NIMBY 02 - Riverton Park Transitional Housing | Alvaro Zepeda

NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) Riverton Park Transitional Housing (Studio City California) is our most recent exploration of a possible architectural solution to the homeless situation we are living through in Los Angeles. This collaboration uses a government-own parking lot (currently used as a homeless encampment) to house 15 raised duplexes for 30 families in transition and a new public park for the neighborhood.

The project addresses the question: Can homeless transitional housing be built near or adjacent to very affluent neighborhoods in Los Angeles? The common belief is that housing for the homeless depreciates the value of neighborhoods. Hence, these types of projects become often unwanted and rejected for being too close to our own "backyards".

In the early stages of the design we collaborated with Costa Rica's renown architect Alvaro Rojas with the design, and then we asked Sri Lankan Landscape Architect @Lahiru Meegoda to help us develop and visualize this concept, and to give us his perspective on how we can use this site to its fullest.