New Women's Homeless Shelter Opens On Site Of Former Hollywood Library
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – A former Hollywood library has been repurposed into a women's homeless shelter which will open for use Tuesday.
The Gardner Street Women's Bridge Housing Center at 1403 North Gardner St. is located on the former site of the Will & Ariel Durant Branch Library.
The permanent facility, part of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's "A Bridge Home Initiative" to tackle L.A.'s homeless crisis, will be able to house up to 30 women.
It was first proposed by L.A. City Councilman David Ryu back in 2017. Construction began back in November. It was built with funding from Measure HHH, a $1.2 billion bond measure approved by voters back in 2016 for the construction of supportive affordable housing.
Garcetti and Ryu will be on hand to help open the shelter Tuesday morning.
The "Bridge Home" program, first introduced by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti in April 2018, involves putting up about two dozen temporary homeless shelters across the city to help combat the growing homeless crisis. The first in the series opened in downtown L.A. last September. The sixth shelter, St. Andrews Place, opened Monday in the Hyde Park area of South L.A. The shelters are designed to give people a safe place to stay until they can find permanent housing.
St. Andrews Place has enough beds to house 100 people. It contains a community room, a kitchen, a space for pets, along with services for mental health and substances abuse.
Last week, Los Angeles City Parks Commission unanimously approved placing a bridge housing shelter on the southern end of Griffith Park in Los Feliz that would also house up to 100 people.
Each of the shelters is scheduled to remain in place for a period of three years.
All this comes as the city council is considering putting new restrictions that would limit where the homeless can sleep overnight. A proposal would restrict people from sleeping within 500 feet of schools, parks, daycare centers, homeless shelters, bicycle paths, tunnels, or bridges on school routes.
In July, a law which prohibits homeless people from sleeping in their cars in L.A. residential areas was extended for another six months. And also last week, the council passed an ordinance which allows police to remove homeless people from high-risk fire-danger areas.
For more information on A Bridge Home, click here.