Latest news with #MidcenturyModern
Los Angeles Times
16-07-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
After having a heart attack at 36, a master refinisher shares his tips on ‘a lost art'
Aaron Moore was at his workshop in Garden Grove when the first wave of pain hit. That fall morning in 2022, the furniture refinisher, who was 36 at the time, felt his limbs begin to tingle as he took the clamps off a table. He had been under elevated stress. He was juggling care for a busy toddler and a booming business, along with building a social media presence to promote his work. So as the tingling escalated to moderate chest pain, Moore chalked it up to a panic attack and kept working. It was only upon seeing a late friend's funeral program pinned above his desk that Moore caved and headed to the hospital. Two weeks later, his doctor told him that decision likely saved his life. 'In the hospital, it was a joke, because we didn't really know what was going on,' Moore said. After being told that he'd had a trio of NSTEMI heart attacks (characterized by partial blockage in a coronary artery), he was still unsure how serious they had been. At his two-week follow-up, though, Moore said he learned those 'mini heart attacks' could have been precursors to a deadly finale. 'It was more of a, 'Hey, you just narrowly dodged the widow-maker,'' he said. At home in Orange, Moore didn't have much time to process the episode. His toddler son and newborn daughter kept him plenty busy. However, back in the shop, amid the mesmeric hum of sanders and drum fans, a thought dawned on him: 'What would have happened to all the knowledge if I had died?' A high school woodshop prodigy, Moore got his start in furniture refinishing at a piano company in Anaheim. His boss, a friend's dad, hired him just before he graduated from Esperanza High School, and he stayed at that job for about five years. Moore loved the work, but he hated workplace politics. He wanted to get poached by another refinisher based in Garden Grove. That refinisher's name was Butch Crane, but Moore liked to call him Elmer Fudd after Bugs Bunny's antagonist from Looney Tunes: 'Bald, kind of chunky, wore the red plaid flannels.' When Crane decided to retire in 2010, he was resolved to keep the building out of the city's hands. So he made Moore a deal. 'Five grand. I'm leaving in one month. If you want it, shop's yours,' Moore recalled Crane telling him. Moore accepted. Fifteen years later, the tradesman stood outside Crane's old spray booth, sanding a $25,000 rosewood bench. 'Rosewood has a very floral scent to it,' he said. 'You can smell it in the air.' Above him hung a 'Moore's Refishing' sign, a friend's comical misspelling of the shop's name. Tucked into a corner of industrial Garden Grove, Moore's Refinishing boasts no ornate exterior. The shop's only signage — save for the misprint in the back — graces the top half of its glass front door. Inside, though, is every thrifter's Midcentury Modern dream. Atop a wooden mezzanine, a rattan back desk sits among chestnut-colored dining chairs. Deeper into the shop, a Grotrian-Steinweg piano is just put back on its legs. When Moore first took over the shop, he worked mostly on antiques, or as he calls it, 'grandma's old furniture.' Over the years, he's amassed high-profile clients from specialty collectors to fine art dealers. His most expensive project thus far is a rare Antoine Philippon & Jacqueline Lecoq wall unit that Laguna Beach gallery owner Peter Blake valued at $175,000. At 38, Moore has spent more than half his life in a trade boasting no more than a handful of old-timers to preserve it. After his 2022 health scare, he has been more intent than ever on passing down all he'd learned, but he wasn't sure how. That's when Anastasia Petukhova wound up at his doorstep. Petukhova, a Moscow-born marketer and photographer, was teaching marketing classes part-time at Loyola Marymount University when she began flipping furniture as a social experiment to share with her students. At some point, Petukhova said, 'my flipping sort of evolved from something very basic to some nicer pieces,' and she realized she needed a master to fill in her knowledge gaps. So she started doing her research. 'Turns out there's this guy, Aaron Moore, an hour away from me,' Petukhova said. She messaged him, offering a free photo session in exchange for a refinishing lesson. 'I thought, I show up for half a day, do the skeleton of the process,' she said. 'How difficult can it be?' They met a few days after Moore's cardiac episode. Moore knew it wasn't wise to return to work so soon, but he'd already canceled on Petukhova twice. He didn't want to bail again. The pair ended up working together for more than a year on Petukhova's furniture flips, Moore's online refinishing content and later the coffee table book of Petukhova's dreams. 'Revive and Refine: The Art of Furniture Restoration' (self-published last year and available on Moore's website for $125) is a 240-page starter guide for aspiring refinishers, covering everything from the basics of disassembly to master staining techniques. It's intentionally written in such a way that anyone can pick it up and get started on a project — Moore's wife scanned his manuscript for jargon before the book was published. In the book, Petukhova's images depicting the refinishing process step-by-step are interspersed with fine art-style photographs. The cover image, chosen by Moore's social media followers, is a striking shot of a 1970s Afra and Tobia Scarpa dining chair, so aesthetically composed that the object itself is defamiliarized, taking on the visual quality of an ancient relic. When Moore first entered the industry in the mid-2000s, he said his mentors habitually kept trade secrets. 