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Echo Park's Dream Center shows off its new floor and facilities
The Dream Center has been providing services to the area's homeless, mentally ill and substance abusers for nearly two decades.
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Ashley Myers-Turner/KPCC
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Women who are currently receiving treatment on the newly renovated women's recovery floor meet Mayor Villaraigosa and tell him stories about their recovery and their personal relationships with the Dream Center.
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Ashley Myers-Turner/KPCC
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Los Angeles, Calif., Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Pastor Matthew Barnett tour the Dream Center in Echo Park on April 4, 2012.
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Ashley Myers-Turner/KPCC
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The center is adding 500 new beds in order to serve a larger community of foster youth age 18-25 that age out of the foster care system.
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Ashley Myers-Turner/KPCC
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The city has long provided funding to the Dream Center, allowing it to renovate its offices and build an additional educational floor.
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Ashley Myers-Turner/KPCC
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Echo Park's Dream Center showed off its recently upgraded facilities to the mayor and press Wednesday. The center has been providing services to the area's homeless, mentally ill and substance abusers for nearly two decades.
Mayor Villaraigosa met with the center's head, Pastor Matthew Barnett, for a tour of the center.
"I choose to look at this not from the monetary savings, but from the savings of lives," said Villaraigosa. "I see talent here, I see great futures here."
The city has long channeled funding to the center, allowing it to renovate its offices and build an additional "educational floor," designed for those residents and visitors completing a GED or participating in an Alcoholics Anonymous program.
Dream Center staff said they hope the additions will allow them to better serve foster youth who have aged out of the city adoption system, as well as single mothers struggling to hold down jobs.
“I’ve been here for three years now," said Amber, one of the center's third-floor residents. "I found this actually on the internet and came here and saw the pictures," she said. "I saw happiness in people. I saw something that I never had and that I really longed for and I just didn’t know how to get it."
Staff said they hope the renovations will allow them to assist an additional 400-500 people, on top of the 700 they currently serve.
"My dad was a pastor as well," said Barnett, discussing his vision for the center. "We both came [to Los Angeles] thinking that we were going to build a traditional church and speak on Sundays. And we came here and we just felt that we didn’t want to be great pastors. We just wanted to be city janitors, walking into city streets and picking up broken pieces."
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