Leg Up Los Angeles's Sustainable Redistribution Program

Housing and Homelessness

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Los Angeles has one of the largest homeless populations in the country and one of the highest homeless population densities in the world, with an estimated 41,290 Los Angeles City citizens experiencing homelessness in 2021 and 66,346 Los Angeles County citizens experiencing homelessness in 2020. The issue has persisted to exist as Los Angeles's most notable issue for the last couple of decades, but the numbers prove that there has not been any substantive course of action made towards assisting those experiencing this issue. There are several reasons why homelessness is so extreme in Los Angeles, but it is undeniable that the most recent waves of gentrification in the city have exacerbated this issue. This high priority issue has yet to show any signs of slowing down, and in this being the case, a new and different platform needs to exist in order to offer productive solutions to the issues of gentrification and displacement.

Leg Up Los Angeles is seeking funding in the amount of $340,060 to purchase and maintain a 2023 Ford XL Cargo Van, under the usage of their Sustainable Redistribution Program. The primary objective of this particular project is to provide as much direct and indirect assistance as possible towards houseless communities across all of Los Angeles. This being done through the programming of a food pick-up and drop-off service. In the implementation of this program, Leg Up Los Angeles looks to utilize coalitions with businesses across the city, to repurpose their unused, excess, or unwanted goods. These goods would be picked up 3-4 times a week, on an 8 hour shift, by a driver who coordinates pick-up times with businesses. Said goods would be distributed on the same day as their pick-up, and would be guided towards more desolate communities of unhoused citizens, as they are further away from care. Given the diligence of this programming, the Sustainable Redistribution Program is projected to provide meaningful assistance for tens of thousands of citizens each year, and allocate hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of otherwise trashed goods. Along with this, Leg Up Los Angeles intends to utilize this program to put the issues of unhoused citizens at the forefront of social media, by creating a video segments surrounding their distributions and discussions about the state of Los Angeles gentrification and displacement.

In undertaking this program, Leg Up Los Angeles looks to... -Provide impactful need-based assistance to tens of thousands of citizens a year. -Repurpose hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods a year that would have been trashed otherwise. -Provide a dramatically more consistent inflow of goods to our program, given the space in the vehicle, and our projected scheduling for van travel. -Create an entirely original interview segment(TBD name), where we invite prominent public figures to be interviewed about the state of Los Angeles homelessness, displacement and gentrification, during a ride along on one of our need based distributions. -Utilize this vehicle as a public advertisement for our cause. -Create a new and exciting platform that dramatically increases awareness around homelessness, gentrification, and displacement. All of these factors combined, have the potential to make a huge difference in Los Angeles's culture towards the issues of houselessness and gentrification.

We will ultimately define and measure our success in this project utilizing 3 indicators that will be consistently tracked through the programs existence. -Amount of people assisted per year and per area, will be tracked on a spreadsheet so that we are able to know how many people and which people we are assisting per year.(Projected to be in the tens of thousands) -Monetary amount of goods we are redistributing, will be tracked on a spreadsheet as well, so that we are able to track how much money's worth of goods we are intaking and distributing per year.(Projected to be in the hundreds of thousands) -Increase of traffic through our platforms, will be understood through the amount of views and likes on our Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok, and Twitter. This is the one we are excited about most, as we feel that this particular program could be the catalyst for some very impactful content across all of our platforms.