On a Saturday afternoon in Skid Row, Deoujahne Darc stood before a crowd at Lifeway Church with an original song and a story shaped by her own journey through housing instability. The 26-year-old Los Angeles native had been singing since she was four. She said she had self-produced seven albums. This past Sept. 19, however, her stage was Lifeway Church, where about a dozen homeless and formerly homeless Angelenos gathered for what organizers described as Skid Row’s inaugural talent show.
Darc performed an original song, “Grace & Mercy.” Her performance would eventually earn her first place, but winning was only part of what brought performers together that afternoon. Singers, rappers, dancers, poets and others took the stage in a neighborhood better known to outsiders for tents, poverty and homelessness than artistic expression.
The event offered an opportunity to change, if only briefly, what people saw. Rev. Gary Carr, who holds a weekly service at Lifeway Church, organized the event after recognizing that the people he encountered on Skid Row possessed talents rarely associated with the neighborhood’s public image. “People give up on the disenfranchised, thinking that they’re worthless,” Carr told the Associated Press. “They have value, and through the talent show today you can see it’s a life story there; it’s a struggle.”
Carr understands that struggle personally. The 69-year-old said he experienced homelessness for nearly 30 years, with periods of incarceration, before entering ministry in 2009. He later worked at Union Rescue Mission while maintaining relationships with people he knew during his years without stable housing.
The talent show, Carr said, could become “an avenue to a new beginning.” Winners are expected to continue meeting and developing their talents in preparation for another performance around Easter.
That beginning comes against the backdrop of a homelessness crisis that remains one of Los Angeles’ greatest challenges. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s 2026 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count estimated 73,040 people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles County, including 45,194 within the City of Los Angeles. Within the city, approximately 29,115 were unsheltered, according to LAHSA. Put simply, nearly two out of every three unhoused people counted in the city were living without shelter. Tens of thousands become a population instead of individual people, each with a different path into homelessness and a life that existed before it.
For some, the breaking point is financial. LAHSA reported that 59 percent of newly unhoused residents surveyed identified economic hardship as the primary cause of their homelessness. At the same time, Los Angeles County lacks more than 473,000 affordable homes needed to meet existing demand. According to the agency, a household would need to earn approximately $110,000 annually to afford the county’s average monthly rent of $2,745 according to LAHSA. The $110,000 isn’t arbitrary; it is the income needed for that rent to consume no more than roughly 30% of income.
In simpler terms, for a majority of newly homeless Angelenos surveyed, the breaking point was economic, and finding another home in Los Angeles can require an income beyond the reach of many working households.
Even as people leave homelessness, others continue entering it. LAHSA reported that 55,691 people accessed the rehousing system for the first time, or for the first time in two years, during 2025. For every person the system placed into permanent housing, 2.37 newly unhoused people entered the system, according to LAHSA.
Put another way: while Los Angeles helped one person reach permanent housing, more than two others were entering or re-entering homelessness. Employment adds another layer, particularly for Black Californians. UCLA’s Black Policy Project reported that the Black unemployment rate in California increased from 5.6 percent in 2024 to 7.5 percent in 2025, twice the unemployment rate of White Californians. Among Black women with college degrees, unemployment increased from 2.7 percent to 8.5 percent, according to UCLA.
Simply having an education or a willingness to work does not guarantee economic security.
But statistics explain only part of what happens after a person’s life becomes unstable.
Ladelle Handy, 45, grew up dancing in Chicago and came to Los Angeles about a decade ago to pursue music. After an eviction in February, he became homeless. Handy told the AP that during his time on Skid Row, he struggled with depression and drug use. He was unsure whether he would perform in the talent show at all. Then he watched the other performers. Handy eventually stepped onto the stage and performed an original song dedicated to his mother, who was killed in Chicago in 2001.
“Showcasing my gift that is a God-given talent, I know I have it,” Handy said. “I just wanted to make sure that the world remembers that I have it.”
His words capture something that statistics cannot. A person experiencing homelessness can still be a singer, dancer, songwriter, poet, parent, or visual artist. Homelessness describes a housing condition. It does not encompass someone’s identity.
And although Skid Row’s talent show was new, artistic expression on Skid Row is not.
The Los Angeles Poverty Department, an arts organization composed of people who live and work in Skid Row, was founded in 1985. Its annual Festival for All Skid Row Artists has become a grassroots celebration of visual art, music and performance created within the community, according to the Los Angeles Poverty Department.
This October, the organization’s 17th Festival for All Skid Row Artists is expected to bring more than 150 artists to General Jeff/Gladys Park. Since the festival began, organizers have developed a registry documenting more than 1,000 Skid Row artists.
In other words, the talent revealed inside Lifeway Church was never particularly new; only the stage was.
For Darc, homelessness is now part of her past, but it remains part of the story behind her music.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, she became homeless in Oregon following a troubled relationship. With assistance from a domestic violence shelter, she returned to California and spent more than a year and a half between the streets and a women’s shelter before obtaining stable housing. Music remained with her.
Rather than simply speaking about what she experienced, Darc said she prefers to put those experiences into her writing and music. “Grace & Mercy,” the song she performed at Lifeway Church, was intended to communicate her belief that people deserve both simply because they are human. By the end of the afternoon, Darc had been named the competition’s first-place winner. Volunteers, judges and performers celebrated together as Skid Row’s first talent show came to an end.
Yet the larger story may be what happens after the microphones are turned off. Los Angeles still faces a shortage of affordable housing. Thousands remain unsheltered. People continue entering homelessness faster than the rehousing system can permanently house them.
A talent show won’t solve those problems. But for one afternoon, it could challenge how people living through them are seen, and how they feel. Long before a microphone was placed inside Lifeway Church, Skid Row had singers, dancers, writers, musicians and poets. And before judges gave out prizes, people there were regularly creating art. The talent was already there, only waiting for its stage.
