LIVEHOMEplace
In the first annual HOMEplace Fellowship, Liberation Arts Community Health Strategists innovate replicable interventions for internal, interpersonal, and collective freedom from internalised and enforced systemic oppression. HOMEplace grants cohort members monthly housing subsidies to create BATJC-inspired pods of first-responders in their chosen families, support unhoused Survivors with resource navigation, and lead monthly Participatory Action Research workshops as community events to tenaciously blossom impact in both quantity and quality.
In which areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?
South LA
In what stage of innovation is this project?
Applying a proven model or solution to a new issue or sector (e.g, using a job recruiting software or strategy to match clients to supportive housing sites, applying demonstrated strategies from advocating for college affordability to advocating for housing affordability and homelessness, etc.)
If you are submitting a collaborative proposal, please describe the specific role of partner organizations in the project.
Currently HOMEplace's host, the Youth Justice Coalition will support as fiscal sponsor
What is the need you’re responding to?
People often stay in abusive situations because they do not have the resources to safely leave, and when they do, they find themselves un-homed and/or without the necessary support to rebuild healthily. Indeed, there are available subsidized housing programs and social service benefits available for LA residents. They also take time. HOMEplace forms a net-work in the gap times of the LAHSA rapid rehousing process in order that no one falls through the cracks of the bureaucratic process or gets lost in institutional paperwork. The HOMEplace fellowship activates Liberation Arts Community Health Strategists to co-create curriculum-based emergency housing retreats that reinforce capacity-building cultural customs already anchored in home communities. Currently living in housing made possible by HOPICS and LAHSA’s Rapid Rehousing program and having been in shelters, I experienced zero community-building efforts. HOMEplace seeks to make all levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs attainable.
Why is this project important to the work of your organization?
Lakhiyia Hicks, HOMEplace Founder/Project Manager, co-educated hundreds of Community Health Workers in LA County’s Department of Health Services 2018-19; and previously trained C2PLA, CAC, and Planned Parenthood Peer Advocates as well asAMP! Peer Educators at UCLA and LAUSD High Schools. Lakhiyia also identifies with each marginalized identity named in target populations. HOMEplace believes those most proximate to crisis need to be at the heart of every response. Whole Person Care-LA for which HOMEplace consulted, continues to prove this with sole employment of those who have lived experience in the populations to which they will contribute.
Following a discriminatory pushout from a university lecturer position resulting in homelessness, Lakhiyia was offered motel vouchers and group subsidized housing with all cis-males. Queer folks are already at risk for “corrective” sexual violence. When they expressed discomfort, they were told that the bedroom door locks. ...HOMEplace was born.
Approximately how many people will be impacted by this proposal?
Direct Impact: 1,000
Indirect Impact: 50,000
Please describe the broader impact of your proposal.
To decrease homeless count and the time taken to house unhoused people
To improve health and self-image
To relieve backlog on rehousing and contribute to policy reform to streamline process
To support the mental wellness of participants; thereby, increasing active civic engagement with community based institutions
To ensure that more people have housing and altogether eradicating homelessness supports public health structures as the COVID-19 pandemic revealed
To eventually purchase permanent home(s) to house LAHSA rapid rehousing program
As a replicable project, research findings will be disseminated to support institutional transformation of unwanted health and housing outcomes elsewhere that result from overwhelmed system
Please explain how you will define and measure success for your project.
HOMEplace: Healing Truth to Power is a public health intervention to uproot systemic generators of disproportionate impacts of homelessness, intimate partner violence, mental unwellness, incarceration, HIV/STI transmission, deportation, human trafficking, and suicide for Black, Queer/Questioning and Gender Non-conforming Female-assigned Survivors of childhood sexual assault. Even in the context of dire straits, people deserve better and most importantly, people have a birthright to heal, call all their fragmented parts back home in their bodies. We know those rebuttals, like “they should be grateful.” During Participatory Action Research workshops, we will survey and monitor shifts in stigma. In so doing, we co-curate the best possible conditions towards such self-possessed autonomy. How can we reimagine safe spaces that also cultivate liberating opportunities for self-reclamation? Homeownership and entrepreneurship are proven promotive and protective factors that help people reinvent their lives while building self-esteem, especially since there is much data on the relationship between low self-esteem and unwanted health outcomes. Survivors thrive in spaces that are removed from the immediacy of the environments they seek to escape. Which is why HOMEplace considers weekend-long retreats tailored to offer people the breathing space they need with the presence of healing arts practitioners to help them process their way towards ensuring healthier home possibilities for them, invaluable. Please find quantitative and qualitative goals/measures listed below:
Quantitative:
4 Strategists to complete fellowship
5 Community Partners to participate in Retreats, monthly trainings and events
100% attendance from Strategists and Community Partners at each monthly training
50 people at each monthly event (600< People)
Each Strategist and Community Partner creates a POD of at least five people from their communities by the culmination (45< People)
Qualitative:
Participatory Action Research monitoring and evaluation throughout fellowship
Which of the LIVE metrics will your submission impact?
Housing affordability
Resilient communities
Homelessness
Are there any other LA2050 goal categories that your proposal will impact?
LA is the best place to LEARN
LA is the best place to CREATE
LA is the best place to PLAY
LA is the healthiest place to CONNECT
Which of LA2050’s resources will be of the most value to you?
Access to the LA2050 community
Host public events or gatherings
Communications support
Office space for meetings, events, or for staff
Capacity, including staff
Strategy assistance and implementation