Building Community Through Housing

The Anita May Rosenstein Campus at the Los Angeles LGBT Center represents one of the most meaningful projects our family has been involved with. The Center describes it as a two-acre, multi-generational complex housing its Youth and Senior Services; its 2017 annual report described the then-under-construction project as a $130 million campus. The campus stands as a model for what housing-led community building can look like when resources, intention, and institutional partnership align.

A Vision for Inclusive Community

The campus was born from the recognition that housing is about more than shelter — it’s about belonging, safety, and opportunity. For LGBT youth experiencing homelessness and seniors facing isolation, the Anita May Rosenstein Campus provides not just a roof but a community. The design itself reflects that philosophy: shared courtyards, a health and wellness center, a pool, computer labs, and dining facilities are woven together so that residents and service recipients can build real relationships across generations.

That intergenerational dimension is deliberate and important. Young people who age out of foster care or are rejected by their families often lack the informal networks that most adults take for granted. Older LGBT adults, meanwhile, face elevated rates of social isolation — a documented health risk comparable to smoking. By housing both populations on the same campus with shared programming, the LGBT Center created the conditions for mentorship, mutual support, and a sense of permanent community that neither group could easily find elsewhere in Los Angeles.

The Campus Model: What Makes It Work

The Anita May Rosenstein Campus integrates several distinct service streams that would otherwise require residents to navigate a fragmented network of providers. On-site mental health services, substance use counseling, job training, and legal aid are available to residents and walk-in clients alike. The co-location of these services removes a major barrier: people in crisis rarely have the bandwidth to manage multiple appointments across a spread-out city. By bringing services to where residents already are, the campus dramatically increases utilization rates and continuity of care.

The housing component itself includes both permanent supportive housing for low-income LGBT seniors and transitional housing for youth. Permanent supportive housing pairs affordable apartments with services intended to help residents remain housed; current local program records and reports can be found in the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority document library linked below.

Lessons for Civic Policy and Future Development

What the Anita May Rosenstein Campus demonstrates is that community-building and housing production need not be separate conversations in Los Angeles. Too often, housing debates focus narrowly on unit counts and density, while questions of who is served and how they connect to the surrounding neighborhood are treated as afterthoughts. The campus model inverts that priority: it starts with the population, designs services around genuine needs, and then uses housing as the stabilizing anchor.

For Los Angeles as a whole — which faces one of the most severe homelessness crises of any American city — that lesson carries broad implications. The city has made significant investments in affordable housing production through programs like Proposition HHH, which authorized $1.2 billion in bonds for supportive housing. But brick-and-mortar investment only delivers lasting change when it is matched by the kind of on-site service infrastructure the LGBT Center has built. As a member of the LA City Planning Commission, I have advocated for zoning policies and community benefit agreements that encourage this integrated model rather than treating housing and services as separate line items.

The campus also illustrates the civic multiplier effect of strategic philanthropy. Our family’s commitment to this project was not simply a donation — it was a long-term partnership with an organization that had already demonstrated operational excellence, community trust, and a clear theory of change. In my experience with this project, philanthropic capital can move faster and take more risks than government funding, which makes it especially valuable for seeding new models that public systems can later scale.

A Family Legacy Built on Purpose

Named in honor of my mother, Anita May Rosenstein, this campus carries forward a multi-generational tradition of giving back to Los Angeles. My mother believed that the measure of a community is how it treats its most vulnerable members — a conviction she modeled throughout her life in her own philanthropy and civic engagement. Seeing her name on a building that now provides stability, health, and belonging to hundreds of people each year is a reminder of what lasting philanthropy looks like in practice. It creates infrastructure for human flourishing that outlasts any single donation or any single generation.

The Anita May Rosenstein Campus continues to grow in its impact. As Los Angeles grapples with ongoing housing pressures and a persistent homelessness crisis, the campus stands as proof that coordinated investment, thoughtful design, and genuine community partnership can produce outcomes that neither government nor philanthropy could achieve alone. That is the model worth replicating — and worth advocating for — across the city.

Read more essays →