Alice Callaghan

Alice Callaghan (born circa 1947, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is an Episcopalian priest and a former Roman Catholic nun.

She 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. [ [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_43_37/ai_79665352Arthur Jones, "National Catholic Reporter," October 12 2001, "Complex reality at street level - training immigrants as garment workers"] Accessed January 18 2007]

Known to most simply as "Alice," she wants to have Skid row look like "a gentrified area for poor people," an attitude that has made her as many foes as friends. Some developers view the Skid row area in Los Angeles as an opportinity to buy and rehabilitate aging buildings, convert them into condominiums and sell them at significant profits. Callaghan has insisted that the renovated buildings be used to house the poor.

Early years

Her family moved from Canada to southern California when she was a small child. Diminutive and athletic, she became a proficient surfer. She attended college and became a nun. She left the convent in order to become an Episcopalian priest. Seeing the grinding poverty of skid row, she decided to "make [herself] useful there." Fact|date=August 2007

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