LOS ANGELES– As Los Angeles prepares for the 2028 Olympic Games, city planning is underway on transportation, infrastructure, and development across the city. But in neighborhoods near the Olympic venues including Venice and downtown Los Angeles, conversations are circulating around how the games could affect the city’s unhoused population.
Mark Hood, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission, said the organization provides emergency and long term services for the unhoused, with a main focus on rehabilitation into society.
“I’ve seen other organizations in the city that are losing funding or shifting funding and so the people that they were providing emergency services for are ending up on the street and they have come to us,” said Hood.
He described the services offered at Union Rescue Mission for individuals experiencing crisis– the first being an emergency service that offers those experiencing homelessness a place to stay, clean clothes, and a hot meal. Hood then went on to explain the long term programs offered, saying, “We have two campuses and those are really our life transformation programs and so those are people who are coming to us that have domestic violence issues in their life. They’ve been abandoned. They have addictions and they’re looking for a lot of transformation. They’re looking to get their family reconnected and those individuals will be with us for one to two years,” he said.
According to Hood the organization is preparing for an expansion to accommodate the increase of people in the unhoused population.
“We are renovating one floor of our building hopefully to bring in a new population of people,” said Hood.
Looking toward the Olympics, Hood emphasized the need to look at the bigger picture to solve the issue of homelessness. The proposed ideas were identifying organizations in the city that have the ability to house and support the unhoused community. He said that investing in those organizations will be the best direction to go in. Hood also said that it is “reasonable” if tourists are deterred from an area if there isn’t an active effort to clean up and prepare, mentioning an emphasis on a cleaner and safer environment.
“I think if I was a tourist, I certainly wouldn’t feel safe walking some of the streets that are in downtown LA, but I think there’s going to be an emphasis on getting the city cleaned up making sure that people come here they feel safe,” said Hood.
Following this sentiment, Hood explained the underlying problem that comes with cleaning operations ahead of an event as large as the Olympics.
“Cleaning up the streets, getting rid of the trash, getting rid of the graffiti– there’s an organization that works really hard at that, but how do you deal with the population that’s currently living there?” Hood said. The real issue at hand isn’t beautification but a problem that is greater than the Olympics preparation. “The only thing preventing us from housing them is funding,” said Hood.
