Los Angeles Mission's Blog

SB 275 _____________________________ Hospital Homeless Discharge


SB 2 _____________________________ Fair Share Zoning

Two bills designed to help address issues of homelessness are now sitting on your desk. Like most legislation they are not perfect. But they are so much better than nothing at all!

We support the Hospital Homeless Discharge bill only because there seem to be some hospitals that need such strong pressure to do the right thing. There are many others that are working with the Los Angeles Mission and other service providers to assure a safe and appropriate transition from the hospital to a safe shelter. We applaud the fine hospitals that work with us under newly established procedures that benefit everyone involved. By the way, Mr. Governor, what happens to these fines? Can they be put into an account to build additional recuperative beds?

We also support the concept of Fair Share Zoning. Way too much time and money is spent in legal wrangling. Lawyers and bureaucrats arguing over where to locate shelters and transitional housing. And way too much time, effort and money spent by civic, religious and service organizations for conditional use permits and such. Why not simplify the process for all local zoning and future site location by responsible service providers? Let’s spend money on services, not legal fees!

Please Mr. Governor, for those who don’t have a voice, sign these bills and we will thank you.

--Herb Smith, President

Sean Penn’s long awaited production of “Into the Wild” is coming soon. The Los Angeles Mission staff is excited to see the full production. In Mr. Penn’s quest for authenticity for the work of author Jon Krakauer, he recreated a night that Christopher McCandless spent at the Los Angeles Mission according to his diary and the Krakauer book.

We were excited to have a small part in the filming of the production last year. And while I haven’t seen the film we have been assured that the scenes shot here did make it into the final version. We also trust attention raised on the topic from this movie will help put another face on one of the issues of homelessness.

Transient homelessness still exists. Dealing with people passing though is perhaps more difficult than working with the homeless who “live” here in LA. We believe relationships are what are needed to begin the process of coming home. Christopher McCandless had issues and we regret that his life ended as it did. We just pray that his night here at the Los Angeles Mission might have inspired him to reach out to others and God in his quest.

For a more in-depth review of the movie check out this piece: Mother Nature’s Restless Sons by Charles McGrath of the New York Times dates September 13, 2007.

--Herb Smith, President

One of the interesting side points of the Downtown New editorial of September 10, 2007 “New SRO Hotels Are Well-Intentioned, But Treatment Is More Important” on the CRA is the final section entitled “People Don't Want to Be Alone” reminds me of the Gilbert O’Sullivan tune.

“It is not so surprising, when you think about it, that people on the streets don't want to be alone in a room. The thing most of us fail to realize about living on the Row is the profound loneliness that helps drive people to stay with each other on the street rather than clean up and go into a room alone.”

The Los Angeles Mission has based its philosophy of service on a need for relationships. Going it alone on the streets, in our program or after graduation is not a solo performance! Statistics show that the more connected persons are in healthy, accountable relationships, the more likely they are to make constructive, permanent changes in their behavior. Whether we offer a bright shiny new room or a slightly older well-used one, neither one will work without the love, care and positive influence of others.

“The lack of imagination in society's investment needs to be addressed, needs to be adjusted. Protect the low-income housing stock, all right. But we all need to understand the urgency of finding cash to do the job right. There need to be treatment beds and full treatment programs. And they need to be off the Row, away from the temptation.”

We do need to find more creative ways to encourage relationships in our most modern society. Going it alone will not work, never has! Whether on the Row or off, it really doesn’t matter. Temptation is as easy to find in the suburbs or lofts as it is on the Row. What’s needed is a relationship that helps break the cycle of abuse and neglect by (as they say) “being there and making their day.” The Los Angeles Mission is here today and will be tomorrow attempting to create those positive relationships.

--Herb Smith, President

A report by the Center for Housing Policy indicates there is a growing problem of affordability of housing for the working poor. The issues being raised in the report aren’t just about the working poor -- they also impact the homeless.

Why? For two reasons.

The first one is pretty obvious. Those who loose their housing become homeless!

But, the second one is a bit more sinister and behind the scenes … OK, I’m using movie analogies because a film crew is shooting a movie outside my window on Maple Street! Seriously, though, what is of great concern is that the statistics on the number of homeless include all those without a permanent address. Many of those who are without a permanent address are likely to be staying with friends and family in sometimes overcrowded units. Maybe they pay a few bucks to help defray expenses, but they are there on the good graces of others who are struggling to make ends meet. For this particular group of homeless persons affordable housing is a key factor to staying off the streets. Many work but simply don’t make enough to even hit the benchmarks of poverty. Overcrowding can be a cultural consideration but dollars to pay the rent are not.

We need to increase the housing stock of affordable units – not just preserve those that already exist.

Here is the full article: The Housing Landscape for America's Working Families 2007.

--Herb Smith, President

I read this and attempted to edit it. But, I think it is best read in its entirety. As a service provider it highlights for us the complexity of the issue and the need for examining situations as individuals not cookie cutter solutions. I do not condone the lack of work ethic in this case but getting a job does require stable housing. Then again, there is some work ethic just to get out of the shelter and back in line to fill out more forms. Sounds like a good candidate for customer service at the cable company!

September 4, 2007

A Challenge to New York City’s Homeless Policy

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

A score of families gather daily in the courtyard of a city office in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. The parents spend time chatting at the picnic tables while children play tag on a few patches of grass. The scene is gentle. But it poses a growing challenge to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s strategy for reducing homelessness.

Each of the families first came here to apply for a place in the city’s homeless shelters, a first step toward getting housing subsidies. They have all been evaluated and told they do not qualify because they have homes they can return to — most often the crowded apartments of relatives.

