intersections

Missional Museums?

I have a new post at Allelon's Missional Journey blog called "Missional Museums?" As I mention in the article, I got this idea when a few of us from the Hollywood Church went to the Getty Center to hear our friend and artist, Man One, speak as part of a panel discussion called, "Art in L.A.: 1997-2007."

Here's an excerpt:

Last December, the Getty Center turned 10, which caused so small amount of reflection not only in the art community but in the architectural community as well. An article on the front page of the LA Times by the resident architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, caught my attention. As I read his article I had this impression that I was listening to a conversation I am frequently a part of – that of the relevance of the church as an institution in our communities.

Hawthorne opens his December 2007 article, entitled, “Getty at 10: Still aloof, yet totally L.A.”* like this:

During much of the 1990s, as the Getty Center was rising on its Brentwood hilltop, a couple of stubborn questions dogged the hugely ambitious project: Would Richard Meier’s design ever have anything meaningful to do with, or say about, the city over which it loomed? Or would it exist as an expensive import, a vast collection of smooth enamel and rough travertine conjured up by a New York architect who looked west for commissions but east, to Europe and its Modernist past, for inspiration?

Questions worth asking, to be sure. Questions church leaders would do well to ask as they are “building” their churches. I hear a lot of talk in my denomination and others about building a great, relevant, healthy, significant churches. But often it seems like we do nothing more than build “expensive imports” inspired by our “Modernist past” that have little do with the cities in which they exist.

Read the rest here.

Affordable Housing Victory in Los Angeles

Today I had the privilege of participating in something truly historic in our city. The Los Angeles City Council today enacted two ordinances aimed at curtailing gentrification in the city. These are complicated issues, but I feel that my role is to stand with the poor and the disenfranchised whenever I get the chance.

The main issue before City Council today was an ordinance that essentially protects "residential hotels" from being demolished or converted into luxury condos or other market rate housing. The folks at LA CAN (Los Angeles Community Action Network) have been leading the charge on this issue for something like 6 years. I spoke for a grand total of 1 minute before the City Council members who were mostly chatting with either other and their staff. Nevertheless, good organizing finally won the day and we have successfully protected over 18,700 affordable units from being lost forever.

Residential hotels in the City of Los Angeles are basically "housing of last resort." If these units are converted to market rate housing the people who currently live there will be homeless. They have nowhere else to go. By preserving these units we essentially prevent thousands of people from becoming homeless and insist that the working poor have a place in our city.

Read the Los Angeles Times report of this ordinance and the other ordinance referred to as an anti-mansionization ordinance. I'll let you figure out what that means.

Hating (and loving) The Grove

LA Observed blog has this short piece about The Grove, quoted from the NY Times, that I just had to link to because it really captured something I have thought a lot about.

The first time you go to the Grove, the immensely successful and completely fabricated commercial center in Los Angeles, you will try to hate it. But then you will watch the old-fashioned trolley passing by, or the dancing fountain as it splurts jovially to the cadence of a Sinatra song, and you will drop your snobby urban integrity and walk around consuming things in a mouth-breathing stupor just like everyone else.... [more]

My wife loves The Grove - I try to avoid it at all costs. I do like the Farmer's Market part. But I have to admit, when I'm there, the nostalgia kinda gets to me. The funny thing is that for me and most everyone in my generation, it's an imagined nostalgia. I've never lived in a quaint town like that with a trolly car and cobbled streets. This is somehow part of our national imagination about "the good life" and, as the New York Times write correctly points out, it is part and parcel of "our brand-saturated American lives."

Rick Caruso's Glendale version of The Grove, called Americana at Brand, is slated to open this summer.

LA Times columnist Steve Lopez writes about his tour of Americana here. [Note: I posted list sentence and link to Steve Lopez BEFORE I read his article. Just so you know.]

Really involving the church in the community

For two years the Hollywood Seventh-day Adventist Church has been working alongside an amazing community organization called LA Voice. LA Voice is one local affiliate of the PICO National Network.

PICO is a national network of faith-based community organizations working to create innovative solutions to problems facing urban, suburban and rural communities.
With more than 1,000 member institutions representing one million families in 150 cities and 17 states, PICO is one of the largest community-based efforts in the United States. Together we are lifting up a new vision for America that unites people across region, race, class, and religion
From The PICO Network about page.

Our affiliate works very hard on the issues that affect our members. In Hollywood we are particularly focused on the issues of homelessness and affordable housing but around the city our work includes youth violence, citizenship, public safety, health care and education. Our organization is comprised of 25 members congregations across the city. And we are growing. Recent additions to our organizing work includes the largest synagogue in the Western US - Stephen S. Wise Temple.

The video above was created by our church media team to help explain to our own members what LA Voice is and how this work is the work of the gospel in our community. LA Voice is now using this video to help explain their work to other congregations, foundations, and others in the community.

We have been very blessed, as a congregation, to participate in God's work in our community. I would encourage any Adventist congregation to get involved in this vital work by visiting the PICO website and see if there is an affiliate in your town or city.

Cross posted at the Spectrum Blog.

UPDATE: Mireya Pena, the Hollywood Church's leader of our community organizing work, has written a really good post about her perspective on this work. You can read it at our church's community blog - We Are Hollywood.

A sad day

Today, Livable Places announced they are closing their doors.

It is with great sadness that we inform you that Livable Places is closing. Seven years ago, our board of directors set ambitious goals for a new nonprofit organization to advocate for land use policy reform, and to develop affordable housing that demonstrated the feasibility of smart growth.  Since then, Livable Places has worked on multiple policy issues and initiated two developments offering 160 homes and leveraging $60 million as we strived to build for-sale housing affordable to working people with minimal subsidy.

