Feeding Our Housing Insecure Angelenos

Housing insecure people are some of the most food insecure residents in our community, yet little research exists regarding the nexus of food insecurity and housing insecurity. This fact is understood through the stories of real people experiencing homelessness, and the advocates and practitioners that support them. Join us as we explore how and where unhoused people access good quality food, the conditions to access food, and how community organizations are using food as a lens of justice and community care.

See you there. Registration Required.

Our Intro Speakers:

Living off of $221 per year, on General Relief (GR) for five years while surviving on my EBT in a food and water desert such as Skid Row, for over a decade now, I’ve had to make a way out of no way. This includes how to regain my health while living with acute health conditions. I look forward to sharing my story and how it connects with so many, by at least a single thread. Today, I write, talk and advocate, Skid Row, from a woman’s perspective.

More speaker information coming soon!

Our Panelists:

is the Director of Homelessness at the LA City Controller’s Office. She is a UCLA alumna and co-founder of community organization Ground Game LA (GGLA). She is the former outreach director for GGLA and POWER where she supported unhoused individuals on their journey to find interim/permanent housing, achieve their personal/career goals, and build community. In her tenure as an advocate she organized with groups including the national campaign for a Homes Guarantee and the Services Not Sweeps coalition, released the People’s Housing Platform with members of congress, helped build power and amplify voices of the unhoused by working with groups including Echo Park Rise Up and UTACH (Unhoused Tenants Against Carceral Housing), and served as a researcher at UCLA for the After Echo Park Lake research collective.

is the Market Director of the Skid Row People's Market. Full bio coming soon!

(moderator) serves as Housing and Homelessness Director for Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez. Prior to this he was the Sr. Manager of Strategy and Systems Change at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles - and before that the Deputy Director with the Los Angeles Community Action Network, where he worked alongside low-income and homeless leaders in the Skid Row community to promote equity and racial justice through organizing, civic participation, and public policy.

He has over 20 years of experience working with public, philanthropic, service, and movement building partners to create permanent solutions to homelessness and poverty. He was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles and currently resides in the same home his family has lived in for over 75 years.

When he’s not working he enjoys unironically cheering for the LA Clippers and losing to his daughter at Mario Kart.

serves as the Co-director at Creating Justice LA/ Peace & Healing Center in Skid Row. Full bio coming soon!

(She/Her/Hers) serves as the inaugural Deputy Chief Equity Officer at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) where she provides strategic leadership and facilitates shared vision and collaborative partnerships among LAHSA staff, Los Angeles Continuum of Care, the City of Los Angeles and the County of Los Angeles. Saba’s work at LAHSA includes fostering: culturally specific and informed healing service delivery models; data driven equity goals, metrics and implementation; equity technical assistance and guidance for service providers, staff and the public at large. Prior to LAHSA, Saba served as inaugural Managing Director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute (HPRI), a collaborative of over one hundred researchers, policymakers, service providers and experts with lived experience of homelessness that accelerate equitable and culturally informed solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County by advancing knowledge and fostering transformational partnerships between research, policy and practice. Under Saba’s co- direction, HPRI more than doubled in size, growing collaboratively from a start-up to an established trusted racial equity centered institute locally and across the country. Saba helped deepen policy relationships, supported anti-racist research, practice and integrated community learning spaces.

is the host of We The Unhoused, a podcast that lifts the voices and struggles of the unhoused in LA and beyond. Host Theo Henderson is currently unhoused and resides in Los Angeles. He tackles the challenging issue of people experiencing homelessness.

Our Summarizing Facilitator:

is the Founder & Director of Polo's Pantry and Co-founder of Home-y Made Meals. Full bio coming soon!

Our Lunch Speaker:

is the CEO of Everytable, a social enterprise in Southern California dedicated to advancing food justice by offering fresh, scratch-cooked, and community-inspired meals that are accessible to all.

Growing up in LA, Sam was exposed to the city's stark inequalities while assisting his mother with homeless medical clinics in Skid Row. Years later, he recognized a critical issue: families in low-income neighborhoods were struggling to access healthy food. This led him to establish Groceryships, a nonprofit focused on addressing the intersection of poverty and obesity.

Sam launched Everytable, a business model designed to offer nutritious food in "food deserts" like South LA at prices competitive with fast food. The name Everytable reflects the company's mission to ensure everyone has access to healthy, affordable meals.

Special thank you to Cedars-Sinai for seed funding the inaugural 2024 series.

Host or Publisher Los Angeles Food Policy Council