Participatory Budgeting happens in other American cities and has now come to Los Angeles through L.A. REPAIR (Los Angeles Reforms for Equity and Public Acknowledgment of Institutional Racism).
The LA REPAIR Participatory Budgeting program is taking place in nine underserved people of color neighborhoods in Los Angeles including Skid Row. For six of the nine, voting begins today March 15th and goes through April 7th. Voting means if you are part of that neighborhood, you will help choose how a portion of the Los Angeles City Budget will be spent. For Skid Row, that means 775 thousand dollars.
Through months of Skid Row community outreach, two categories were created: Employment & Financial Security and Health & Wellbeing. Community based nonprofit organizations made proposals based on one or both of those categories to the City and on March 13 the City released the seven chosen proposals. Voting will see which ones share in the 775k.
But the actual purpose of this article is to focus on one of those proposals because of these words : “…and improve access to essential needs: water and shade”. Those words are from the Health & Wellbeing proposal of the Los Angeles Poverty Department, the oldest arts organization in Skid Row.
The reference to water and shade are the only words in any of the seven proposals which directly relate to the unique vulnerability of Skid Row in the classification of Downtown Los Angeles as an Urban Heat Island and that means the only proposal which directly relates to Climate Change.
I’m one of the co-founders of Skid Row Cooling Resources, a grassroots planning and advocacy coalition which started in the Fall of 2020 to focus on the Urban Heat Island effect in Skid Row during the months of Summer in 2021. 2021 as a very successful pilot project consisting of four cooling canopy stations in different sections of Skid Row then became a City program of four climate stations during the summer in Skid Row with two of them going year round.
Yesterday I attended the first ever Climate Equity LA Community Assembly organized by City Hall’s Climate Emergency Mobilization Office. Stephany Campos of Homeless Health Care LA and the Director of the Skid Row Community Refresh Spot was part of the Planning Committee. She is also a co-founder of Skid Row Cooling Resources.
While I’ll be helping spread the word about the Los Angeles Poverty Department Health & Wellbeing proposal, the bigger picture here is the voting period ends on April 7th — and so get ready for Summer!
Go to repair.lacity.gov/vote for more information.