DignityMoves

A developer and advocate of innovative, rapid, cost-effective interim supportive housing (ISH), DignityMoves works to reimagine how the United States addresses unsheltered homelessness. With this award, we will develop a strategic plan for ending unsheltered homelessness across the city of LA. Believing that re-instilling optimism in this long stagnant and challenging policy area is essential to lasting change, included in this work will be community research and a media campaign to educate and elicit buy-in that this issue can be addressed.

The ELAC Rooftop Student Housing Pilot will provide 120 units of interim and permanent supportive housing to housing insecure students. This student-led collaboration between ELAC, Gensler, DignityMoves, and Jovenes pilots a scalable model that leverages existing urban infrastructure, namely parking garage rooftops, to build innovative student housing at 1/3 of the cost and in 1/2 the time. The pilot has larger implications as there are over 40 publicly-owned rooftops in LA County that could accommodate up to 3,000 beds of affordable housing.

The LA2050 Grants Challenge said housing/homelessness got more votes than ANY issue. DignityMoves works to end unsheltered homelessness in communities by building interim supportive housing as a rapid, cost-effective, and scalable solution. We will launch a proof of concept model for small to mid-sized LA County cities, starting with the City of Norwalk. Using our DignityNOW approach, we will build enough interim housing to move everyone off the streets so they are not left suffering while waiting for affordable and supportive housing.