Homeboy Industries Gets Assist From Billionaire Frank McCourt

Homeboy Industries is hoping to expand in downtown Los Angeles with 200 apartments and a 35,000-square-foot mental health facility, and it has fundraising support from a billionaire.

The nonprofit focusing on youth programs and rehabilitation, founded in 1992, is campaigning alongside Frank McCourt of McCourt Partners to raise $100 million for the Father Gregory Boyle Center for Radical Kingship, L.A. Business First reported.

McCourt, co-chair of the campaign committee, pledged the first $10 million to get the development off the ground. McCourt Partners, based in Los Angeles, will help establish a fundraising platform for the campaign.

Funds raised will be directed toward the master planning, land acquisition and development of Hope Village, the nonprofit’s proposed residential and supportive care campus.

The project is named after Homeboy Industries founder and priest Greg Boyle, a former pastor in East Los Angeles. The center is slated to include 200 units of supportive and transitional housing as well as 35,000 square feet of space dedicated to mental health care, substance-use disorder treatment, job training and career development for Hope Village residents.

Homeboy Industries’ Homeboy Art Academy will relocate and expand into a 5,000-square-foot space as part of Hope Village. The art academy connects with locals in need by hosting programming focused on healing, training and creative expression through art.

“This community will serve as a model for the nation – prioritizing healing the wound instead of punishing it,” Boyle said of the forthcoming development. “In this collaborative mission and commitment to Hope Village, we focus on long term health and wellness of individuals and their families to make Los Angeles and our communities safer.”

The center will work in tandem with the Hilda L. Solis Care First Village, which provides interim housing for unsheltered L.A. residents, as well as the planned Robert K. Ross Center for Hope and Healing, meant to deliver affordable housing and health services to residents.

Father Gregory Boyle was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Joe Biden last year for his work as the founder of Homeboy Industries.

— Chris Malone Méndez