In this time of so much chaos in the world, we are especially grateful for our community in Los Angeles—for each of you, our partners, collaborators, and extended family—and our shared values that guide our work. 

Our team gathered this month in Chinatown at the beautiful offices of our friends at Radar Architecture to reflect on the year, set intentions for 2024 and define the values that guide Ocean & Mountain. (We also signed on to make the Radar space our new hub for regular in-person meetings.Let's meet up there!) We landed on Care, Social Justice and Liberation, Creativity and Curiosity, Flourishing and Collaboration. 

In that spirit, we are grateful to see our clients flourishing and advancing liberation—especially our partners who are bringing so much of Los Angeles home. Wishing you very happy holidays, and here's to our continued collaboration to build a more just and free community in the next year. 

Thank you,

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

P.S. Please sign up and join us Jan. 23-25 as volunteers for the 2024 Greater LA Homeless Count (or join Marie in Pasadena!)

New affordable homes by Abode Communities

In September, nonprofit developer Abode Communities broke ground with Manchester Urban Homes on 122 affordable homes in South Los Angeles, on land that was once held under a restrictive racist covenant, dating from the 1950s, that prohibited people of color from living there.

In December, Abode joined Los Angeles City Councilmember Tim McOsker in Harbor City for the installation of new modular units of supportive housing at Western Landing. 

Coverage Highlights: Manchester Urban Homes in LAist, LA Sentinel, Western Landing in Urbanize LA, Daily Breeze

The promise of LACAHSA to protect, preserve and build

We helped shine a light on LA’s new ‘Metro for housing,' the Los Angeles Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA). The new board of directors has been meeting monthly to get the agency up and running, with its first year funded by Hilton Foundation and a new grant from SCAG for a strategic plan. In 2024 the board will hire an interim CEO and begin its work preserving and building affordable housing and protecting renters.

Coverage highlights: LACAHSA in the Daily Breeze; Alissa Walker interviews LACAHSA Board Chair Holly Mitchell for LA Forward

Understanding media narratives on housing, homelessness and justice

As part of our work supporting a community coalition in partnership with United Way of Greater Los Angeles, our team developed a new approach to understanding and analyzing media narratives about housing and homelessness, similar to work we’ve undertaken around community safety and justice with a roundtable of organizations convened through Liberty Hill. 

View the work: Narrative analysis on housing and homelessness, justice reform

Master leasing is bringing people home faster

Across LA County’s rehousing system, the new approach of master leasing is gathering steam and bringing people home faster. In partnership with the County, LAHSA has begun to co-sign on whole buildings and individual apartments for people experiencing homelessness and give them the tools to stay housed through case management and connection to resources. 

Coverage highlight: Master leasing in the Los Angeles Times

Former student takes action against Flintridge Prep over sexual abuse and grooming

This fall, we had the honor of helping civil rights law firm Hadsell Stormer Renick Dai LLP seek justice for 'Jane Doe,' a former student at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada-Flintridge, who was groomed and sexually abused by her Latin teacher starting when she was 15 and he was 31. The school knew about the abuse and harassment of Jane Doe and failed to act until it was far too late. 

Coverage highlights:  ABC7, KNX News, Whittier Daily News

Los Angeles’ philanthropic sector fosters organizing for change

We were especially happy to see the publication of a pair of long-awaited LA Times pieces by Corie Brown on Los Angeles’s singular philanthropic sector. The first piece celebrates LA philanthropy’s turn towards loosening the reins on funding in order to allow multiple organizing efforts to bloom, supporting not just charity but power-building and structural change. It was especially sweet to see credit given to the Liberty Hill Foundation, which we’ve supported as consultants for years and as donor-activists for years before that, for leading the way there. As the Times quotes CEO Shane Goldsmith, “People who are most impacted by problems know best how to fix them.”

The second piece asks whether homelessness can ever become “rare, brief and nonrecurring” and goes deep on that question with the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Hilton Foundation. We have been proud to work with both organizations over the years.

Making waves on the op-ed pages

The Hill: ‘How 3 Black women took on breast cancer in our failed health care system’

Dr. Elaine Batchlor (above left) and Dr. Medell Briggs-Malonson (above right) had to intervene to help their hairstylist, Sharone, access quality care after she found a lump on her breast that turned out to be breast cancer. Their opinion piece for The Hill exposes the inequality in our flawed healthcare system and what needs to change to ensure equitable access to quality healthcare for people of color.

CalMatters: ‘California makes it needlessly difficult for people to regain housing once homeless’

30th City of Justice Awards Dinner honors civil rights trailblazers

For the third year in a row, O&M helped the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy produce its City of Justice Awards Dinner. The event honored Billie Jean King, Stella T. Maloyan, the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Senator Vincent Hughes, and Gary Stewart's legacy. LAANE raised a total of $1.25 million in 2023, which will support organizing and research that advances labor rights and environmental action.

Note on Twitter/X: We were occasional users of Twitter, but using that platform no longer aligns with our values. We’ll let you know when we resurface on social media. Let us know where you promote your work, and we’ll follow you there.