You can change LA for the better!

Can you design, write, or code? Are you an activist with an idea? You can help Los Angeles live up to its potential at Hack for LA. Everyone is welcome!

Weekly Civic Hack Nights

We host Civic Hack Nights in Santa Monica, Downtown Los Angeles and Inglewood each week. At these events, we help groups of volunteers organize themselves into project teams to build technology addressing the LA region’s biggest civic issues. Each night offers an inclusive, diverse community and everyone is welcome.

Westside

Mondays at 6:00 pm
Onboarding: Every other week

Downtown LA

Tuesdays at 6:00 pm
Onboarding: Once per month

South LA

Wednesdays at 6:00 pm
Onboarding: Every week

We welcome new volunteers on select Onboarding Nights. Check our Meetup events page for the current schedule and locations.

Our Meetup Events Join our Slack

More Upcoming Events

Current Projects

  • image

    311 Data

    The 311 Data project seeks to empower local Neighborhood Councils to improve the ideation and analysis of their initiatives using the wealth of publicly available 311 data.

    Links: Github
    Partner: EmpowerLA
    Looking for: TBD
    Location: Downtown LA
  • adopt civic arts

    ArtWatcher

    There are thousands of works of public art scattered around the city. There should be one place to see where they are and how they’re doing. We’re building it.

    Links: Github
    Partner: County of Los Angeles
    Location: Downtown LA
  • gavel/

    Los Angeles Criminal Sentencing Project

    Our project's goal is to make all criminal sentences administered in LA county into an open dataset. There is a lot of data about when and where crimes are committed - but none about what sentences are passed down in LA County.

    Links: Github
    Location: Downtown LA
  • city council closed in session

    Engage

    Engage is a civic participation platform. Currently in beta, Engage makes it easier for residents of Santa Monica, CA to offer their feedback on policy issues that City Council is considering. Engage aims to increase access for community stakeholders who are unable to attend public meetings or may otherwise feel unheard by their local government.

    Links: Github, Site
    Partner: City of Santa Monica
    Looking for: NLP engineers, Django developers (API), React developers, UX designers, anyone else...
    Location: Santa Monica
  • vegatables beats stacked

    Food Oasis

    Everyone deserves access to healthy food. Help us make it easier for Angelenos to find the best places to buy or grow healthy food in their city.

    Links: Github, Site
    Partner: Youth Policy Institute
  • programming code icon that reads helping the homeless with code

    Heart

    Heart is a project working directly with the LA City Attorney’s Homeless Engagement and Response Team. The HEART program helps homeless individuals resolve eligible traffic and pedestrian infractions and related warrants and fines by engaging with relevant services. Hack for LA is helping them build a database and case management system to streamline their workflow and enable them to scale their program.

    Links: Github, Slack
    Partner: LA City Attorney’s Homeless Engagement and Response Team
    Looking for: experienced full-stack developer, node.js, react
  • smartphones using hellogo app

    HelloGOV

    HelloGOV is helping reproductive rights advocacy organizations connect supporters to their state assembly and state senate representatives for call campaigns. The HelloGOV webapp generates a campaign shortlink that can be used in texts, social posts, and more.

    Links: Github, Site
    Partner: Digital Defense Fund
    Looking for: Angular skills or willing to learn, Node, JS, visual designers, dev-ops.
    Location: Santa Monica
  • LA county homelessness initiative logo

    Jobs for Hope

    We compiled job listings from 60+ different non-profit organization websites for the LA County Homeless Initiative and consolidated them into a single database so that it is easier for job-seekers to search and filter for jobs.

    Links: Github, Site
    Partner: LA County Homeless Initiative; http://homeless.lacounty.gov
    Location: Downtown LA
  • metro ontime logo

    LA Metro Health Monitor (Metro Ontime)

    The health monitor tracks LA Metro trains and generates summaries of daily, weekly,monthly and annual performance. We are building a tool that allows anyone to easily review and analyze the on-time performance of LA's 6 train lines.

    Links: Github, Site
    Partner: LA Metro (https://www.metro.net/)
    Looking for: Frontend Developers (React, D3), Backend Developers (Python, Pandas)
    Location: Downtown LA
  • person

    Not Today - Self-Defense Against Suicidal Thoughts

    NotToday is a mobile app for people who suffer from chronic suicidal ideation (thoughts). It allows people to time-shift their desire to live across suicidal/non-suicidal dissociated mental states.

    Links: Github
    Partner: Seeking
    Looking for: Flutter, Mobile Development UI/UX, Empathy and sensitivity with subject material and end users.
    Location: Santa Monica
  • public tree map grid

    Public Tree Map

    Public Tree Map documents all ~36,000 public trees in Santa Monica's urban forest. The map includes contextual information compiled from open datasets and digitized city records. To reflect tree plantings and removals, the map updates every day.

    Links: Github, Test Site, Slack
    Partner: City of Santa Monica
    Looking for: Front-end web development (JS, leaflet), project management, appreciation for trees.
    Location: Santa Monica
  • linked arms

    Shared Housing Project

    LA Family Housing, an LA-based non-profit working to end the homelessness crisis, engaged the help of Hack for LA to identify and design a more efficient & effective solution for matching multiple individuals who experience homelessness as potential co-tenants, and placing the matched individuals in suitable shared housing units.

    Links: Github
    Looking for: project management, product management, design-thinking, user research, user interviews, UX design, UI design, front & back-end web development, scrum / agile project management & product delivery
    Location: Downtown LA
  • a logo that reads what can you spare

    Spare

    A fun new project project that connects people in need of clothing and other essentials with people in the community who have things to spare. It's kind of like one on one Goodwill. The main objective is to foster interactions between the housed and unhoused. The donation is the mechanism for building these connections throughout our community.

    Links: Github, Site
    Partner: Hope of the Valley and hopefully others in the near future.
    Looking for: Front-end development, Back-end development, Product Management, and Marketing.
    Location: Santa Monica
  • Los Angeles City Hall building

    Work for LA

    Applying for work should be simple—but the application process for the City of LA is confusing and cumbersome. We’re going to make it easier to find the job of your dreams.

    Links: Site
    Partner: Department of Personnel
    Looking for: UX, Writers, Designers
    Location: Downtown LA

Have an idea? Submit your pitch

Hack for LA is a great example of how we can harness technology and our city's creativity to solve everyday problems. As Mayor, I will closely partner with our tech industry to create jobs and bring innovation to City Hall so government works faster and more efficiently.

Mayor Eric Garcetti Mayor Eric Garcetti

Press

Want to know more about Hack for LA?

We bring together civic-minded volunteers to build digital products, programs and services with community partners and local government to address issues in our LA region. Hack for LA is a project group of Hacker Fund and the official Los Angeles chapter of Code for America.

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