Have you seen Rehousing.LA ads in your feed? Funded by the Hilton Foundation and developed with our friends at voxpop, the campaign showcases the people and policies making a difference in L.A.’s homelessness response.

Every Monday morning, our team gathers around our screens to analyze the past week's headlines. Scowling over our monitors, coffee mugs in hands, we swap hot takes, historic context, a joke or two (hit or miss), and inevitably, a few gems of wisdom we can take back to our clients.

This spring brought a slew of disheartening news. From cuts to housing and homelessness funding to reports of violent abuse in Los Angeles youth jails, the narratives that surround us can be overwhelming.

Still, spring reminded us that we can begin again, and the truth is we can do that anytime. We aim to keep that spirit alive all year long. Our work connects us with people (if you’re reading this, you are probably one of them!) who are dedicated to solving some of society's most difficult challenges. In early June, we helped two clients secure supportive Los Angeles Times masthead editorials on saving a program that finds jobs for justice-involved and formerly homeless people and asking the city to take the final steps toward the groundbreaking of 140 affordable homes in Venice.

Here on the edge of summer, we want to offer our gratitude for how we continue to learn and grow with all of you in ways that strengthen our collective movements and move our society toward greater empathy.

Thank you,

Mar Martinez and the O&M team: Marie Condron, Katrina Eroen, Joshua Joy Kamensky, Tony Weiss and Jen Wheeler 

“Don’t send homelessness funding off a cliff.”

Bring CA Home Coalition rally in front of the state capitol.

The pandemic brought a newfound urgency to investing in homelessness solutions, but too many of those investments were one-time allocations. Their expiration threatened to send homelessness solutions off the “funding cliff.” The Bring CA Home coalition organized a rally in front of the state capitol to call on legislators to provide ongoing funding for housing and homelessness. 

Liz Adams, regional director for PATH Santa Barbara, published an op-ed in USA Today. In it, she recounts her own experience living in her car during law school and urgently calls on state leaders to commit to permanently funding homelessness and housing services in California. 

Coverage highlights: SacBee, Daily News

Building understanding of homelessness challenges & solutions

Raquel Roman, executive director at Proyecto Pastoral at Guadalupe Homeless Project.

This year, we’re providing media relations and messaging support to a Housing and Homelessness Collaborative of more than 50 community leaders. Part of that work has included training on crafting media pitches, and we’re also producing a series of reporter briefings to spotlight critical issues underreported in mainstream media and programs that are making a difference but need to be scaled up. Our first briefing focused on the rise in Latino homelessness in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, featuring Dr. Melissa Chinchilla’s UCLA report on housing insecurity in Latino communities and comment from Proyecto Pastoral and ACCE.

The briefing opened up a conversation about the stigma associated with mental health and homelessness that we explored in more depth for our second reporter briefing, centered on the needs of unhoused people with severe mental illness. We spotlighted programs including the new countywide 988 emergency line for mental health crises, L.A.’s street psychiatry teams, Sycamores’ program pairing transition counselors with youth exiting foster care to help them stay housed, and policy solutions to scale up board and care facilities— a critically needed part of our housing supply.  

Coverage Highlights: La Opinion, LAist

Preserving housing for families

In February, we had the honor of supporting the housing advocacy group Better Neighbors LA in passing sensible regulations for short-term vacation rentals in LA County. On Feb. 13, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to advance the Short-Term Rentals Regulations Ordinance, preserving long-term housing for families and making neighborhoods more peaceful and safe. (A follow-up vote in March granted preliminary approval.)

Coverage highlights: LAist, SCNG, KCRW, Westside Voice

Real Talk, Real Change: Liberty Hill’s Podcast

Ocean & Mountain teamed up with Liberty Hill's communications team to develop Season 3 of Conversations From the Frontlines: Real Talk, Real Change. Liberty Hill’s President and CEO Shane Murphy Goldsmith hosts the podcasts, which bring leaders from throughout Los Angeles together to discuss the struggles and joys of progressive change. This season focuses on community organizing and electoral politics, with episodes already available featuring Peter Dreier and Mike Bonin illuminating the right-wing agenda in L.A. as well as a preseason episode on the launch of the Liberation Fund to End Girls Incarceration. Subscribe and listen here.

Scenes from spring

Jeovana Ramirez of SAJE teaches a crowd of economic justice advocates the Zapateada at SAJE’s LA For Everybody celebration, honoring leaders building community power for economic justice. 

The O&M team and our friends and partners spent an afternoon on the iconic field of the Rose Bowl for the 7th Annual Masters of Taste Festival, a showcase of treats from top LA area chefs and mixologists that benefits Union Station Homeless Services in Pasadena.

O&M helped script and produce LAANE’s annual Women For a New Los Angeles Luncheon, honoring LA County Fed leader Yvonne Wheeler and Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. LAANE’s new Executive Director Victor Sanchez celebrated the women leading LA’s progressive movements as well as the women in his own life on Dia de la Madre.  

KIWA celebrated 32 years of “Yonde” (Korean for solidarity) at its first-ever Yonde Gala, co-hosted by director Oliver Stone. O&M helped produce the event honoring labor lawyers Bush Gottlieb, SEIU 99 president Max Arias, and filmmaker Julie Ha.

Liberty Hill followed up its spectacular springtime Upton Sinclair Dinner with the Liberation Fund Prom, celebrating resilience, persistence and advancing the end of the incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth in L.A. County

O&M’s Josh Kamensky and Katrina Eroen at “The Edge of Summer.” O&M helped script and produce this 20th anniversary celebration of Clockshop, an arts organization operating at the intersection of working class communities, public space, art and non-capitalist time.