
Westwood
Where ambition feels at home.
Explore the houseThere is an art to making room for a life.
We’re Los Angeles Room & Board. We started with a question about our students. How do you make it through college when you’re still figuring out where to sleep or what you’ll eat tonight? Our answer begins with a home and a good dinner. The young people who move in take it from there.
We want to be the kind of neighbors who invite you over. In Echo Park, we carved pumpkins together, then invited everyone back for movie night. A hundred neighbors showed up. We played Coco for the kids and saved the scary movie for later.

Where ambition feels at home.
Explore the house
The beauty of belonging.
Explore the house
Room to grow. Space to become.
Explore The Cottages
For Black History Month, we turned the courtyard over to the performers. Turn up the sound for this one.
Watch the step show
Stretch the dough, choose your toppings, and make it the way you like it. Our culinary team has the flour ready.
Watch the pizza class
Two young people who helped bring the HUG Act to the governor call The Cottages home. We got to celebrate them right here.
Watch the celebrationIf you want to know us, spend some time in the kitchen. Chef Andra leads the team that puts dinner on the table for our young people and pulls out all the stops for Friendsgiving.
Around here, you can also get your hands in the dough and learn to make your own pizza. That’s the “board” in our name.
Come to the tableGreen-painted beams. A piano beside the window. A comfortable chair in a patch of afternoon light. The rooms in our Westwood home invite a closer look.
This was the first home we opened for students. We wanted anyone coming back from class to have a place to put their feet up, find a quiet table to study, or sit down beside somebody.
Explore WestwoodA courtyard framed by arches. Flowers that climb the walls in paint and in leaf. A little shade, a quiet table, and an invitation to stay awhile.
Come on talent night and that same courtyard is a stage. Students sing, dance, and cheer each other on under the arches of our Spanish Colonial Mission home.
Explore Boyle HeightsCottages among the trees. Sunlight across a shared living room. A favorite chair, a kitchen, a quiet corner. In Echo Park, home unfolds at a different scale.
Explore The Cottages through eighteen moving portraits of the spaces that make everyday life feel considered.
Step into Echo ParkA welcome at the door. Food being shared. Conversations that carry from room to room. The reopening of our Westwood home brings the spaces—and the people gathered in them—into the same frame.
College asks a lot of a young person. We want our students to have people in their corner for the long stretch between the first day of class and the walk across the graduation stage.
Read our storyOne of our students earned her associate degree in psychology. Then came acceptances from Riverside, Irvine, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and UCLA. She got to decide where she wanted to go next.
Chef Andra shared the news and gave a shout-out to the stylist who helped her get ready for graduation. We love getting to make a fuss over a day like that.
See the graduation celebrationWhere ambition feels at home.
When Oprah opened the summer issue of O to Westwood, our students got to tell the story. They spoke about finding a home and what it took to keep going to college. Photographer Ryan Pfluger was there to document it.
There are many ways to tell the story of a house. This one begins with a living room: green beams overhead, striped armchairs gathered around a low table, a fireplace at the far end. Nearby, a piano waits beside a window.
Move from room to room and the palette shifts. A rosy ceiling in a quiet sitting room. Warm yellow in a shared study space. Checkerboard floors beneath the dining tables. Bedrooms with desks and space to rest. The details are different; the sense of intention is the same.
For Los Angeles Room & Board, a home is part of a neighborhood. In Westwood, we serve youth in community with our neighbors, making room for learning, connection, everyday joy, and a future that has not yet been written.
On the day of its reopening, our Westwood home filled with greetings, conversation, and shared food. This short film moves through the gathering, with glimpses of the work behind the rooms.
A closer look at a room designed for more than a meal.
Open a laptop. Take a breath. Give an idea somewhere to grow.
The small, considered spaces that make a house feel personal.
23 photographs
The beauty of belonging.
Golden hour · Boyle Heights · 4K · No sound
Hover to play · Move away to pause
From the street, warm stucco, red roof tiles, and a tiled stair announce the Spanish Colonial Mission character of our home in Boyle Heights. Inside, a courtyard opens the story: dark arches, patterned paving, trailing greenery, and pink flowers painted across the walls.
The rooms hold their own conversations with that architecture. Arched glass doors frame a living room in soft plaster tones. Long windows light a row of small dining tables. Elsewhere, olive walls, woven pendants, and round wood tables bring a quieter warmth.
A recording table gathers four microphones beneath a red pendant. A barber room pairs warm wood with checkerboard tile. In a yellow sunroom, botanical seating turns a small corner into a place to pause. Each offers another way to feel at home.
For Los Angeles Room & Board, welcome extends beyond the front door. Here in Boyle Heights, we serve youth in community with our neighbors. Shared spaces and quiet corners are part of a home rooted in the neighborhood around it.
String lights trace the sky. Long shadows cross the lawn. A few places to sit make room for an evening outside.
A courtyard becomes a stage. A shared table becomes a celebration. A room becomes a place to try something new. These films follow life at Boyle Heights, and the experiences that carry it into the wider city.
Hover for a quiet preview. Select “Play with sound” for the original audio. Every film plays here, in place.
The same home, seen in different lights. A daytime luncheon, an evening around the table, and a little holiday magic.
Court to College luncheon · June 21, 2024
The courtyard fills with conversation, a shared meal, and people coming together.
Dine-around · May 8, 2024
Flowers on the tables. Food from the kitchen. Conversations that carry into the evening.