'This was an industry of gatekeepers,' he said, adding that master tradesmen ultimately viewed their apprentices — working in the same 10- to 15-mile radius as them — as competition. However, in the internet age, there's business enough for everyone, Moore said, and teaching others what he knows doesn't threaten his own livelihood. If anything, it preserves his legacy at a pivotal moment for skilled trades. Enrollment at public two-year schools focusing on vocational and trade programs has risen by nearly 20% since the spring of 2020, according to a May National Student Clearinghouse report. One explanation for this upward trend is the majority belief among Gen Zers that a college degree isn't necessary to obtain a well-paying, stable job. Moore's mission is to capitalize on this resurgence of interest in the trades. He started to notice the uptick on his social media channels, especially after he first started sharing refinishing content on Instagram in 2021. He's since expanded his content by posting longer form videos on YouTube and teaching a paid online course that has 100 members. Moore films most of his online content during the work day, which he admitted has caused some projects to pile up. Blake, the gallery owner, has begun calling Moore 'Aaron Kardashian' — a dig at what he called the refinisher's growing 'influencer' behavior. 'I love giving him s— about [it], you know, when I walk in there and see the tripod,' Blake said. 'I tell him that, 'Of course, my stuff isn't done, because you're so busy being an influencer.'' But like the vast majority of Moore's clients, Blake is mostly content to wait, knowing his go-to refinisher has never skimped on quality. 'I hate to say this, but I pushed the s— out of him,' Blake said. 'I would give him threats all the time that, 'It better be good, Aaron. You realize this is a $30,000 chair. Do not f— it up.' 'I gotta say, he rose to the occasion,' the gallerist said. Ivan Astorga, Moore's only full-time employee, initially had trouble adjusting to his boss' high standards. He began working part-time at Moore's Refinishing in 2016, while still employed at his father-in-law's refinishing business. A couple years in, Moore realized Astorga had downplayed his skills and promoted him to full-time. 'Working here was a complete different ballgame. He demanded only the best for his clients,' Astorga said. At the shop earlier this month, Astorga was making his fourth pass on a chipped wooden table. Several times, he worked a Walmart iron over a wet cloth, then peeled the fabric back to inspect the surface underneath. On the last round, the chip was hardly visible. To this day, whenever Astorga visits his father-in-law's shop, he said he has to hold his tongue about stains and scratches Moore would never miss. In the rare event Moore does make a mistake — like the time he sanded through the veneer on a coffee table — 'we have the capabilities to repair it after,' he said. Sometimes, he added, 'you have to break things first before you can make them better.' Moore said that as a kid growing up in Yorba Linda, he always loved the physicality of taking things apart and putting them back together. But it's not the work itself that has kept him in the industry; it's the stories. Pacing across his workshop, Moore rattled off the names of clients with heirlooms in his queue, smiling as he spoke about one woman who brought in her childhood sewing machine for restoration. Just outside his office, he's curated a Wall of Treasures, composed of miscellaneous objects he found in furniture purchased at auction. Among the bric-a-brac are a hosiery stock card, old negatives and a birthday letter. 'It's history,' Moore said. 'I'm a catch-all person for this, not junk wood.' Moore doesn't see himself retiring any time soon. No one currently stands to replace him, but he's hoping that the supplemental income he derives from his online and in-person coaching side hustle will allow him to spend fewer hours in the shop. 'I'm tired of doing it to this degree,' Moore said, adding that he'd rather make the bulk of his salary teaching refinishing than doing it himself. That plan looks promising as he gears up to send a $20,000 quote to a prospective coaching client. To him, the figure seems inordinate. But to his wife Taylor, it represents the true value of his labor. 'My whole family is attorneys,' said Taylor, a probate paralegal. 'They're looking at it from, 'What is your hourly rate? How long is it going to take you to do this? What would you make in the shop?'' Taylor, 33, added that her husband can sometimes underestimate the value of what he does because 'it's such a lost art.' 'He doesn't realize what he does is so unique, and no one really does it anymore,' she said. 'All the old-timers are either retired or have passed or slowed down.' Financially, it would behoove Moore to keep the trade specialized and therefore more lucrative for himself. But that's not the future he wrote a book for.
