My Friend’s Place helps youth experiencing homelessness move toward
wellness, stability, and self-sufficiency. My family and I have worked with them for many years.

During the Holidays, they are purchasing gifts for the homeless youth of LA, even though it is not the holiday season anymore, they are still open to donations during all operating hours. They especially accept:

• Sweatpants/Joggers
• Sleeping bags
• Tents
• Backpacks
• Hoodies
• etc

My first connection with My Friend’s Place was when I noticed an opportunity to build a dormitory-styled assisted living facility next to their location in Hollywood. I had many ideas on how I would make the housing, but when I thought of cost-efficient and transportable, the best idea was shipping container homes. Here is what my first schematic looked like for the project.

Through making this first design, I did some more research and concluded, speaking with people who work with shipping containers, that at the time, there was a global shortage of both shipping containers and people to drive the shipping containers. Here I pivoted the idea to a more durable and robust large tent design. Here it is:

Once I had multiple well-researched designs, I scheduled a meeting with Susan Dutra, Director of Development for My Friend’s Place. This meeting went very well; however, she had a few concerns at the end of the session. Although she loved how cheap they would be, the issue would be labor. She brought it to our attention that the people she would need to hire to make sure everyone is safe would be too costly. Along with this and other issues regarding specific safety laws, we agreed that this plan would sadly not work. And this left me devastated.

Through a quick pivot, I continued to ask her what I could do to help the most, and this is when she told me about the holiday wishlist which My Friend’s Place set up, and she said the best thing I could do was to spread this message and get as many people as possible to donate. Some of the things they needed were:

• Sweatpants/Joggers
• Sleeping bags
• Tents
• Backpacks
• Hoodies
• etc.

Then I hosted a fundraiser for My Friend’s Place to help their holiday cause; because of this, we filled all of MFP’s donation requirements and even pushed it beyond what they were asking for. I just want to thank everyone who contributed in any way they could. And a special thank you to the Director of Dev. Susan Dutra ga a heartwarming speech.