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
    Active

    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
    On Hold

    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/
    On Hold

    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
    Active

    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
  • The
    Active

    Equity Language

    Equity is a priority in the City of Los Angeles and we want to improve the language used in websites to be more inclusive (of all communities) while also educating the public about exclusionary language.

    Links: Github, Slack, Readme
    Looking for: Gender researcher, Communications writer, Videographer, UX developer, JavaScript programmer, QA coder, DevOps engineer.
    Location: Downtown LA
  • vegatables beats stacked
    Rebooting

    Food Oasis

    The website is focused on individuals seeking food in Los Angeles who need an up-to-date resource about food pantries and meals. Our mission is to update the existing website, foodoasis.la with a simplified UI and verified data. Future development goals include creating functionality for referral services that will allow the end user to annotate and update listings through a peer verification system.

    Links: Github, Site, Read.me
    Partner: seeking
    Looking for: Project Management, Junior Python developers (2) , documentarian (UX) - specifically someone to help with the wiki for onboarding and communicating to stake holders what the project is about.
    Location: Downtown LA
  • programming code icon that reads helping the homeless with code
    On Hold

    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
    Active

    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
    On Hold

    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
    Active

    Railstats LA

    Trailstats LA tracks LA Metro trains and generates punctuality reports. Our website enables both Metro officials and the public to easily review up-to-date statistics for LA's 6 train lines.

    Links: Github, Site, LA metro, Observable
    Partner: LA Metro (https://www.metro.net/)
    Looking for: Application Developers (Javascript, Node, React, D3) & Data Engineers (Python, Pandas, GIS)
    Location: Downtown LA
  • Team working during meeting
    Active

    New Schools Today

    We’re building a platform for students across LA County to create more accessible school-related apps and web apps. Our desired impact is to make students feel more welcomed and included in their community through an online academic environment created by peers, for peers

    Links: GitHub, Slack
    Partner: Seeking
    Looking for: Mobile Development, Serverless PaaS Expertise, UX knowledge, React Web Development, Marketing/Research, any high school student or technical mentor interested
    Location: Santa Monica, CA
  • person
    Active

    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
    Active

    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
  • record clearance project
    Active

    Record Clearance Project

    Record Clearance helps people in California with non-violent criminal records accomplish record clearance, expungement or reduction as a result of Prop 47 & Prop 64. The main features include building trust, educating the public about the program and informing those who are eligible for this program.

    Links: GitHub, Slack
    Partner: NDICA
    Looking for: Research/UX-UI
    Location: West Los Angeles
  • linked arms
    Active

    Shared Housing Project

    The shared housing team works on creating an 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: Graphics Designer
    Location: Downtown LA
  • a logo that reads what can you spare
    On Hold

    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
  • LA TDM Calculator Landing Page (Mock Up)
    Active

    LA TDM Calculator

    We’re building a TDM web calculator for LADOT. It scores proposed real estate developments in real-time and aims to discourage exceeding parking requirements to reduce the occurrence of single-occupancy trips to new developments.

    Links: Github
    Partner: LA Department of Transportation LADOT (https://ladot.lacity.org/)
    Location: Downtown LA
  • Undebate
    Active

    Undebate

    Not debates, but recorded online video Q&A with candidates so voters can quickly can get to know them, for every candidate, for every election, across the US.

    Links: Github, Demo
    Partner: EnCiv.org, Ballotpedia.org
    Looking for: Node, React
    Location: Santa Monica + Remote
  • wireframe
    Active

    hackforla.org website

    The hackforla.org website is our organization's way of communicating with new volunteers, stakeholders, and donors. This project is a good place to start for new volunteers looking to polish their git protocol skills (branches, separation of concerns, etc.). We are currently in a redesign phase, using CI/CD in the run up to demoing the new version at Code for America's Summit 2020 in Washington, D.C.

    Links: Github, Site
    Partner: N/A
    Looking for: UI (wireframes), Photoshop, junior JavaScript developers, anyone wanting to learn how to do Git commits in a collaborative work environment
    Location: Santa Monica, Downtown and Remote
  • Los Angeles City Hall building
    Completed

    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 of Code for America and is it's official Los Angeles chapter.

Contact Us

Are you press and want to get in touch? Are you interested in becoming a sponsor? Want to just check us out on Slack? Looking to volunteer?

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