Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe LOS ANGELES, April 19 (UPI) -- A $17 million state-of-the-art homeless shelter opened in Los Angeles, complete with a full-sized gym, a hair salon and a professional kitchen. Midnight Mission, a modern structure of concrete and steel in the heart of one of the city's largest poor neighborhoods, opened Monday to help Los Angeles' more than 6,000 homeless amid criticism that the facility does little to address the city's lack of affordable housing, the Christian Science Monitor reported. Advertisement "Since the late 1980s, America has built a mammoth infrastructure of shelters and the number of homeless has gone up, not down. It's a bit of the if-you-build-it-they-will-come phenomenon at work," says Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. "That same $17 million could have gone a long way toward creating homes and jobs," says Bob Erlenbusch, vice president of the board for the National Coalition for the Homeless. "Affordable housing is what these people need, not a way to institutionalize their temporary status."
