Catherine Gudis

This collaborative project by UCR and LA Poverty Dept with LA County Health Dept and grassroots activists enhances ethical digital access to first-person narratives and archival documents from the Skid Row History Museum & Archive related to healthcare and housing justice. It foregrounds the lived expertise of Skid Row residents who are unhoused, low-income, use drugs, & otherwise marginalized to demonstrate community origins of visionary approaches to harm reductions, “housing first,” and peer-care networks. The project provides a primary source foundation for integrated housing and health policy, directly combating narrative loss, structural stigma, and the defunding of crucial public health programs. It builds capacity for advocacy, research, skills sharing and new knowledg co-creation.

“Skid Row, By Design” is a multi-tiered collaborative project with Los Angeles Poverty Department’s Skid Row History Museum & Archive (SRHMA) aimed to illuminate the deep historical roots and community activism shaping the 50 blocks of downtown LA’s Skid Row. The project engages and enhances the SRHMA collection of oral histories and activists’ papers, with the goal of filling gaps in the documentary record. It also encompasses co-produced research with community members, curatorial conversations, and public dialogues in association with an upcoming exhibition and performance exploring contradictions between public policy and public compassion for homelessness. The collaboration culminates in the development of a book project entitled “Skid Row, By Design” that offers an accessible history of Skid Row, representing, in part, the museum’s collections (and the community wisdom in abundant evidence in the archive) and materials related to the LA Poverty Department’s work in Skid Row since 1985.