


A 19-story apartment building dedicated to housing the homeless in Los Angeles, California, finished construction Wednesday.
Weingart Center Tower will start moving in homeless residents by July. Its floor plan includes 228 studio apartments and 47 one-bedroom apartments in addition to three one-bedroom plans slated for the building managers. Residents will also have access to a dining hall, commercial kitchen, community center, music room, art room, computer room, and outdoor spaces. Weingart Center is strategically located on Los Angeles’s Skid Row, a neighborhood notorious for its large homeless population.
“The mission-driven development spans 228,000 square feet, making it the largest permanent supportive housing project in the city’s history and one of the largest on the West Coast,” construction company Swinerton explained on its website.
As the over $165 million project was funded by taxpayers, 30% of the construction workers were required to be locals in the area. As residents move in, the building will also host job trainings, counseling, and classes.
“Building in the heart of Skid Row presents unique challenges, but this team is constantly reminded that the vision behind this project serves as a positive response to the homelessness crisis. We hope this project and future endeavors will positively change the entire community,” senior project manager Daniel Kim said.
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This comes as the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles has once again closed its waiting list for Section 8 housing vouchers after giving out more than 61,000 of them to participants. HACLA reports nearly 6,400 public housing units and over 5,500 asset management units as of last year.
At the end of last year, HACLA claimed to have housed some 47,743 participants. Meanwhile, roughly 96,000 more participants are on waitlists for all three types of affordable housing options in the city alone.