That was supposed to be the end of the story. But these families have not taken no for an answer. Instead, after the office stops taking shelter applications at 5 p.m., they stay and ask the after-hours staff for emergency shelter, which the city says is for families in a one-time crisis only.

Then sometime between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., they and their children take all their belongings — shopping carts and strollers laden with televisions, toothpaste, fans — to board buses for a city shelter. Sometimes they are taken to a shelter in the Bronx; sometimes they go to Brooklyn or Queens. It is different every night.

They unpack, shower and sleep until 6 a.m., when they are awakened by the shelter staff. At 7 they are bused back to the city office in the Bronx, where they wait in the courtyard until the office closes at 5 p.m. and their nightly routine begins again.

It is a brutal existence.

Until recently the number of families willing to undergo such hardship was small. Officials say that families were given emergency late-night shelter, and did not reapply during office hours the next day, fewer than 75 times a month for most of 2006.

But the number erupted over the summer. In July, such families checked in for emergency overnight stays nearly 800 times. City officials and advocates for the homeless estimated that a core group of families, perhaps dozens, stayed in this cycle for weeks or longer.

Some much, much longer.

Liset DeJesus says that she and her husband and two daughters, with the Bronx center their base, have been moving from shelter to shelter every night since June. She says that the girls, who are 10 and 15, have been out of school for a year.

Victor Pellot, who says he gets a military pension for an injured shoulder, says he and his son, 14, have been living this way for seven months.

The families say they have no choice, nowhere else to go.

City officials view the tenacity of these families with alarm. They say these are largely families who do not want to return to overcrowded situations, like doubling up in relatives’ apartments, that are less than ideal, but adequate.

And they worry that the families are reinforcing one another’s behavior in defying the city’s rules, and undermining the reforms made in recent years to make the shelter assignment process faster and less subject to abuse.

So serious are these concerns that the officials are considering denying even a single overnight shelter stay to families who have been evaluated repeatedly and told to return to the homes of relatives or friends.

“We cannot allow this subculture of ineligible families to cast a shadow on the entire process,” said Robert V. Hess, the commissioner of homeless services. “We need to get to the point where ‘no’ really means no.”

The question of who is really homeless has been an issue since 1986, when a state court ruled that the city is required to provide free shelter to needy families.

For a while, the city essentially took in all people who sought lodging at homeless shelters. Then, under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, the city began a 10-day review of applicant families.

Although the city found that many families could return to their relatives, many of the rejected families were simply allowed to reapply and stay in a shelter for a 10-day grace period.

One-night-only placements existed, but usually only while families were in the application phase of the cycle, which could last two or three days.

The entire process was revised under Mayor Bloomberg. The city opened a new intake center at the end of 2004, with new procedures for applying.

Long processing times were reduced by three-fourths, and social services assistance for families found ineligible for shelter, including counseling and one-time rent aid, was offered.

Finally, in the fall of 2005, the city won the explicit right from the court and from the state to deny shelter to families who had been through the application process and found to have a suitable alternative.

The city has been tentative in exercising the new right, recognizing that it could cause a public relations debacle. But with record numbers of families filling the shelter system, more than 28,000 people at last count, city officials say they are forced to separate the miserably overcrowded from those in dire need.

“Overwhelmingly these are young moms who don’t like being doubled up,” Mr. Hess said. “They are using staff and other resources that are slowing the whole system down, and it could have a very detrimental effect on families truly in need. We can’t allow that to happen.”

Advocates for the homeless see it differently. They believe that the city’s evaluation process is still rife with errors. They point to the hundreds of families who have been found eligible for permanent shelter on second, third and fourth applications even in the last year.

The city says most of those cases involved changing family circumstances, but the advocates say the idea that a family would agree to such a crushing daily existence if they had options is ridiculous.

“The city is caught between publicly claiming everything is fine and the brutal realities of families and their children having nowhere else to go,” said Steven Banks, attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, who has filed a pending court complaint about the accuracy of the eligibility rulings. “It is a ticking time bomb.”

The families say they are willing to put up with the single-night stays without real hope that they will ever persuade the city to approve their applications.

Iatia Mabry, 19, says that she, her year-old daughter and her husband have been in the overnight cycle since the end of July. She had been living with a friend in Virginia, but when that woman’s boyfriend got out of prison and moved back in, living there became untenable. A high school dropout on public assistance, Ms. Mabry has not worked for a year. She says that she cannot work until she gets housing and that she cannot afford it on her own.

She says she was bused to a shelter as late as 3 a.m. Like most other families at the Mott Haven office, she has to carry basics like towels and toilet paper with her. Like most others, she says that in general the shelters are clean, but that a few are horrific — and full of mold, which has aggravated her daughter’s asthma.

Still, Ms. Mabry says she cannot return to her mother, with whom she has never gotten along. She ran away at 17. Neither will she live with her mother-in-law, who has an apartment just blocks away from the office in the Bronx and is holding some of their personal belongings. “I am the head of my own household,” Ms. Mabry explained, “and she doesn’t understand that.”

Besides, Ms. Mabry says, that apartment is already full, housing her mother-in-law, her mother-in-law’s husband, the woman’s daughter, and the wife and two children of another of the woman’s sons.

Although Ms. Mabry says she “cries every night,” she says she will not stop seeking the city’s help. The growing group of families at the Bronx office has become a source of comfort for her.

During the long days there, they use sheets from the shelters to make beds in nearby St. Mary’s Park. They take turns holding one another’s children. They share food. And they watch the others’ backs.

The group has “become like a family,” Ms. Mabry said, “and we are not giving up.”

--Herb Smith, President