at their new house.
“I really never had nothing really given to me besides stuff and family,” Shannon Gresham stated. “When I was homeless, I was looking at it like, ‘There’s nobody out there,’ it was like a little dark hole, like, it was just me. I went from being in that hole to coming out the hole like, ‘It’s a lot of support and love out here,’ so I’m so speechless right now, I’m happy. I want to see my unit.”
