Homeboy Industries has launched a fundraising campaign aimed at raising $100 million for a major expansion of its downtown facilities.
The gang rehabilitation center has big plans to upgrade its campus near the central men’s prison downtown to accommodate more people and teach more skills.
Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, and real estate developer Frank McCourt announced a campaign Friday to fund a complex that would include temporary housing for people leaving prison and provide services such as health care, drug treatment, job training and career development.
McCourt, founder of McCourt Partners and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, pledged the first $10 million to launch the campaign. Homeboy hopes to raise the rest over the next five years from private donors, as well as corporate and philanthropic organizations.
Homeboy was founded 37 years ago to help thousands of formerly incarcerated people and gang-involved youth learn new skills and avoid returning to jail or prison.
Homeboy is already “the largest gang intervention reentry program on the planet,” Boyle said, with 500 trainees at a time working with 300 staff members, most of whom have completed the rehab program themselves.
Well-known businesses employing interns include Homeboy Bakery and Homegirl Cafe in Chinatown.
A successful expansion could serve as a national example of how to break the cycle of young ex-offenders returning to prison instead of becoming productive citizens because they see no other way forward, Boyle said.
“We are a source of hope for people to whom hope is foreign,” he said.
Renderings of housing planned to serve Homeboy Industries in downtown Los Angeles.
(KFA)
Temporary housing would help them find their place, he said, because 70 percent of people who enter the program are effectively homeless, sleeping in their cars or couch surfing.
Housing units of 200 apartments would make up the first phase, and would be built on a parcel of land formerly used to store damaged police cruisers, Boyle said.
This is followed by 35,000 square feet of space dedicated to essential services for trainees, including mental health care, substance use disorder treatment, job training and career development.
The expansion designed by Culver City architectural firm KFA would increase Homeboy Industries’ ability to provide education, legal aid, health care and rehabilitation services, Boyle said. Other services include tattoo removal.
Father Greg Boyle, with glasses and a white beard, walks with Homeboy Industries program enrollees to City Hall for a ceremony marking Father Greg Boyle Day in Los Angeles on May 17, 2024. A vacant lot, behind the fence, is planned to be part of Homeboy Industries’ expansion along Alameda Street in Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
As part of the expanded Homeboy campus known as the Fr. Gregory Boyle Center for Radical Kinship, the Homeboy Art Academy would expand into a new 5,000 square foot space, where hundreds of people could learn about creative expression through multiple art forms.
The arts program is one of 14 social enterprises run by Homeboy, Boyle said, which include catering, dog grooming and electronics recycling services.
During an 18-month training program, interns work across the 14 social enterprises, learning new skills, Boyle said, “and when their 18 months are up, we find jobs outside of Homeboy.”
The Homeboy development aims to expand an array of philanthropic services in the neighborhood, including temporary housing for the homeless provided by the Weingart Center and an affordable housing and medical services complex planned by the California Endowment.
McCourt said his $10 million commitment was intended to “prime the pump” to get the expansion going and that his company would provide real estate expertise to help navigate design, construction and other aspects of real estate development.
McCourt attended Jesuit schools, including Georgetown University, and said he was moved by the approach taken by Boyle, a Jesuit priest, to addressing what McCourt sees as a “dehumanization” of people who have experienced incarceration, gang life and other challenges.
“We need to get back to treating people as people with dignity, respect and giving them opportunities,” he said. “Economic development helps because it creates jobs and vitality, but it’s all about taking care of people. »
