There is a place in Skid Row where quality medical, dental and mental health care is available to patients who are sick, poor, and all too often homeless.
It’s a place where there is ‘no wrong door’ to access non-judgmental care and health services that focus on body, mind, and overall well-being. A place where everyone is greeted warmly or called if an appointment is missed. A place where health care is as much about ending homelessness as it is about treating disease. That place is called Joshua House, and it’s been located on Winston Street since 1996.
Joshua House would never be called fancy. But, it is the medical home that 4,800 hurting people in downtown LA chose. They may live in shelters, in cars or in the doorway of an abandoned building. Many face the grueling struggle of managing chronic illnesses like diabetes, HIV, hypertension and depression, with supplies stored in a plastic bag that they must carry from door stop to door stop. They also may be looking for work, housing, or a way to survive the grips of poverty, addiction, pain and abuse.
Joshua House is a life-affirming stop on the journey to healing and restoration. For many, a visit to this clinic is a reprieve from the isolation of homelessness. It’s an anchor of hope for a better future and contact with a source of love and inspiration.
Running a clinic like this from an 8,200-square foot, three-story, 100-year-old former crack house with poor ventilation, no elevator or central air isn’t easy.
And that’s an understatement. There are nine medical exam rooms, four dental chairs, six social work offices and seven mental health rooms. That’s it to serve and treat close to 5,000 patients per year.
For more than 20 years, LACHC and Joshua House have strived to meet the needs of the most vulnerable people in Los Angeles despite the complications of a building with patchwork technology, overcrowded hallways, and an inadequate number of exam rooms.
BUT, all of this is about to change … radically.
The Open Hearts Open Doors Campaign is an opportunity to be a part of this transformation as we build the new Joshua House Health Center. The new health center will transform our Skid Row neighborhood by offering a new level of quality, beauty, dignity and hope. A place where those who are isolated and hurting can experience being fully integrated into a healing community.
Friends and neighbors can experience being part of that same healing community by contributing. Together we will build a New Joshua House with the health and complete well-being of every patient as a priority concern. The new center will have enough space to provide the kind of care that we all desire, regardless of ability to pay, age, race, education, status or faith. The Open Hearts Open Doors Campaign is the vehicle to raise the funds needed to build, equip and sustain a New Joshua House Clinic at 7th and Wall Streets in Skid Row.
It will be located at 317 E. 7th Street within a seven-story mixed- use building that also includes a permanent supportive housing project consisting of 55 units serving individuals experiencing homelessness, veterans and those with special needs. The residential project, called 649 Lofts, will be separately owned, operated and financed by Skid Row Housing Trust. The Clinic consists of the first three stories; with the residences located in the four stories above the clinic.
The clinic will cost $26,818,122. And the good news is we’ve already secured close to 90 percent of the funds. We just need your support to help us, and the patients we serve, cross that new threshold. Please contribute to the Open Hearts Open Doors Campaign today. A gift of any level makes you a part of the solution to end homelessness in Skid Row.