Dive Brief:
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A 102-unit apartment building with a gym and an art studio just opened on Los Angeles’ Skid Row. Its tenants: the homeless locals who once lived outdoors on the same street.
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The new Star Apartments are part of an overhaul of a neighborhood once littered with makeshift cardboard shelters and tents belonging to up to 5,000 homeless people.
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The new headquarters of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services is located on the ground floor of the building, whose apartments are city-subsidized for jobless tenants.
Dive Insight:
As young professionals have started gentrifying Skid Row, it has led to tensions between them and the city's destitute. This move could not only help ease tensions, it could save taxpayers some money. It’s three times less expensive to move homeless citizens into permanent housing, where they have a chance to turn their lives around, than to pay for repeated visits to emergency rooms and time spent in jail, according to the city’s Skid Row Housing Trust.