SHEPMA

SHEPMA (Silver Lake Hollywood Echo Park Metropolitan Alliance) was established in 1995 in the Silverlake, Hollywood and Echo Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles to build strategic partnerships between multiple sectors of the social justice movement and to organize low income communities beyond South Los Angeles. SHEPMA communities face gentrification, an increase in transient low wage jobs without basic health benefits, and chronic levels of unemployment in strange proximity to an influx of new, affluent residents seeking "affordable" housing.

Despite strong financial growth in certain sectors of Los Angeles, poor and working families are being left out and, in many cases, pushed out of economic opportunities.

• 30% of the 300,000 residents in Silverlake, Hollywood, and Echo Park currently live in poverty.
• 75% of residents are people of color and 70% do not have (or have been denied) US citizenship.
• About 25% pay over half their earnings for the cost of rent.
• Voter turnout in our communities is consistently 10-15 percentage points lower than in wealthier communities.

Since 1995, SHEPMA has waged campaigns to make job creation, quality health care, and job training top priorities for our elected officials and decision makers. SHEPMA's key strategies are to:

• Unite working families across Los Angeles' communities
• Develop proactive solutions to the problems that plague poor and working class neighborhoods based upon research, education and analysis.
• Build strategic alliances with constituencies across the city.
• Wage strategic campaigns that hold decision makers accountable to our needs.

SHEPMA believes that the future of Los Angeles should be determined by all of its residents and that the working poor and people of color should be at the forefront in the struggle to win systemic change.

Become a SHEPMA Member: