California’s Los Angeles County sought to address homelessness and the public health crisis tied to it, including issues of mental illness, poverty, addiction, disability, and/or other unstable living conditions. One solution is the Restorative Care Village (RCV) located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood on the campus of Los Angeles County + University of Southern California (LAC+USC) Medical Center.

The LAC+USC Restorative Care Village is designed to help individuals struggling with serious medical, mental health, and addiction issues who may be homeless or incarcerated as a result. When the RCV is completed in March 2021, it will offer a comprehensive strategy for managing the whole person and the full continuum of interrelated challenges facing this vulnerable population.

Its two primary components are a recuperative care center with 96 beds to provide immediate placement options for individuals discharged from an inpatient hospital setting who lack a supportive place to live, and a residential treatment program consisting of four buildings that provide a short-term alternative to hospitalization to address mental health needs.

The village concept, created by CannonDesign (Los Angeles), is based on a neighborhood model, with all buildings oriented on a main street that harnesses extensive landscaping and placemaking strategies. The cladding on the buildings draws inspiration from the 19-story, historic art deco Los Angeles County General Hospital, which sits on the LAC+USC campus. Public art will be an essential element of the project, as well, with interior and exterior artwork playing a central role in creating a restorative living environment.

The RCV will largely be built through modular construction and leveraging prefabricated materials to reduce the project timeline while maintaining quality to immediately allow the county to make the RCV available to those in need including mental health patients and homeless individuals.

 

Project details:

Facility name: Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Restorative Care Village

Location: Los Angeles

Expected completion date: March 2021

Owner: Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health

Total building area: 67,500 sq. ft.

Total construction cost: $53.8 million

Cost/sq. ft.: $796/sq. ft.

Architecture firm: CannonDesign

Interior design: CannonDesign

Modular Construction: ModularDesign+

General contractor: CannonDesign Builders

Engineering: CannonDesign (structural), Southland (mechanical), Randall Lamb (electrical), Southland (plumbing), Cornerstone (civil), RELM (landscape)