The Star
29-06-2025
- The Star
Brad Pitt's LA home torn up by burglars while he attends 'F1' premiere
Thieves broke into a Los Angeles home owned by Brad Pitt (pic) on Wednesday and ransacked the actor's abode while he was out of town, according to law enforcement sources. Los Angeles police officials said a break-in at a home occurred around 10:30pm Wednesday. At least three suspects scaled the security fence at Pitt's Los Feliz-area house and smashed a window before entering, making "a real mess" and stealing some items, according to sources not authorized to discuss the case. Pitt's possessions were tossed and overturned as the thieves "had gone through looking for what they could take of value," said one source familiar with the crime. Pitt is one of the latest celebrities to see their home burglarised. South American theft gangs have plagued upscale areas of LA in recent years. In early February, Olivier Giroud, the French striker who plays for Los Angeles FC, had his home targeted and $500,000 worth of jewellery and watches stolen, sources said. On Valentine's Day, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's home was burglarised. Pitt's Midcentury Modern home, dubbed the Steel House, is one of several owned by the movie star. He was in London on Monday night for the European premiere of F1 The Movie. Last August, the FBI, working with local police, dismantled a multimillion-dollar crime tourism ring that had operated for years in Southern California, facilitating thefts across the country. Their investigation led them to a most unusual hub: a Los Angeles car rental business. The group directed crime tourists who committed hundreds of thefts across the nation — including in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties — beginning around 2018. The thefts occurred in about 80 cities in California, Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey, Kansas and Illinois and netted about $5.5 million for those charged in the case, according to the indictment. Prosecutors, however, estimated the loss to businesses and homeowners at about $35 million. The trend of South American crime groups visiting Southern California for thefts and robberies emerged roughly six years ago, and authorities have been grappling to get it under control. – Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service
Los Angeles Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The curvy couch is making a comeback. Should you get one?
