The Urban Alchemy website states in part:
We’re a social enterprise that engages with situations where extreme poverty meets homelessness, mental illness and addiction.When a neighborhood, street or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around. Urban Alchemy is a peaceful and supportive presence, inviting communities to rebuild and restore a sense of pride and respect in urban spaces. We’re able to do this because we share a special bond with society’s most vulnerable – and because we see ourselves in their struggle. We know what it means to be dismissed and disrespected. We recognize the humanity in those who are struggling and we treat them how we once wished others had treated us.Our People Menu Few people know how to withstand the trauma and chaos we see on the streets – it’s usually those who have endured it themselves.
Los Angeles leaders condemned viral video of a contractor for a nonprofit organization hosing down a sidewalk as a homeless person scrambles to collect their belongings.
The video, which surfaced Thursday, appears to show someone in a high-visibility vest holding a water hose, spraying it next to a person with a blanket draped over his shoulders in the city’s Skid Row neighborhood.
Urban Alchemy, a San Francisco social enterprise that runs projects to alleviate homelessness and drug addiction, confirmed the man with the hose was working for it as a contractor and has since been fired.
