Los Angeles has the largest homeless population in the country. In a city where people spend so much time in their cars, it’s a population that many tend to ignore. But not Peter Samuelson. About five years ago, on a typical weekend bike ride, Samuelson began to notice an increase in the number of people living on the streets. After counting 62 homeless individuals on his route from West L.A. to the beach, he decided he had to do something…Soon after, his unique homeless shelter concept emerged.

Though Samuelson had previously founded three children’s aid nonprofits, he was a media executive not a designer or engineer. He felt he had a good idea for a new form of shelter—he just needed a way to realize it. He started talking directly to the homeless and asking them what they needed. These conversations led him to envision a cart that could unfold into a bed, and after discovering that many of the people with whom he spoke survived on money earned by recycling, he wanted to make sure the cart facilitated that. Privacy—another important issue—meant the cart had to have a means to be secured.

To help transform these ideas into reality, he contacted the Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena, through which he met designers Eric Lindeman and Jason Zasa. The trio finessed their shelter design and took their drawing to Precision Wire, a shopping cart manufacturer in the City of Commerce. After several prototypes, a beta version of EDAR (Everyone Deserves a Roof), a four-wheeled mobile unit based on a shopping cart, was born.

Today, some 170 EDARs are in use with an additional 50 to be distributed next month. Samuelson’s non-profit group partners with philanthropic, governmental, and homeless advocacy organizations to distribute the units. Most are sheltering homeless in the Greater Los Angeles area; other units are being tested in Phoenix, Arizona, Camden, New Jersey and Denver Colorado. EDAR is exploring expansion opportunities in various other communities such as Austin, San Francisco and New York.

Some might suggest that providing such durable shelters only serves to encourage homelessness. “Yes, they are more comfortable in an EDAR unit, but I don’t think that is giving them an incentive to remain homeless,” EDAR’s Executive Director Julie Yurth Himot responds. “In fact, we had one woman recently who had an EDAR and was labeled ‘chronically homeless.’ After three weeks, she said that the EDAR reminded her of what it was like to sleep in a real bed and that she wanted to get out of the EDAR and into transitional housing ASAP. She kicked her drug habit and is currently in a transitional housing program.”

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Not all EDAR stories are equally rosy, but the fact remains, as Himot explains, “there are just too many people homeless right now. This recession has brought an enormous amount of people into shelters. These families have never been homeless and it doesn’t seem to be stopping.”

Samuelson saw a problem and wanted to help solve it. With over 3 million people, half of them children, experiencing homelessness each year, he couldn’t stand by and do nothing. Not finding the right solution, he created one on his own

UCLA students help high schoolers build skills, feel empowered and beautify community.

For a group of high school students in Inglewood, a community gardening project began with picking up debris: bags, bottle caps, a sprouting potato and crack pipes.

Launched by students under the leadership of D’Artagnan Scorza, a graduate student in education, the project aims to cultivate not only the city’s first community garden, but also a sense of civic engagement and empowerment.

Once a week, Scorza and two of his UCLA classmates, Lorna Apper, a graduate student in geography and Erick Sanchez de Leon, a UCLA alumnus, drive down to teach the students everything from soil composition and water drainage to shoveling basics.

Although the weekly sessions have only gone on for five weeks, the initial idea came a year earlier. Scorza’s students in his group, the Black Male Youth Academy at Morningside High School, decided they wanted to beautify their community, Scorza said.

Since then, Scorza reached out to the local government and the Inglewood Unified School District, which allowed the group to use the district’s unused property across the street from the school’s field.

“By and large, it’s already been a success, but we’re going to see a significant success when this place is full of vegetables, fruits, trees and flowers,” said Scorza, who served as a student representative for the UC Board of Regents until 2009.

The lot right now is a growing pile of gravel, an unused well and a few patches of weeds, but the students’ dreams are big. They want to see fruit trees, sunflowers, a gravel pathway and vegetables, and eventually a farmer’s market.

For a school where nearly 80 percent of the students receive free or reduced meals and fast food chains circle the campus, the chance to grow their own food has been empowering, said English teacher Rashondra Woods, who joins her students in the weeding and digging.

“(The class) can actually see that they have the opportunity to understand that an idea sparks action and they see the result. Hopefully, they’ll see by May and June the flowers and seeds blossoming,” she said.

Although Scorza, Sanchez de Leon and Apper have pointed the students to local resources, the project is run by the students.

One of the students is Kevin Crawford, a ninth-grader at Morningside High School, who appointed himself the seed collector. As the class saves seeds from beans or fruits they have eaten, he is in charge of counting and storing them.

“It might sound boring, but it’s kind of cool because I get to count seeds when I’m bored,” said Crawford, who is learning to start a garden for the first time. “Let’s just say, (gardening) is not as easy as they make it look on TV.”

Aside from over 150 seeds collected, much of the supplies have come from the students, friends, such as Apper’s mother and neighbors.

After a city council member, Ralph Franklin, saw the students working on their first day, he rushed back with shovels, gloves and a $200 check.

Neighbors have started noticing and helping, too. Sanchez de Leon and Apper have answered the questions of curious neighbors, who are now donating their trash for the garden’s compost.

The school’s assistant principal, Joyce Rushing, is excited to see the project coming together.

“The people in this community are hungry for fresh vegetables and fruits,” she said. “And I’m really happy to see the children involved in something that’s really positive for them.”

From the partnerships Scorza has fostered with the district, school board, local government and UCLA groups, the team hopes to involve more groups in the project to help design and implement new elements for their garden, like a solar panel water pump.

The students have applied for a $25,000 grant as a part of Pepsi’s Refresh Everything, a program that allows people to vote for a community project to win money from the corporation.

To promote their project, they have made YouTube videos of their progress and will soon be completing a painted sign.

But for now, the 30 students’ homework assignment is to take care of a pea. Each student took a cup filled with soil from the lot with a seed, which they will have to water everyday.

“(My parents) are going to trip out about (the peas in the house),” said Javier Ortega, a high school senior. “But they’re going to have to deal with that to support nature. If I don’t, who else is?”