A more equitable Los Angeles would be able to produce enough housing the ensure that everyone was able to afford a place to live. A more equitable LA would have accessible and affordable transportation, high quality jobs, safe parks and streets — opportunities for ALL Angelenos to lead fuller lives. Equitable communities are those in which everyone’s basic needs are met; physical, social, and mental well-being at all stages of life so that, instead of surviving paycheck to paycheck, they are free to focus on achieving their full potential.

At Holos Communities, we began by creating permanent supportive housing for our unhoused neighbors and have gradually expanded our focus to include the creation of more equitable communities. This is because our homelessness crisis is a part of the housing crisis and our inability to produce enough housing impacts nearly everyone. A majority of Angeles spend more than 1/3 of their income on housing with the idea of home ownership completely out of the picture while businesses struggle to retain employees due to high housing costs. Working class families need affordable housing but so do seniors (the fastest growing homeless population) and college students (with nearly 20% of CA Community College students experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity).

Although the task is daunting, these are the challenges we embrace everyday at Holos. This is why we are focused on holistically fostering more equitable communities:

• We need to derive new models to solve our housing and homelessness crisis.

• All communities need to be more resilient to the impacts of global warming.

• We need to improve the process of financing the construction of housing, so it is cheaper, simpler, and faster to build enough housing for everyone.

• By incorporating commercial spaces within multifamily affordable housing properties we can make neighborhoods more walkable and friendly to small businesses.

• To reinforce our social safety net and reduce socioeconomic segregation, we must create more stepping stones to reduce the large gap between publicly subsidized and market rate housing.