Future home for houseless people's services?

Today the Board of Sisters of the Road had a walk-through of the building we hope to buy. The building was a Chinese restaurant called The House of Louie. It closed five years ago when, according to the owner, the number of houseless people in the neighborhood discouraged customers. It looks like the employees just left the pots and pans on the stove, the dishes in the sink, and walked out.

Since then some windows have been broken and it has been boarded up, with street art and tagging on the plywood that covers the windows. The roof is unsound, so water is running down all the walls, the rugs are squishy, and the mold forest growing from the carpet is three inches high. It was a dark and rainy day. We had the light of several cell phone flashlights and a few overhead emergency lights, but I accidentally bumped my shutter speed up to 250 instead of lowering it to 60, so it's amazing I got any photos at all.

The main image here is the kitchen. There’s also a statue of Guan Gong Yu, just as it was left on the last day the kitchen operated. The property has been marked down from $5 million to $2 million, and we figure it will take $5 million more to fix it up, but if we can raise that, it can be a community center for houseless people: with multiple toilets, showers, charging stations, a lounge and meeting rooms, and a restaurant. It can be a place for houseless people to meet, to work with advocates, and to become more effective at organizing for systemic change to end houselessness. 

The current Executive Director thinks we can raise the money and do the work in two years. I’m skeptical about that timetable, but I’d love to see it happen. I'll be documenting the project (and I'll be more careful about that shutter speed button).

Critics of the project say the money should be used to build housing. I get the point of that, but it would be difficult to build a significant number of housing units with $7 million. Advocates believe we can get some grants and donations and it won't cost $7 million. The mayor wants $27 million to build internment camps for houseless people. I don't know how it will play out. But I'll be the photographer.