Bobby Livingston found it hard adjusting to life in his Senator Hotel room. Soon after moving in, he was screaming at neighbors and the management. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Though the project gave Bobby Livingston an apartment, he clung to old habits and refused to take his schizophrenia pills. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Livingston hugs Project 50 director Carrie Bach. “If we can succeed with him -- oh, my goodness,” she said. “If we can do him, we can do anybody.” The problem was lack of leverage: He seemed unafraid of death, jail or the streets. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Livingston digs through a garbage can for recyclables on skid row. Once he gathered enough cans and bottles he would take them to a recycling center, collect his money and head off to support his drug habit. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Advertisement
Project 50 outreach worker Doris Starling walks with Livingston to meet with other program staffers to discuss his living arrangement. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Livingston, right, almost gets into a fight with a visitor to Martha’s Kitchen on skid row. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Project 50 team leader Adrienne Gee, left, along with other staffers from the program, tries to tell Livingston, right, that he is in danger of losing his room at the Senator Hotel. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
No one seemed more remote, more trapped in the bleak cycles of the street, than Cliff Butler, who was No. 46 on the Project 50 list. To him downtown was a landscape of things to take, people to swindle. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Advertisement
Project worker Doris Starling talks with Butler. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Butler argues with Project 50 therapist Lori Schwartz, left, about his unhappiness with the changes to the staff of program. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Butler washes the window of Tim Bragg’s truck, parked along Central Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
For years Butler slept on a bench and shined big rigs along Central Avenue to buy crack. But the project director believed that if he had any hope of reclaiming his life, he had to steer clear of that scene and the fast money it promised. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
