Mission, History
1736 Family Crisis Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to serving vulnerable community members in the greater Los Angeles area. Our mission is to comprehensively help children, women, men, and families through crisis circumstances, including domestic violence, homelessness, abuse, neglect, poverty, substance use, post-traumatic stress disorder, and distress, and to improve their prospects for long-term housing, safety, survival, financial stability, and success. The agency serves approximately 9,000 individuals directly through in-depth residential and nonresidential programs, and approximately 15,000 more through educational and street outreach.
1736 Family Crisis Center began in 1972 as a single Emergency Youth Shelter for runaways and street kids, including girls and boys who were abandoned and kicked out of their homes by parents or guardians. Programs progressively expanded beyond housing and basic life necessities to 24-hour emergency and longer-term counseling (including suicide intervention), advocacy, life education, schooling support, as well as detailed counseling and networking with schools, hospitals, police, child protective agencies. In 1981, the Center opened its first confidential emergency domestic violence shelter. In 1984, the agency developed Los Angeles County’s first – and for nine years, only – confidential transitional domestic violence shelter to give survivors and their children the broad-based counseling, job preparation, life-skills education, and self-confidence tools needed to rebuild safe, independent lives.
Thereafter, the agency expanded its program reach to serve additional populations (e.g. family members of homeless veterans and crime victims) and geographical regions throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties, addressing each client’s complex challenges and professionally aiding program participants toward their future goals. Currently, 1736 Family Crisis Center has 22 dedicated facilities and service locations throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Programs and services include domestic violence and homeless youth shelters; mental health and legal clinics; hotline centers; financial and job/skill training sites; a co-located police-response program; and homeless outreach/drop-in/service centers for veterans, youth, human trafficking victims, and other crime victims. All services are provided free of charge through the generous support of public and private funders, individual donors, and volunteers.