A holiday gathering · December 9, 2023
Music, festive food, and a garden full of people. The house takes on the warmth of the season.
Our 2026 Black History Month gathering opened with the Black National Anthem and African drums. Members of the Divine Nine shared stories with our young people about their days at historically Black colleges and universities.
Chef Andra thanked Chef Daniel and the rest of her kitchen crew for feeding everybody. The step show and Beyond the Yard are two more nights we’re glad we caught on film.
Black History Month · February 25, 2026
Drumming, stepping, and a celebration that brings people together.
The Divine Nine · February 21, 2024
A Black History Month gathering filled with conversation and performance.
Step show · February 26, 2025
An evening of performance, movement, and shared energy.
A sketch becomes a possibility. A beat becomes a sound of your own. A familiar courtyard becomes a stage. Creativity belongs in everyday life.
Fashion workshop · May 21, 2025
Fabric, sketchbooks, and a shared table become a place to explore an idea.
Beat Making 101 · July 11, 2024
Trying a beat. Learning a tool. Hearing what happens next.
Talent night · June 20, 2024
The courtyard becomes a stage, with room to sing, dance, and cheer each other on.
A favorite style. A fresh cut. Time spent moving together. These are personal moments of attention, expression, and care.
Flawless hair activation · April 6, 2024
Care in practiced hands: a day of hair, conversation, and personal expression.
The salon and barbershop bring care close to home. The films linger on the work: practiced hands, careful finishing touches, and the chance to feel like yourself.
Hair styling · July 16, 2024
The attention, skill, and finishing touches behind a fresh style.
At the barbershop · August 14, 2024
A closer look at the care in an everyday ritual.
The garden makes room for movement, encouragement, and time together in the sunshine.
Fitness day · February 10, 2024
Out on the lawn, there’s room to move.
Fitness day · November 16, 2024
Movement, encouragement, and a moment to come together.
A film and a conversation at home. A night at the theatre across town. Culture brings new stories into view—and takes life beyond our own rooms.
Young, Wild, Free · July 19, 2024
A movie premiere with actor Algee Smith, followed by time to talk together.
A night at the MJ Musical · January 18, 2024
From the front door to the theatre: an evening out in Los Angeles.
A home in Boyle Heights.
A life connected to Los Angeles.
17 photographs
A place to call home.
A place at the table.
The culinary & food security program
at Los Angeles Room & Board
Food is central to what we do. Alongside our beautiful homes, LARNB’s culinary and food security program expresses our belief that young people deserve nourishment, dignity, and something to look forward to.
Led by Chef Andra, our culinary team brings skill and love to the work of feeding our youth. That care reaches from the meal on the plate to the knowledge shared in the kitchen, and from an everyday table to a celebration with friends.
This is the “Board” in Room & Board.
Chef Andra leads a crew that can put on a Friendsgiving dinner for a crowd and still take time to teach someone how to make a pizza. Watch Chef Daniel at the stove and you’ll get a sense of how much work goes into one plate.
We want our young people to come home from class knowing dinner is taken care of. These are the people who make that possible.
In the kitchen and around the table · March 2024
The same care that shapes our homes belongs on the plate. A closer look at two meals from the culinary team’s kitchen: color, texture, greens, and the small finishing touches.
A kitchen can be a place to try, ask, practice, and discover. Food education gives young people a way to participate in the care that goes into a meal—and to carry that knowledge into their own lives.
From preparation to the stove: a minute with Chef Daniel, following the work behind the finished plate.
Hands in the dough, toppings on the table, and the pleasure of making something together.
A meal can say
“you belong here.”
The table holds more than food. It makes room for conversation, celebration, and the simple joy of being together. Two Friendsgivings, each with its own warmth.
A shared meal and an evening together · November 20, 2024
The tradition continues · November 19, 2025
When fires hit the Palisades and Altadena, our culinary team got to work making meals for neighbors. This is what that day looked like on the kitchen side.
Food preparation for fire relief · January 13, 2025
Six views of color, texture, and the care behind each plate.
The Cottages
Room to grow.
Space to become.
Eighteen films / Echo Park in 4K
Young people helped write the HUG Act so a young person in custody could hug a parent during a visit. We gathered under the trees with families and neighbors to celebrate the people who made it happen. Our culinary team fed the crowd.
A cluster of cottages. Garden paths beneath mature trees. Rooms that open to the light. Our Echo Park home has a rhythm of its own: the intimacy of a cottage, with places to come together just beyond the door.
Some of the hands that helped get these cottages ready came a long way. Students from Utah Valley University and Central Michigan University spent their spring break here, helping us renovate.
Then our Echo Park neighbors helped make the place feel like home. When we invited families over for pumpkin carving, Café de Olla came through with drinks. We’re grateful to the people who keep saying yes to an invitation.
Green siding, pale trim, a shaded porch. Planting softens the path to a front door, and the trees give the cottages a setting that feels settled into the neighborhood.
The first welcome is a simple one: a place that looks and feels like home.
Barber chairs face arched mirrors framed by botanical patterns. A long wood counter runs beside windows overlooking the garden.
It is a small room with a clear intention: the ordinary rituals of feeling cared for deserve a beautiful setting, too.
Step through a cottage doorway and the scale becomes personal. Cream seating, green cushions, a kitchen island, sunlight across the floor. The beauty is in how naturally these rooms make space for an ordinary day.
A beautiful place to live is part of the care. The life that unfolds here belongs to the people who call it home.