Los Angeles City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, 13th District, recently joined the Los Angeles Housing + Community Investment Department in hosting the inaugural Poverty Prevention Summit on Sept. 20 to discuss initiatives to lift Angelenos out of poverty and prevent them from becoming homeless.

The event, titled “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: Defining Innovative & Equitable Strategies,” included service providers, business leaders, employers and educational institutions. The summit was held to help city leaders create additional ways to address the homelessness crisis.

“Los Angeles is a city where we never give up on the most vulnerable, where we act to lift up families in every zip code and where we don’t measure progress by how well people are doing at the top but by how effectively we help Angelenos start to climb toward economic security,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti. “Despite years of disinvestment by the federal government, our city is focused on investing in programs and policies to break the cycle of poverty, and [the] summit is a critical step forward in finding innovative solutions to serving and supporting people who need help.”

“My goal for leading this summit is to lift people out of poverty and prevent them from falling into homelessness,” added O’Farrell, chair of the City Council’s Homelessness and Poverty Committee. “We are bringing people together who don’t regularly collaborate on addressing the fundamentals of poverty. I am grateful to all who are providing their expertise and insight on how we can help people thrive instead of just exist at the margins.”