LAMP (Los Angeles Men's Project)
Mollie Lowery
627 S. San Julian St.
Los Angeles, Calif. 90014
(213) 488-0031

Skid Row in Los Angeles is almost a unique example of urban cynicism, even by the sorry standard that many American cities set in their policies toward poor and homeless residents. In a calculated policy decision back in the middle 1970s, the Los Angeles City Council sought to "contain" the city's street homeless people within the 40-block neighborhood that had won the name "Skid Row" decades earlier. Through zoning constraints and funding priorities, the city moved virtually all homeless services -- particularly the huge Union Rescue Mission -- into this neighborhood with the explicit purpose of "isolating the homeless problem."

The move didn't entirely succeed, Mollie Lowery says, because the homeless population mushroomed so much later in the decade that even Skid Row can't hold them all. But it still contains an estimated 10,000 homeless and near-homeless men, women and children, many of them mentally ill and many deeply mired in substance abuse. And, for what it's worth, it also contains a startling concentration of services for homeless people that range from simple, old-fashioned charity to innovative self-reliance programs.

LAMP, almost 10 years old, is one of the most innovative, not only by the standard of Skid Row but of the nation. It ranks among the most creative and effective approaches to rebuilding the lives of mentally ill homeless men and women of any grassroots program I've seen in all 50 states, and it calls out for study and replication all over the nation. Its premise is simple enough: Provide clean and decent shelter and multiple support services for mentally ill homeless men and women; treat them with respect and let them make their own decisions, and they WILL come in and, eventually, begin reclaiming their lives.

Among particularly creative touches, LAMP operates four non-profit businesses -- a commercial laundry, a coin laundromat, a convenience store and a public shower room and toilets -- that among them provide permanent jobs for up to 20 program "guests," LAMP's respectful term for the men and women that many organizations would depersonalize as "clients." In another humane touch, LAMP doesn't seek to move its people along but creates a permanent community offering lifelong support if they need it; encouraging them to progress but remaining there as a safety net if they fall.

Mollie Lowery, a longtime community organizer, founded LAMP in 1985 to fill a gap in services for mentally-ill homeless men, as a parallel service to Jill Halverson's Downtown Women's Shelter nearby. "I wanted to prove that people with mental illness could and would come in to a place if they felt it was meeting their needs. I didn't for a minute believe that mentally ill folks are out there on the street because they don't have enough sense to come in out of the cold. They're out there because they don't see any options. They want identity, they want the freedom to make choices. They just need consistent, solid resources."

So when people come in to LAMP's Day Center and Crisis Shelter, they don't have much structure imposed on them. They find a safe, tolerant and flexible environment where they can get emergency shelter (beds are available for 18 men and women), a bite to eat, something to wear -- and some counseling when they're ready for it. As they begin to want to get control of their lives, they may move on to the LAMP Village, a more structured environment with 48 beds, where men and women live and learn, agreeing to specific goals and working on them in a supportive environment. Here's where the four small businesses offer job-training and earning opportunities.

And now, using a converted SRO hotel with separate kitchen and bathroom in each of 50 studio units, the LAMP Lodge offers permanent, affordable housing to people who've gone through LAMP Village and are ready to live on their own, while remaining part of the neighborhood and the LAMP community.

With a staff of 50 (35 of them full-time) and a $1.3 million annual budget, LAMP is touching the lives of as many as 700 people a year.

"LAMP could be seen as what was MEANT to happen when they closed the large mental institutions," Lowery said. "LAMP is a model of the support systems that should have been there all along."

Lowery is particularly interested in seeing the program replicated. In an article she wrote for the journal New Directions for Mental Health, she observed, "When people ask how to duplicate LAMP in their own cities, they are most often looking for short-order recipes that can be microwaved rather than baked in a slow oven. It takes time to build a community! The essence of LAMP is community, as well as process -- a dynamic, inclusive, responsive process. What we have done can be duplicated, with vision, time and commitment. ... All of what we have done is possible in any and every neighborhood. The key ingredients are vision, respect, common sense, passion, clarity of goals, understanding and commitment; some savvy about how to raise money; fearlessness in the face of prejudice and ignorance; and time, patience and the courage to learn and change with experience. These are the elements of long-term solutions. We can make the time, generate the will, and create the resources. The health, growth and quality of people's lives, of our communities, depend on our collective good use of them."

(Last visit: Spring 1995)

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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