Read the rest at their website.

We got to know the good people at Livable Places as we began working for solutions to the housing crisis in Hollywood and around LA. Beth Steckler is a great advocate for affordable housing and once came to the Hollywood Church to give their presentation about livable communities.

Thanks, Livable Places, for all your good work. It's a shame to see events unfolding like this.

2008 Songkran Festival in Hollywood this Sunday

This Sunday, April 13, is the 5th Annual Songkran Thai New Year Festival. The festivities - which include lots of amazing Thai food (of course), cultural music and dancing - start at 8:00 am with a 5K run/walk and last until approximately 7:00 pm. The stretch of Hollywood Boulevard from Western to Normandie is literally transformed into a Thai city street.

An additional feature this year is the First Los Angeles International Curry Festival. This, from the Thai CDC website:

The Thai New Year's Day Songkran Festival in Los Angeles is the largest and the most popular Thai celebration outside of Thailand.  Every year this festival will attract more than 30,000 people (and the number is still increasing!) from around the world to experience the colorful Thai traditions and also the tasty and authentic Thai food.  The participants are always amazed by the beautiful parade, the world largest Pad Thai noodle demonstration, Thai classical dances, music, and more!

The Economist on Los Angeles

The most recent issue of The Economist has a short article entitled "Tackling the Hydra" about Los Angeles and urban design. It highlights the debate that is all too familiar to those of us in the coalition for affordable housing and sensible transportation design that takes more cars off the streets and puts more eyes and feet on the sidewalks.

Los Angeles has long epitomised car-oriented sprawl. As early as 1946 the historian Carey McWilliams judged it “a collection of suburbs in search of a city”. So rare are neighbourhoods where basic needs can be met without hopping into a car or bus that estate agents tout the few where they can as “walkable”. Urban planners elsewhere routinely invoke the city as an example of what to avoid.

Yeah, we know.... Do you have to rub it in?

News footage from Housing LA press conference

And here is a story that ran on the cover the Business section of yesterday's LA Times (Sunday, March 9). Deanna is a member of LA Voice. Another pastor in Hollywood and I wrote an Op-Ed piece that included Deanna's story, but alas, it didn't get printed. I'm really glad Deanna's story could be tole. But honestly, David Lazarus "Good luck with that?" Is that the best we can do - luck?

The print edition had a nice picture of Deanna.

Housing LA Press Conference

A couple of days ago (Wed, March 5, to be exact), I had the great privilege, as a clergy leader with LA Voice, of being the moderator for a press conference put on by Housing LA. Housing LA is a a coalition of community leaders, affordable housing developers, religious leaders, labor leaders and business leaders who have come together to move forward several policy priorities with regard to the housing crisis in Los Angeles. To my left in the photo above is City Controller Laura Chick.

I opened the press conference, introduced the various speakers, and then closed the press conference with a call to action. As you can see, there were hundreds of people in attendance.

After the press conference people divided into groups and went inside City Hall to make visits to the various Council Offices. Lennox and I went to the Mayor's office where we had a meeting with the Deputy Mayor for Housing, Helmi Hisserich and Eric Garcetti's office, where we met with his chief of staff, Ana Guerrero.

For more photos and information about the housing crisis in Los Angeles and the policy work that Housing LA, keep reading after the fold.

For a press release and more photos, click here.
For more photos on LA Voice's website, click here.

Meeting with the Mayor

On Monday afternoon I met the Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa in his office. It was an interesting meeting, full of anticipation and a little comedy. I was part of a 10-person delegation from LA Voice. The meeting was set up through Helmi Hiserich, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development, with whom we have a good relationship from her days at the Hollywood office of the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). I was one of three clergy in the group of ten. My friend, fellow Hollywood Adventist Church member and church board member, Mireya Pena, chaired the meeting and did a remarkable job. I was so impressed!

Our subject was affordable housing, which we have been working on for over a year, in different ways. The Mayor has a signficant speech coming up on October 17 in which he is presenting his strategy for addressing Los Angeles' housing crisis. So, our visit was time to follow up our 1,000+ person strong Town Hall and to preceed the Mayor's Housing Summit speech. I'll spare everyone the policy details (if you're interested I'm happy to tell you about it), but the meeting itself was interesting.

At first we were escorted to a small-ish conference room in the Mayor's wing of City Hall. Then, a few minutes later, the Mayor's policy advisor on housing came in to tell us there was a change. We would be meeting in the Mayor's office. We had introductions all around and Mireya began the meeting by explaining quickly who we were and that she would be facilitating the meeting. Well, that didn't go over too well with the Mayor, until he realized that he had confused us with another community organizing group in Los Angeles. After that confusion was clarified we had a very friendly and frank conversation in which he seemed to confide in us some of his challenges in getting his housing policy through City Council. All in all it was a very positive meeting in which Mayor Villaraigosa vowed to work with us to move important policy through City Council, such as permanent funding source for the HOusing Trust Fund, which will fund the production of new affordable housing units, as well as demanding that the Planning Department enforce an existing law to drastically reduce condo conversions and demolitions, which are destorying the cities existing affordable housing stock.

Oh wait, I said I wouldn't get into policy. Sorry about that. On Thursday, several from our church will go to a "Housing Forum" meeting in Hollywood in which the Mayor's staff will be listening to the communities concerns about the housing crisis. Then, on October 17, we'll see what the Mayor says about this plan.

I've met a few powerful people in my life: the Mayor of Philadelphia, several members of the US Congress and the State Legislature, but none compare to this meeting. Mayor Villaraigosa is definitely a powerful person and it was a significant moment for me to sit in a room with him and have such a frank, heart-to-heart conversation.