L.A.’s Homeboy Industries lays off most employees – Los Angeles Times.

L.A.’s Homeboy Industries lays off most employees

The institution dedicated to helping gang members quit lives of crime has been unable to raise the $5 million it needs. A quarter of the staff will remain.

Homeboy Industries, the Los Angeles institution whose mission for more than 20 years has been to turn jobs into a recipe for saving the lives of gang members, laid off most of its employees Thursday because of crushing financial problems.

Father Gregory Boyle, who started Homeboy Industries in Boyle Heights during the height of the city’s gang wars, said 300 people were laid off, including all senior staff and administrators. Boyle said he has stopped taking a paycheck.

Other recent headlines in Los Angeles:

The $106.5-million Picasso and the Bel-Air house where it hung

LA TIMES

May 5, 2010

The art world is buzzing over the sale Tuesday night of Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” sold at Christie’s in New York for $106.5 million, making it the world’s most expensive artwork ever purchased at auction. The 1932 painting came from the estate of Frances Lasker Brody, wife of Sidney F. Brody, but it’s not just the Brody art collection that’s up for sale.

The couple’s Holmby Hills estate, pictured here with the Picasso on the wall at right, has gone on the market for $24.95 million.