From the Streets to The Laurel: Chris Felts Finds Home
October 17, 2025
After nearly 25 years of experiencing homelessness, 12 of them spent on the streets of Santa Monica, CA, Chris Felts now has a place to call his own, a story that reflects both one person’s resilience and the power of coordinated, long-term housing solutions.
Chris’s path began on Valentine’s Day 2024, when Los Angeles County partnered with the City of Santa Monica and The People Concern, a local homeless services provider, on a Pathway Home encampment resolution. Pathway Home is a regional initiative that moves individuals experiencing homelessness out of encampments and into interim housing, pairing a safe place to sleep and regular meals with supportive services such as healthcare access and case management. For Chris and many others, it was the first step toward lasting stability.
The final step in that journey was The Laurel, EAH Housing’s newly developed permanent supportive housing (PSH) community in Santa Monica. PSH combines stable, affordable housing with on-site supportive services, a model built specifically for individuals who have experienced chronic homelessness and benefit from both a home and ongoing support to maintain it. The Laurel itself is an adaptive reuse project, meaning it transformed an existing structure rather than building entirely new. In this case, that structure was the historically significant Nikkei Hall, once a vital gathering place for Santa Monica’s Japanese American community, reimagined as a welcoming community room and property manager’s unit that blends modern housing with historic preservation.
Chris quickly became part of The Laurel’s community, and was honored as the resident speaker at the property’s grand opening, sharing his story with the many partners and neighbors who helped make the development possible. He has since welcomed Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and Santa Monica Housing and Human Services Director Heather Averick into his new home, both of whom played a role in the systems that brought Pathway Home and The Laurel to life.
As Chris puts it, “It’s more than just a home, it’s a new beginning.”
