The Los Angeles Poverty Department, considered the first performance group in the nation made up principally of homeless people and the first arts program of any kind for homeless people in LA, is facing a shortfall of funds due to federal cuts and changed priorities. Last month, it announced a fundraising campaign to raise $150,000 to sustain its current programming and the Skid Row History Museum & Archive.
On Dec. 24, the LA Poverty Department updated the community, sharing that it was halfway to its $150,000 goal.
“It’s been moving to see the broad response from community members, artists, individual donors large and small and cultural and social service partner organizations and foundations — all of whom are unwilling to see LA Poverty Department undermined and disappeared,” John Malpede, organization founder and artistic director, said in a statement in the LA Poverty Department newsletter. “Many LAPD arts projects have been designed to resist the displacement of the Skid Row community and the erasure of its history. Our current funding crisis was precipitated by an attempt to erase LAPD and all independent cultural voices. This caused us to dig in our heels. As we raise funds to minimize the length of this man-made disaster of a crisis, we are implementing plans to re-stabilize the organization and developing new projects with cultural and community partners that will be upcoming in 2026 and 2027.”
The LA Poverty Department has not halted any of its programming and does not plan on doing so. It is moving a new exhibition, “Hotels in Crisis (Again)” into its gallery space. On Saturday, May 23, 2026, it will host its Walk the Talk performance and parade honoring eight Skid Row community members whose initiatives have remarkably improved the community.
Notable projects from 2025 by the LA Poverty Department, as noted by Malpede, include the 16th annual Festival for All Skid Row Artists in General Jeff Park, the exhibition “Walk with Me” from Skid Row’s Studio 526, and “Tents & Tenants” from the After Echo Park Lake Research Collective.
“We (LAPD) are continuing our active engagement at the intersection of healthcare and housing with our theater workshops at Housing for Health’s new Skid Row Care Campus,” Malpede continued. “The main Care Campus building features LAPD’s mural with portraits of 36 community members honored in our first Walk the Talk performance / parade (2012). We start each workshop at the Care Campus performing the story of one of those honorees. Each time we perform their story there is someone in the courtyard audience who knows that person… Molly Lowery, Mike Neely, Robert Chambers, Jeff Dietrich and Catherine Morris… Skid Row knows its history and uses it to secure the future. Los Angeles Poverty Department’s artistic strategies to turn around the present moment are working.”
For more information, visit lapovertydept.org.