Over the past few years, the forecast has been cloudy when it comes to couches. Cumulus-like sofas have descended from the skies into living rooms across Los Angeles and the country at large. To some, like Annie Elliott of Annie Elliott Design, sinuous sofas are often an unwelcome, alien presence. 'I just don't like them,' she says, describing many as 'massive, space-age blobs' in white boucle that don't fit most spaces. 'I'm manifesting that they'll be out of style in 15 minutes.' But many, like Los Angeles designer Jeff Andrews of Jeff Andrews Design, feel differently. Andrews designed two curvy couches for his collection with furniture company A. Rudin and estimates he includes a serpentine sofa in roughly half his design projects. 'There's always an opportunity for a curved sofa,' he says, 'whether the setting is traditional or ultra-modern.' Circular and S-shaped couches might seem newfangled, but they're classic, he adds. Initially popular during the Art Deco era, this type of seating was back in fashion in the 1950s (when designer Vladimir Kagan introduced his Serpentine Sofa). Now that Midcentury Modern is wildly popular again, it's no wonder the curved couch has made a comeback. But if you're still on the fence about getting one, consider these reasons and picks. Place a serpentine sofa in the middle of a room and you'll instantly transform it from wan white box to theater-worthy. A curvy couch is outside of the box, literally, and can help achieve a more custom, interesting look, says Andrews. One reason for these couches' star power? Their curves contrast with the angularity of most spaces and depart from the conventional rectilinear profile of sofas. Curvy couches can soften all those 90-degree angles and add femininity, says Los Angeles-based Kim Gordon of Kim Gordon Designs. She describes including them as akin to 'bringing in some girly hips.' But their benefits are more than aesthetic. Curvy couches can also be practical, especially in open-plan spaces. Large rooms can feel cold and cavernous. But a large-scale serpentine sofa in the center can break up a space, acting as both seating and separation. Including one or two of these couches is an alternative to creating two or three distinct seating areas with several pieces of furniture, says Gordon. Because of their curves, the couches create a space within a space, adds Atlanta-based Jessica Davis of Atelier Davis, who describes them as hug-like and enveloping. Even if you're sitting at the opposite end from someone else, you can still have a conversation with them, she says. While these sofas are often found in large spaces, they can work in small ones too. A single couch can take the place of a sectional or a sofa and a chair or two, Gordon says. In a cozy room, one curvy couch with a coffee table and side tables might be all the furniture you need. Since they're not rectangular, you can also be creative and play around with their positioning, adds Andrews. Unlike a traditional couch, a curvy couch doesn't need to be pushed against a wall — in fact, it shouldn't be. Tuck it into a corner or float it in the center of a room, he says. 'You can angle it different ways for different feelings, depending on where you're trying to center the attention.' Curvy couches are often deeper than their traditional counterparts, says Beth Diana Smith of Beth Diana Smith Interior Design. So before you fall for the wrong one, whip out the measuring tape. Measure each contender or confirm its specs with the manufacturer, suggests Davis. Pay attention to overall depth versus seat depth — different manufacturers can specify depth differently. Then use painter's tape to outline the silhouette on your floor, ensuring the couch will fit. Also consider how highly you value comfort. Some curvy couches, especially more sculptural models, might not be deep enough for you to curl up in, says Julia DeMarco of Kim Gordon Designs. Test each one and seek out down- or feather-filled cushions, which will 'give' when you sit, DeMarco adds. If you're not a fan of the couch's material (many come in 'gray, icky' stock fabrics, says Gordon), you can always reupholster. Finally, don't pair your curved couch with similarly curvy tables and chairs, says Smith, since 'too much of the same thing isn't visually pleasing.' In fact, it can feel almost … square. Consider these couches across the price spectrum, some of which have changing prices due to sales. Jacqueline 89.4-inch Upholstered Sofa ($1,399): This couch with a curved back and gold legs feels glam and feminine. In the Kelly Clarkson Collection available from Wayfair, it features a deep seat and comes in five fabrics (including light blue and pink). Brayden Studio® 125-inch Modern Curved Sectional Sofa ($2,839): DeMarco sometimes incorporates this sectional from Wayfair in homes she stages. Crate & Barrel Martina 94-inch Sofa ($2,159): Here's a subtle take, featuring a kidney-shaped, 43-inch-deep bench seat and pillows with feather-down fill. The base is solid walnut, and the off-white upholstery is a linen blend. Eternity Modern Savelle Modern Curved Sofa ($3,659-$5,779): Designed by Swedish architect Jonas Wagell, this couch comes in six boucle or sheepskin fabric choices, all in neutral hues. With a medium-firm, customizable cushion and a seat depth of 23 inches, it's 'comfy' and 'our go-to,' says DeMarco. Edra Standard Francesco Binfaré (price upon request): 'If you want to go 'bananas,' this one is orgasmic,' Gordon says. 'It's just heaven.' The deep, customizable couch features backrests and armrests you can mold with just a touch of your hand. It's sold at Spazio Edra Los Angeles by Diva Furniture in West Hollywood.
