UTACH - Unhoused Tenants Against Carceral Housing is a grassroots organization run for and by unhoused tenants in Los Angeles. The homeless services system has functioned too long by implementing a top-down approach to ending homelessness. It is time that OUR voices be at the center of services and solutions being offered.
UTACH’s mission is to fundamentally transform Project Roomkey and other forms of carceral shelter -- that is, housing options where people are treated as if they are prisoners -- offered to homeless people as an alternative to the street. Facing conditions in PRK that are jail-like, UTACH demands community self-determination, autonomy, and the same rights as housed tenants in Los Angeles. UTACH understands that for many unhoused communities, the city and service providers are their landlord -- a landlord failing to provide basic habitability needs for their tenants.
UTACH rejects the city’s strategy of shuffling people between carceral, temporary shelters and the street, a process which immiserates the houseless by continuously and forcibly -- but unpredictably -- removing us from our communities and support networks. We believe Los Angeles must instead focus on permanent, community-determined housing that empowers tenants to live in the fullness of our lives.