The Midnight Mission is a human services organization in downtown Los Angeles' Skid Row. [1] [2] It was founded in 1914. [3] A secular non-profit, [4] [5] the organization provides food, drug and alcohol recovery services, "safe sleep" programs, educational training, a mobile kitchen, and family housing with an emphasis on developing self-sufficiency.
The term "midnight mission" was common in the 19th and early 20th centuries to designate efforts by domestic missionaries in the United States against so-called "white slavery", a deprecated term for prostitution. [6] [7]
The Midnight Mission was founded by businessman and lay minister Tom Liddecoat in 1914. Meals were served at midnight, after church services.
As of 1920, the mission held nightly religious services. [8] The mission became an incorporated non-profit in 1922.
During the Great Depression, the Midnight Mission was a major residence in Los Angeles for people who lacked permanent housing. [9]
During World War II, the mission began assisting with job placement and established job training programs.
In 1963, the Midnight Mission conducted a survey of people living in Skid Row, and concluded that alcoholism was a significant contributor to their life situation. In 1974, they named recovered alcoholic and popular A.A. speaker Clancy Imislund as managing director, [10] a role he undertook for many decades. [11]
In 2004, a campaign called Building a Home for Hope raised funds for an expanded facility. David Bentley was hired as the owner's project manager by the Board and oversaw the design by Gin Wong Associates and the construction by Snyder Langston until the new facility on San Pedro route Street opened in April 2005. Permitting and construction was difficult due to the site being within an active archeological zone. San Pedro Street was the original access route from downtown Los Angeles to the port in San Pedro in the 1800s.
In 2005, the shelter served three meals to approximately 170 residents and 500 guests each day. The shelter continues to emphasize their role as a "bridge to self-sufficiency", making this the first bullet point in their mission statement. The Mission is not associated with any religious group.
A skid row, also called skid road, is an impoverished area, typically urban, in English-speaking North America whose inhabitants are mostly poor people "on the skids". This specifically refers to people who are poor or homeless, considered disreputable, downtrodden or forgotten by society. A skid row may be anything from an impoverished urban district to a red-light district to a gathering area for people experiencing homelessness or drug addiction. In general, skid row areas are inhabited or frequented by impoverished individuals and also people who are addicted to drugs. Urban areas considered skid rows are marked by high vagrancy, dilapidated buildings, and drug dens, as well as other features of urban blight. Used figuratively, the phrase may indicate the state of a poor person's life.
San Pedro is a neighborhood located within the South Bay and Harbor region of the City of Los Angeles, California, United States. Formerly a separate city, it consolidated with Los Angeles in 1909. The Port of Los Angeles, a major international seaport, is partially located within San Pedro. The district has grown from being dominated by the fishing industry, to a working-class community within the city of Los Angeles, to an increasingly dense and diverse community.
The Los Angeles Fashion District, previously known as the Garment District, is a business improvement district (BID) in, and often cited as a sub-neighborhood of, Downtown Los Angeles. The neighborhood caters to wholesale selling and has more than 4,000 overwhelmingly independently owned and operated retail and wholesale businesses selling apparel, footwear, accessories, and fabrics.
Gilbert William Lindsay was an American politician who worked his way up from Los Angeles City Hall janitor to become the city's first black City Council member and one of its most powerful elected officials. He helped fashion downtown Los Angeles into a major metropolitan center but was accused of turning his back on the people in his district who elected him to 27 years on the city's governing body from 1963 to 1990.
Skid Row is a neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles. The area is officially known as Central City East.
The Cathedral Shelter of Chicago was founded in 1915. It began as a storefront mission of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, attached to the former Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul, providing food and clothing to the poor and homeless. In 1920, they began offering substance abuse treatment. Under the leadership of Father David Gibson, an Episcopal priest, the shelter was of great importance during the Great Depression.
San Pedro Street is a major north–south thoroughfare in Los Angeles, California, running Little Tokyo near Downtown Los Angeles to join Main Street, and East and West 46th Streets in a five-way intersection in East Gardena.