Los Angeles Times
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
8 Emmy contenders that show off real-life L.A. locations
There has never been a shortage of TV series that take place in Los Angeles, the longtime hub of the American television industry and its players. But the 2025 Emmy season features such a wealth of shows set and shot in and around L.A. that we couldn't resist spotlighting how several of them use the iconic locale we call home. The Apple TV+ comedy, which follows an interconnected group of co-workers, friends and neighbors, is set mainly in Pasadena and Altadena. Location manager David Flannery, a fifth-generation Pasadena native, notes, 'So often [these cities] play for everywhere else in the world. But we want to show exactly where we are — which is just a little more specific than general L.A. — and that the characters are grounded in very real places.' These sites have included the Rose Bowl, Pasadena City Hall, Pasadena's Central Park (featuring the landmark Castle Green building) and the South Pasadena train station. The Laird and Bishop family homes, with their adjoining backyards, may look like a set but are actually neighboring Altadena houses, both of which survived the Eaton fire. Although Hulu's Emmy-winning comic mystery is the ultimate New York tale, its Season 4 opener sent its crime-solving lead trio to Tinseltown to pursue a movie adaptation of their popular podcast. Co-creator and showrunner John Hoffman, calling in during the show's Season 5 shoot, says, 'Last season had to start in L.A. It really kicks off a season that is specific to cinema, to moving images.' Filming took place on the classic Paramount Studios lot, at the historic Il Borghese condo building in Hancock Park and at an 'ultra-glamorous, deeply L.A.' Hollywood Hills home, which served as studio exec Bev Melon's party house. Creator-showrunner Erin Foster can't imagine her Netflix rom-com about a progressive rabbi and a gentile sex podcaster set anywhere but her native Los Angeles. 'You have to write what you know, and that's what I know,' she says by phone from her West Hollywood home. 'In L.A., people are following their dreams, so it says a lot about who someone is. I think the same applies to locations in a TV show: They all signal where [the characters] are in their life and who they are.' Some of these illustrative locales have included Westwood's Sinai Temple, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Koreatown, the Los Feliz 3 Theatre, Calamigos Ranch in Malibu and WeHo's Pleasure Chest sex shop. Seth Rogen and company's raucous creation about a beleaguered movie studio chief is rooted in firsthand experience. 'Seth knows this town very, very well,' says supervising location manager Stacey Brashear. 'He and [co-creator] Evan Goldberg wrote in 90% of the locations, including the [John] Lautner-designed, Midcentury Modern houses that studio executives like to collect.' Among these eye-popping sites are the Silvertop house above the Silver Lake Reservoir and the Harvey House in the Hollywood Hills. Adds Brashear, 'I feel like our locations are actual characters in the show.' Among the Apple TV+ series' many other L.A. locations: the Warner Bros. studio lot, the Smoke House Restaurant in Burbank, Lake Hollywood Park and the Sunset Strip's Chateau Marmont. This Netflix limited series revisits the 1989 murder of wealthy Beverly Hills couple José and Kitty Menendez by sons Erik and Lyle, a crime notoriously connected to Los Angeles. 'It was such a period of decadence and grandeur, and Beverly Hills was kind of the poster child for that,' says production designer Matthew Flood Ferguson. 'I wanted to recapture the [town's] glamour and celebrity culture.' He also notes, of L.A.'s diverse architecture, 'You can get quite a few different looks all in the same place.' These 'looks' included a grand Hancock Park-area home standing in for the Mendendez mansion, Koreatown's Wilshire Colonnade office complex, a 1970s-built Encino bank building, Beverly Hills' Will Rogers Memorial Park and the former Sunset Strip site of Spago, restored to look as it did in its heyday. Unlike past seasons, in which L.A. often subbed for Las Vegas, Season 4 of 'Hacks' is mostly shot and set in Los Angeles. Says Lucia Aniello, co-creator with Paul W. Downs and Jen Stasky, 'Much of [the season] is getting back to the roots of L.A. comedy. It really is a love letter to Los Angeles — and to the comedy world.' Adds Downs, 'The show is a lot about people outside of the industry looking in. By being in L.A., we got to really explore what that means.' Some key locations: CBS Television City, the Lenny Kravitz-designed Stanley House, the Americana at Brand and Echo Park's Elysian Theater; the Altadena estate doubling for Deborah Vance's Bel-Air mansion was lost in the Eaton fire. Loosely based on the life of Lakers President Jeanie Buss, this Netflix comedy is 'filled with a lot of L.A. DNA,' says co-creator and showrunner David Stassen. He adds that, like Buss, the show's star, Kate Hudson, 