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Statements by Jeff Gilbert, associate executive director, Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Housing Corporation[Interviewer’s note: SRO and LAPD were founded the same year, and have partnered in various configurations throughout their histories. The SRO/LAPD partnership is another great example of an ensemble perfectly aligning with the mission of a community service organization, and vice versa. – F.L.] Description of partner We develop and manage affordable housing, we manage parks and open space, we provide public-safety officers, we provide social services and case management, nutrition, transportation. Half our residents are on general relief, half are on some kind of SSI (Supplemental Security Income) or SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) retirement, one third are seniors, one third are seriously disabled, either by substance abuse and addiction, mental-health disorders or HIV/AIDS. It costs $190 a month for people on general relief for a room. This leaves them with about $1 a day. Our operating costs are closer to $300 month per unit, so the city and other agencies make up the difference. We manage 1,450 units, and all are single occupancy. Every unit is set up with a private sink, most have baths, all have beds, not cots, and writing tables, dressers and bed-stands. These are residences, this is not a flophouse. We like it when people put pictures on the walls. It means they’re settling down for a while. Sometimes it’s just a thumbtack and a postcard. The act of handing keys to somebody can be transformative. It says, "You're home, you're in a community." It’s shared baths, tight quarters, and these adults have to learn to get along with one another. That's a remarkable thing. If a guy doesn't flush the toilet, the community will tell him about it. The management doesn't have to do it, the residents will do it. That's an indicator of normative behavior, considering some of these people were formerly defecating in public. Relationship to the arts Art always has figured into it in a number of ways. The buildings themselves are turn-of-the-century. From Day One there was a serious commitment to preserve the historic quality of the buildings, because we don’t' want people to forget that there has been a Skid Row for a long time, and that it's here now, and that it's part of the public consciousness. We had to earthquake-retrofit some of the buildings, and it cost extra to preserve the face of the building, but we did it to preserve that history. It helps to define place and, in that, it helps to establish an identity, which takes the place out of Skid Row being the scourge of the city and tells them we value the neighborhood, we value you. This is also in the greening of the neighborhood that we do. LAPD was founded at the same time as SRO. SRO manages pocket parks, which LAPD has used as venues. SRO’s executive director and founder had a strong commitment to the arts. One program manger/artist, Lillian, asked if she could run an artist's workshop – not arts and crafts, but a real workshop with a real artist – and to this day it meets weekly. So, SRO has an artist-in-residence, and they have generated a circle of local artists. A lot of our residents are artists, not all of them were homeless, some prefer to live with us as a lifestyle thing. Several of the actors in the show have been residents; Bob Chambers lived in SRO hotels over the years, over the last several months he and SRO have pulled together the "Skid Row Consortium" of artists, to put artists together with arts professionals. This show ("Agents and Assets") dress-rehearsed in the lobbies of the SRO hotels. People would come in and there were moments when people thought this was a real public hearing, they would be berating the speakers. Jeff had to stop a security guard from throwing someone out. This show's impact on the partner We all felt the power of the performance. You know that a lot of the performers were addicts themselves, but here they are treating this issue in an aesthetic perspective. You're out of the addiction for a moment and into public policy and art. It gets people to stop and take account of what their addiction means within the sweep of world history. It's a wonderful thing to do. It shows the interconnectedness of our often forgotten community with events elsewhere. It also shows the limits of power – what we can and can't do. If you're in your room in Skid Row, and now you have a belief that you are there because of a CIA plot, that's not useful, but if it gives you a reason to care, you might be reading stories about the CIA in the LA Times and suddenly you care about it. We once hosted a candidates forum during one of the presidential elections. The candidates were there, they assumed everyone was a Democrat, and the director of SRO was approached by an old fellow who began to rail on the Democratic bent. This is a thinking population, they're poor they're beaten down , but these are people whose vote counts the same as yours and mine at the end of the day. The partner's mission is realized by the project We’re conscious of helping people to grow to be more active participants in their environment, which is the very definition of being a good citizen, these are the skills of citizenship. People who don't work in the downtown area think everything is based on the handout, which is contrary to the definition of good citizenship. What we are in the business of doing is establishing normative relations on Skid Row, between the residents, and between the residents and the community, and the communities around us, through a local set of norms and expectations, and nonhotel residents. It's about making people stakeholders in their turf. There are standards of behavior, even in Skid Row. LAPD is not about product. Most of the stuff is very open and freewheeling, but this [current production] was scripted. John [Malpede] is open to the wonder of serendipity: In this community it seems anarchical all the time, so it's all serendipity. John is good at making that part of the process and the event. He creates culture and community and identity. In order to be involved in culture you need leisure: people living hand to mouth don't normally have the time energy or the inclination to culture, but then time, energy and inclination are the very things that you need to create identity. SRO has hired LAPD to create pieces. But on this show we just made rehearsal space available, only, though. Ferdinand Lewis is a founding member of The Ghost Road Company, an educator, writer and theater artist. He is currently at work on two books: "Ensemble Theater: An Anthology" and "Ensemble Theater: Traditions, Approaches, Strategies." He lives in Los Angeles. |
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