Our syringe service program, which started unofficially in 2019 and became city-sanctioned in 2020, emerged in response to a profound unmet need. As we built relationships with hundreds of unhoused and drug-using residents of Skid Row, and later, MacArthur Park, harm reduction came to include MAT, social service referrals, healthcare linkages, and building relationships with street and agency partners. Sidewalk’s new Skid Row walk-in crisis center for women and gender-expansive people will open in 2024, offering system navigation, a safe space, and community-building opportunities among unhoused women, sex workers escaping intimate partner violence/street violence, who use drugs and/or live with serious mental illness.

In addition to daily harm reduction outreach, Sidewalk has historically held monthly events including food, hygiene supplies, music, and art, as well as organizing summer music festivals and underwriting mural painting. Sidewalk’s county-funded three-year project to interrupt violence and reclaim public housing, through art, music, and organizing, takes place in an apartment building abandoned by the now-defunct Skid Row Housing Trust and occupied by medically vulnerable, formerly unhoused older adults. The grant also funds the build-out of the number-one item on every Skid Row wish list: A music recording studio. All activities come with participation stipends.

A central harm reduction strategy for Sidewalk is job creation for unhoused local residents. Sidewalk promotes intersectionality and equity through diversity in hiring. Peer advocacy breaks down the barrier of the participant-provider construct, restores dignity, and aids self-determination. Providing day labor pay for folks with limited employment opportunities is the first step toward regular work and is our most effective leadership-building strategy.

Sidewalk provides support and supplies to a wide network of smaller mutual aid organizations (including regranting relationships with Water Drop LA and Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary) to serve local unhoused, drug-using, and sex worker populations.