'is also part of a dynastic L.A. family. Plus, she knows Jeanie, she loves the Lakers and she grew up going to games.' Though much of the season was filmed downtown at Los Angeles Center Studios, location work included the Pacific Coast Highway south of Venice (where Cam, played by Justin Theroux, crashes his Porsche), downtown L.A.'s elegant Hotel Per La and homes in Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills. The L.A. skyline gets quite the workout here as well. Netflix's reimagining of Judy Blume's 1975 novel unfolds in 2018 Los Angeles, where it evocatively explores first love between teens Justin and Keisha. Showrunner and L.A. native Mara Brock Akil considers her adaptation 'a love letter to Los Angeles and to the idyllic life we're all trying to live in this city, where dreams are not isolated to one particular neighborhood.' Key parts of the story take place around Keisha's home in the View Park-Windsor Hills area, with the show's many other L.A. locations including Ladera Park, St. Mary's Academy in Inglewood, the Grove and the Original Farmers Market, Griffith Park and the Santa Monica Pier. Adds Akil, 'A lot of people [in L.A.] are moving around on public transportation, which I wanted to shine a light on too.'
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
In a state with a dire affordable housing shortage, does the Coachella Valley offer hope?
Along the main thoroughfare of this desert city, just a block from a vibey, adults-only hotel and a gastropub serving boozy brunches, a new apartment building with a butterfly-wing roof inspired by Midcentury Modern design is nearing completion. The property, called Aloe Palm Canyon, features 71 one-bedroom units with tall windows offering natural light and sweeping views of Mt. San Jacinto, plus a fitness room and laundry facilities. When it opens this summer, serving lower-income seniors over age 55, the complex will become the latest addition to the Coachella Valley's growing stock of affordable housing. A decade ago, this desert region known for its winter resorts, lush golf courses and annual music festivals produced just 38 units of affordable housing a year, while the low-wage workers powering the valley's lavish service industry faced soaring housing costs and food insecurity. Fast-forward to this year, and affordable housing units are planned or under construction in all nine Coachella Valley cities, including the most exclusive, and in many unincorporated areas. At least some of that momentum can be credited to a Palm Desert-based nonprofit organization that in 2018 set an ambitious 10-year goal to reduce rent burden — or the number of people spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs — by nearly a third. Lift to Rise aimed to do this by adding nearly 10,000 units of affordable housing in the Coachella Valley by 2028. Some seven years into its decade-long push, Lift to Rise appears well on its way to that goal. It counts 9,300 affordable housing units in the pipeline as of April. That figure includes those in the early planning stages, as well as 940 units starting construction soon, 990 under construction and 1,405 affordable housing units completed. It is notable progress in a state where the dire shortage of low-income housing can seem an intractable problem. Now, some officials and elected leaders say Lift to Rise may offer a path forward that could be replicated in other regions. The Coachella Valley, in Riverside County, stretches from the San Gorgonio Pass to the north shores of the Salton Sea. Its major employment sectors — leisure and hospitality, retail and agriculture — generally produce the area's lowest-paid jobs, putting the cost of renting or buying a home out of reach for many. Coastal areas have a reputation for being unaffordable, but the desert region has a higher share of rent-burdened households than Riverside County as a whole, the state or nation, according to American Community Survey data compiled by Lift to Rise. Addressing the situation comes with its own complications. Many California housing and climate policies tend to support the development of affordable housing in dense, pedestrian-friendly communities with easy access to public transportation, said Ian Gabriel, Lift to Rise's director of collective impact. Such adaptations are difficult in the Coachella Valley, where suburban-style neighborhoods, limited public transportation and months of triple-digit heat have lent themselves to a car-centric lifestyle, he said. And although state policy — and funding priorities — often focus on alleviating chronic homelessness in major urban areas, he said, the Coachella Valley also needs housing for low-wage farmworkers who aren't homeless but are living in dilapidated, financially untenable conditions. All of that makes it harder for the region to compete for state affordable housing dollars, he said. 'We're not saying other folks in coastal areas shouldn't be getting money,' Gabriel said. 