COMPREHENSIVE HOMELESS STRATEGY

My principal role as a FUSE Fellow at the Office of the CAO was lead author and designer of the Comprehensive Homeless Strategy (CHS) adopted unanimously by City Council and the Mayor on February 9, 2016. This report sets short, medium and long term implementation strategies for the City of Los Angeles to address and prevent homelessness. The report contains 64 strategies, is organized into ten parts and was written under an aggressive timeline. I started my fellowship on October 5, 2015 and by January 7, 2016, three months later, the first major draft was released on the same day in collaboration with the County of Los Angeles' Homeless Initiative. I wrote over half the CHS, determined the structure, layout, graphic design, fonts and color scheme and sourced photos (pro bono) of homeless Angelenos from world-renowned photographer Martin Schoeller.

Samples from the Executive Summary

The image above is a sample from the Executive Summary of the report. While composing the CHS, I created a unifying theme of font, color, headers and footers and ensured all the graphic representations of data and information (image on the right, which I also created), matched this scheme. After the report was adopted, I ensured bound copies were professionally produced noting industry standards like bleeding edges. I saw the CHS as an opportunity for the City of Los Angeles to raise the profile of issue too often lost to numbers. Portraiture of actual homeless Angelenos, used to mark the covers of each major section of the report, connected an issue of numbers (thousands of homeless Angelenos) back to a personal reality.

Below please find a link to the Executive Summary. This summary is my most unfiltered writing of the report and was personally reviewed by both CAO Miguel Santana, and CLA Director Sharon Tso prior to publishing. Miguel later surprised me by specifically recognizing my work in the Acknowledgements toward the end of this section.

Press Coverage of the Report

In addition to coverage by the Los Angeles Times, the Comprehensive Homeless Strategy received national press coverage in The New York Times, Washington Post and National Geographic. 

Press included recognition of the report and its direct, yet fair language, as well as commentary on the use of impactful photography.

Printed Copies of the Report

In order to ensure momentum in implementing the report, printed copies were distributed to each of the City's departments and agencies, City Council, The Mayor, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The CHS sets strategy but also provides narrative and reference for homeless-related issues in the region.