LA General Hospital. Image Courtesy of Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have decided to move forward with a plan to reuse L.A. General Hospital as affordable housing for high-need populations. The plan aims to provide homeless residents and low-income tenants with new living units inside the 1930s-era hospital. The board approved a motion to study the feasibility of reusing the structure and to craft a strategic plan that would bring the project to life. As the “birthplace of emergency medicine,” the Art Deco–style building includes 1.5-million-square-feet of space that could be used for the housing project.
In a press release, Supervisor Hilda L. Solis said that, “Today’s action to transform the abandoned General Hospital into a marquee facility will not only breathe new life into this historic building, but it will also help our most vulnerable residents regain control of their lives. By renovating the General Hospital to offer our most vulnerable individuals affordable housing, we will be able to address their unmet needs by offering them wrap-around services and other resources as they heal. Providing patients with a bed and a roof over their heads will help them regain their confidence and dignity.”
Originally opened in 1933, the 800-bed teaching hospital was designed by the Allied Architects’ Association of Los Angeles. The hospital is now surrounded by LA County and USC Medical Center facilities, with nonprofits focused on health and social services on the ground floor. The hospital is “notable for its relationship to the Chicano Movement of the 1970s and community organizing in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ’90s,” says the Los Angeles Conservancy. The motion asks the county’s chief executive officer to complete the feasibility study and report for the Board of Supervisors by fall 2019.
News via CurbedLA