Alice Callaghan
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Alice Callaghan (born in 1947? in Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is an American Episcopalian priest and former Catholic nun who is an aggressive advocate of the homeless and impoverished people of downtown Los Angeles. She is the founder of the SRO Housing Trust and the manager of Las Familias Del Pueblo, a skid-row community center.[1]
She is known to all as "Alice," and her desire to have skid row look like "a gentrified area for poor people" has made her as many foes as friends. Many developers in the Los Angeles area view skid row as an opportinity to buy and rehabilitate aging buildings, convert them into condominiums and sell them at significant profits. Callaghan has said that the renovated buildings should be used to house the poor.
[edit] Early Years
Callagan's family moved to southern California when she was a child. Tiny and atheltic, she became a proficient surfer. Coming of age, she attended college and became a nun' however, the demands on her (e.g. long hours, long-distance travel with little advance notice and celibacy) ultimately became unacceptable and she left the convent in order to become a nun. Seeing the grinding poverty of skid row, she decided to "make [herself] useful there."
