• AFTER ECHO PARK LAKE

AFTER ECHO PARK LAKE RESEARCH COLLECTIVE

The After Echo Park Lake research collective brings together university and movement-based scholars with unhoused comrades to study displacement in Los Angeles. We analyze and challenge systems of housing insecurity and scrutinize the investment of public resources in the criminalization of poverty and in carceral housing. Our research is a counterpoint to racial banishment and seeks to advance housing justice in Los Angeles and worldwide.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS

(Dis)Placement: The Fight for Housing and Community after Echo Park Lake

by Ananya Roy and the After Echo Park Lake research collective based at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

Continuum of Carcerality: How Liberal Urbanism Governs Homelessness

by Ananya Roy, Annie Powers, Ashley Bennett, Sam Lutzker and Hilary Malson via Radical Housing Journal

Blueprint for the future: Unhoused Tenant Organizing in Los Angeles

by Annie Powers and Ashley Bennett via Radical Housing Journal

We Do Not Forget: Stolen Lives of LA’s Unhoused During the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Ananya Roy and Chloe Rosenstock via UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

MEMBERS OF THE COLLECTIVE

  • Ashley Bennett
    Ashley is a UCLA alumna and co-founder of Ground Game LA (GGLA). Currently she is outreach director for GGLA and POWER where she supports unhoused individuals in their journey to find community, permanent housing, and achieve their personal goals. Heavily involved with organizing efforts at Echo Park Lake beginning in 2019, Ashley continues to work daily with residents who were displaced.
  • Jennifer Blake
    Jennifer is a homeless advocate who is passionate about helping others achieve self growth. Born in Ventura, she now resides in Los Angeles where she enjoys helping the houseless find available resources. When Jenn isn’t building opportunity and awareness, you can find her drawing.
  • Jonny Coleman
    Jonny is a writer and researcher based in Los Angeles. He has contributed to numerous LA organizing efforts, including NOlympics LA, Street Watch LA, and Knock LA.
  • Hannah Cornfield
    Hannah is a PhD student in Social Welfare at UCLA. She is interested in the power of political education in abolitionist movements that challenge the state violence of racial banishment and criminalization of poverty.
  • La Donna Harrell
    La Donna is an unhoused artist, organizer, and entrepreneur living in the San Fernando Valley. She most recently founded a self-sustained artist studio and talent agency to support other artists living on the streets.
  • Terrie Klein
    Terrie is a passionate, full-spirited soul who owned her own business as a single parent, as well as her own home when she was 28. She is proud to have purple hair and tattoos and to fight for what she believes in. Terrie asks us all to “be who you are and pay it forward.”
  • Sam Lutzker
    Sam is a PhD student in Sociology at UCLA who conducts ethnographic research with unhoused people about a variety of topics, including parking enforcement, carceral shelter programs, and criminalization of public space.
  • Hilary Malson
    Hilary is a PhD student in Urban Planning at UCLA and a researcher with the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Her work examines housing justice, Black life, and community building, and she is active in LA’s tenant organizing movement.
  • Jessica Mendez
    Jessica, also known as Queen, is a lifelong resident of Echo Park. After a car accident rendered her unable to work, Queen moved into the tent community at Echo Park Lake where she stayed until the police raid and displacement. Queen organizes with unhoused and low-income tenant, as well as mixed-status family communities.
  • Carla Orendorff
    Carla is an artist and community organizer committed to the struggle for housing justice and liberation, alongside the decriminalization of poverty in the city that raised her, Los Angeles. She believes in the power of neighborhoods and using collective memory to fight back against state violence and the erasure of communities in resistance.
  • Gustavo Otzoy
    Gustavo is an activist from Street Watch LA. He wants every unhoused person to get housing and he fights against any injustice from those with power in the city.
  • Annie Powers
    Annie is an organizer with Street Watch LA and a member of the LA Tenants Union. They are a researcher and historian who writes and works in solidarity with collective struggles for liberation in Los Angeles.
  • Chloe Rosenstock
    Chloe is an undergraduate student at UCLA studying Sociology and Labor Studies and an organizer with Street Watch LA. Chloe’s interests include housing justice and the impact of gentrification on Los Angeles tenants.
  • Ananya Roy
    Ananya is a Professor at UCLA where she is also Director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Her scholarship is concerned with racial banishment and seeks to advance housing justice.
  • Rayne Laborde Ruiz
    Rayne is an architectural designer, urban planner, and interdisciplinary researcher, her projects prioritize public engagement while raising questions of agency and spatial justice across a portfolio of speculative and built work.
  • William Sens, Jr.
    Will is an artist/community organizer living in Los Angeles, California. He has spent 6 cumulative years living on the streets, volunteering as an activist for Unhoused Tenants Against Carceral Housing, Street Watch LA, Echo Park Rising, Food Not Bombs, and Earth First.