Supporting the Recovery of the Entire Region

It’s amazing that I started this work almost 20 years ago because I was displaced, lost my home, lost my business, and lost every possession that wasn’t in the carry-on bag I’d packed for a wedding that happened to be the same weekend as Hurricane Katrina. And I chose the winding, city hopping, border crossing, path that led me to that morning’s interview because I wanted to rebuild a place that I loved and remake it better than we had ever dared to imagine it could be.

I want the same thing now, for Los Angeles.

And my responsibility and obligation are to begin by focusing on our neighborhood. Not just our needs and aspirations that must remain at the forefront of our efforts, but how our resources, empathy, and expertise can be channeled to support the recovery of our entire region. Our colleagues leading Business Improvement Districts across DTLA, in Santa Monica, Long Beach and across our great city are centering themselves to do the same. Collectively we form a BID Brigade, with the ability to pool our resources and rally the international downtown community to help our neighbors through the recovery ahead.

As the fires in Los Angeles persisted, the Social District created a program to purchase meals from neighborhood restaurants and provide them to fire victims and first responders. This program not only supports restaurants in the Social District, who have experienced the cancellation of events at LA Live, closures because of impacts to employees, and fewer people downtown, but will also benefit those in our community most in need of immediate assistance. Over the weekend we partnered with 33 Taps, Starbucks, and Katsuya to distribute nearly 300 meals, and we will continue to deliver hundreds more from other restaurants while the needs persist.

The strength of our neighborhood has always been our residential community. Developers and property managers at Aven, Emerald, Wren, Eden, and others are adjusting lease terms and furnishing apartments to provide respite and housing relief to those who have lost homes, their own routines, and cherished amenities. I have no doubt that we will welcome them into our community and showcase why many of us are already proud to call it home.

As a community aspiring to be Los Angeles’ Social District, the task ahead of us is to continue to build community, and perhaps find a way to incorporate the social fabric – cultures and routines – of new neighbors into our own. Is there an Altadena recreational league that we can help finish its season at the Ketchum-Downtown YMCA or at Terisaki Budokan in Little Tokyo? Is there a group that met every morning at Caffe Luxxe in the Palisades that can find a new regular gathering spot at Cow Café or Ideology? It has been my lived experience that communities will become stronger by working together toward a common good in times like these. Let’s hope we remain optimistic early in this new year, and together we’ll build the place we dare to imagine we can become.