'We're saying we need more equitable distribution and a path forward that isn't just a one-size-fits-all, because it's not fitting for our region.' Lift to Rise has built a network of more than 70 people and organizations — among them residents, county officials, funders and developers — with a shared goal of increasing affordable housing in the region. One of the group's early steps was to create an affordable housing portal to track developments in the pipeline and, maybe more important, determine what factors are holding projects back. In assessing those bottlenecks, Lift to Rise identified a need for stronger advocacy, both at the local level and in the policy sphere. So it has launched an effort, Committees by Cities, to help residents develop leadership skills and advocate for affordable housing at public meetings. Modesta Rodriguez is a member of the Indio chapter, attending city council hearings and passing along information to her neighbors. Although she and her family have lived in a development specifically for farmworkers for a decade, she wants to ensure her four children — the oldest of whom graduated from San Diego State University this month — can find housing in the eastern Coachella Valley. 'It's not as if they are going to begin their careers making a lot of money,' Rodriguez said, seated in the kitchen of her tidy three-bedroom apartment. 'For us, these projects are very good, because I know at least they will help my daughter.' Mike Walsh, assistant director of Riverside County's Department of Housing and Workforce Solutions, said Lift to Rise and its army of advocates should get credit for helping to change the narrative around affordable housing in the Coachella Valley. 'When affordable housing projects pop up, they have a built-in network to turn folks out and support those projects, where in the rest of the county, there's not that same sort of ease of turning people out," Walsh said. Walsh recalled that a teacher, a farmworker and a social worker — essentially a cross-section of local residents — spoke up at a recent county meeting. 'It drowns out NIMBYism,' said Heidi Marshall, director of the county's housing and workforce solutions department. The organization aims to spark wider conversation about the fight for affordable housing and living wages through eye-catching billboards that the nonprofit buys along the 10 Freeway during spring music festival season in the Coachella Valley. 'Born too late to afford a home, and too early to colonize Mars' is among their slogans. And when an analysis revealed low-income housing developers were having trouble getting predevelopment financing, Lift to Rise set out to create a funding mechanism to help get projects off the ground. The result is a revolving loan fund known as We Lift: The Coachella Valley's Housing Catalyst Fund. The $44-million fund, supported by public and philanthropic dollars, is intended to bridge financing gaps and accelerate development. The developer behind the Aloe Palm Canyon complex in Palm Springs, the West Hollywood Community Housing Corp., benefited from three loans from the fund totaling more than $11 million. It has already paid back two of those loans. 'I don't know any other regions in California that are doing this at this level of support,' Anup Nitin Patel, the corporation's director of real estate development, said during a toasty morning tour of the construction site. Another Palm Springs project — a partnership between the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition and DAP Health, a local healthcare provider — received a $750,000 predevelopment loan that was repaid at the start of construction. Last June, Sean Johnson moved into that development, which is for low-income people who are HIV-positive or living with AIDS. After struggling to find stable housing, he said it's a relief to pay a monthly rent of $718 for a studio apartment. 'It's going to be something I can sustain, a game-changer for me,' he said. Lift to Rise is seeking a $20-million allocation in the next state budget to scale up its work. As part of that request, it is asking for a one-time $10-million investment into the Catalyst Fund to expand lending capacity across Riverside County. Read more: In America's 'salad bowl,' farmers invest in guest worker housing, hoping to stabilize workforce Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) and Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa) submitted a budget request on the organization's behalf. Padilla said it's a worthy expenditure, especially as California faces a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall. In lean budget situations, Padilla said, the state should focus its investments on programs that are having meaningful impact and have the data to prove it. 'In tough budget times, you have to be very strategic," he said. "And this is a good example of [an effort] that's proven some pretty impressive results.' This article is part of The Times' equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California's economic divide. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
