A record-breaking supportive housing development in the overburdened Los Angeles market is one step closer to completion this week after AXIS/GFA Architecture + Design’s new 19-story Weingart Center Tower 1 project topped out near Skid Row.

Once completed, the development will provide a total of 228 studio and one-bedroom apartments reserved exclusively for people who had previously experienced homelessness. Proponents say it will be the largest single-addition housing project of its kind in the city. 

Los Angeles is currently in the midst of a crisis caused in large part by state and local policy failures, the lack of financing, and a compendium of related issues, including developers' reticence, corruption, and the resounding absence of low-income housing countywide. New Mayor Karen Bass recently signed an ordinance that makes it easier to realize constructions under 49 units, but the hope and need for larger developments is also glaring. Therefore the project stands as a new high-water mark in the quest to alleviate the crisis of homelessness, which recently increased by 9% throughout the region according to a report from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“If the average project is roughly 75 units, we are essentially building four of those projects all at once,” Weingart Center Association president and CEO Kevin Murray Murray told Los Angeles Magazine at the project's commencement in 2021. “It’s a big and important leg of the table, of the solution. But I am a believer that we should have permanent structures for interim and temporary housing as well. That is kind of what [Judge] Carter’s model was based on.”

Tower 1 will eventually be joined by a second smaller 12-story design located at 554-562 S. San Pedro Street Downtown. The project is expected to be completed in 2024. A time-lapse of the new tower's construction can be viewed below.