The Nations Are Coming To Skid Row

Something is clearly happening. The Nations Are Coming To Skid Row.

I recently posted a blog that begins: “Raquel Rolnik, professor of Urban Planning at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, is the author of URBAN WARFARE: Housing Under the Empire of Finance. From 2008 to 2014, she was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing. She talks about money as ten percent public and ninety percent private. The ninety percent private is a massive cloud moving about the world looking for places to touch down and create The Perfect City. Dubai is a good example. One of the places the cloud has been touching down is Downtown Los Angeles.”

I learned about this cloud a couple years ago when Professor Rolnik spoke at the opening on the Institute of Inequality and Democracy at UCLA. She spoke in early August at LACAN in Skid Row.

LACAN on September 6 held a panel discussion “GLOBAL VOICES: the Housing Crises from Skid Row to Tokyo” where Leilana Farha, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing joined in by Skype.

This is from the Goethe Institut LA website:

“In Los Angeles, where the phrase “Homelessness is just a paycheck away“ is all too well known, the divide between the “haves and have-nots“ is ever-present. While the city is best known for its Hollywood image, it is estimated that 80,000 individuals experience homelessness in LA County. Among these are also students and working-class individuals, who have to live in their cars because they cannot afford to pay rent.

“Worlds of Homelessness” is a project of the Goethe-Institut that offers an interdisciplinary engagement with the issue of homelessness and its many related themes such as the gap between rich and poor, participation, inequality, gentrification, racism, and migration. “Worlds of Homelessness” seeks to bring together local and international artists, architects, scholars, and others in an effort to create a platform to share ideas, thoughts and to present their work, as well as examining different ways of engagement with the many questions related to the topic.

The project is developed in cooperation with the Los Angeles Poverty Department, who, for decades have worked with Skid Row artists, the Thomas Mann House, Naval, the architecture and design school SCI-Arc, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin as well as other partners.

SAVE THE DATE!

The event series including discussions, music performances, and film screenings takes place from October 22–27, 2019 in Los Angeles at the Skid Row Museum, Naval, and SCI-Arc, and culminates with the Festival for All Skid Row Artists October 26–27, 2019 in Skid Row.”

And so The Nations Are Coming To Skid Row means these global systemic financial dynamics as they relate to housing from a Social Justice perspective are converging on Skid Row.