A seamen's haven is a social welfare organization for sailors, often operated by Christian churches or missionaries. Havens were most prominent in North American port cities in the 19th and 20th centuries. They were widely used during the Great Depression and declined in popularity afterward. Some provide comprehensive social services such as food and shelter, while others are mainly social organizations.
The Upland–San Bernardino Line was an interurban line operated by the Pacific Electric Railway between Downtown Los Angeles and San Bernardino, California. This line also had shorter service that terminated before the end of the line at Baldwin Park, Covina, and San Dimas. Though service along this line in its entirety was discontinued in November 1941, it stands as the fourth-longest rapid transit line in American history, after the Sacramento Northern Railway's Chico and Colusa services, and the Pacific Electric's own Riverside–Rialto Line.
Union Gospel Mission is a charitable organization providing meals, education, shelter, safe and affordable housing, drug and alcohol recovery programs, and support services to those struggling with homelessness and addiction in Canada, with locations in the Metro Vancouver area and the city of Mission.
The Bowery Mission is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides hot meals, overnight shelter, and faith-based residential programs for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness. Its mission statement reads: "The Bowery Mission meets essential needs and creates transformative community... so that together we overcome homelessness and poverty, and flourish through the power and love of Jesus Christ."
The Weingart Center for the Homeless is a comprehensive human services center for homeless men and women living in Skid Row, Los Angeles. It provides on-site short and long-term services including transitional residential housing, medical and mental health, permanent supportive housing, substance abuse recovery, education, workforce development, long term case management. The Weingart Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
The Cecil Hotel is an affordable housing complex in Downtown Los Angeles. It opened on December 20, 1924, as a luxury hotel, but declined during the Great Depression and subsequent decades. In 2011, the hotel was renamed the Stay On Main. The 14-floor hotel has 700 guest rooms and a checkered history, with many suicides and accidental or unnatural deaths occurring there. Renovations started in 2017 were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in the hotel's temporary closure. On December 13, 2021, the Cecil Hotel was reinaugurated as an affordable housing complex.
Charleszetta Waddles, also known as Mother Waddles, was an African-American activist, Pentecostal church minister, and founder of Mother Waddles Perpetual Mission, an independent church in Detroit that provides support, such as food, clothing and other basic services to Detroit's poor. She is listed in the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame for her contributions to Social Work and Mission Work in the Detroit area.
The Star Apartments are a purpose-built residential housing complex on Los Angeles' Skid Row that caters to the needs of the long-term homeless. Opened in October 2014, the Star Apartments include 102 units averaging 350 square feet, alongside amenities such as on-site medical services, counseling, fitness and art facilities and a community garden. The complex was developed by the Skid Row Housing Trust, and designed by Los Angeles–based firm Michael Maltzan Architecture. It received LEED Platinum status in August 2015. The building also houses the Los Angeles County Department for Health Services' Housing for Health division.
Mollie Ellen Lowery was an American advocate for homeless and mentally ill people in Los Angeles. In 1984, she co-founded the non-profit housing support center, LAMP, and in 2006 she founded an advocacy group, Housing Works.
Tanya Tull is a leading expert in family homelessness in America. In 1980 she founded Para Los Ninos, in reaction to an article she read in the Los Angeles Times concerning children living in Skid Row hotels. Para Los Ninos began as a childcare center that blossomed into a full range family service center utilizing renovated warehouses in Skid Row, Los Angeles. Today Para Los Ninos also operates charter schools in Central Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Downtown Industrial District (LADID) is manufacturing and wholesale district of downtown Los Angeles, California, that was established as a property-based business improvement district (BID) in 1998 by the Central City East Association (CCEA). The district spans 46 blocks, covers 600 properties, and is the historic home of seafood, produce, flowers, and a variety of products daily shipped in and out of Los Angeles by air, rail, and sea. The LADID hosts the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, the second largest produce market in the United States.
The Skid Row Running Club is a running club based in the Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Since its founding, the club has had more than five hundred participants.
The Union Rescue Mission, commonly abbreviated as the URM, is a Christian homeless shelter in the Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It is the oldest in the city and the largest private homeless shelter in the United States. The organization behind the URM is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that was established in 1891.