Major Crime Initiative Started in Skid Row last Sunday

Police Presence Stepped Up on Skid Row

LOS ANGELES, September 24, 2006 - About 50 Los Angeles police officers will start walking foot beats Sunday in the Skid Row area.

The long-promised strike force, modeled on a successful one used in North Hills, also will include prosecutors, parole officers and trash crews and aims to reduce crime in the Skid Row area, police said.
"The condition of being homeless in and of itself is not a crime," said Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton. "Officers will focus their activities on behavior, not the condition of being homeless."
"The criminal element, which preys upon the homeless and mentally ill, will be targeted, arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But we will never arrest our way out of the this problem, nor do we intend to," he said.
Officers will obey a court ruling that bans them from arresting people for sleeping on sidewalks, Bratton said.

Check out the TV video report on this intiative.

Some Thoughts about the Next Step for Love LA

We have started to discuss the next step for Love LA. There have been some discussions going on among KM volunteers and among EM volunteers. I think many of us agree that we need a true community church to connect the people who come out to Love LA. It's great that we are getting 200-350 to come out to Love LA every Sunday, but we need to do something about connecting them to a life of a church, discipling them, and giving them a sense of family. If we are not connecting them to a church or become a church ourselves, we might be doing them disservice by providing a worship service and giving them a excuse for not connecting to a church community where deeper tranformation may happen.

I think there are two ways to do this:

1. First option is to hire a pastor, rent a space and plant a church; Love LA can become an outreach of or a starting point for this new church plant. The Love MacArthur Park is a good model for a church plant. The La Luz Church (where Pastor Hector is the senior pastor) leads the outreach of Love MacArthur Park. EM partially supports him financially and KM still sends the burgers and Ki-Won still goes out and helps.

2. The other option is for Love LA to "marry" Central City Community Church of the Nazarene (CCCC)--see entry below about more details concerning CCCC. I use the word marry because it is much more than a partnership. This whole thing is just in a "what-if" stage but, conceptually, Love LA could become an outreach of CCCC, and CCCC could become an outreach/partner of Young Nak (both KM and EM). I think it would be awesome if Young Nak became involved in CCCC and tried to support their ministies where we could--for example, finances, prayers, volunteer forces, etc. Young Nak can continue to volunteer and support Love LA but it would be led by CCCC (just as it would be run by the church plant if we planted a church there). I have spoken with Rev. Jeff Thomas, the senior pastor of CCCC, about this "marriage" and he is open to discussing possibilities. I think the key question is: how can we structure the marriage so that both CCCC and Young Nak feel empowered to continually invest in this ministry as if this was their own?

What do you guys think? You can respond to this posting.

Also, I would like to spend some time discussing this issue on Sunday 10/8 after Love LA. Maybe we should meet at CCCC right after Love LA.

Another LA Times Article about Sleeping in the Streets at Skid Row

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Attempt to Settle Skid Row Suit Fails
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Rebuffing Villaraigosa, the council rejects a plan to let the homeless sleep on sidewalks at night.

By Steve Hymon and Richard Winton

September 21 2006

Defying Police Chief William J. Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday rejected a legal settlement that would have allowed homeless people to sleep on the sidewalks of skid row at night and permitted police to remove them during the day.

The complete article can be viewed here.

L.A. Times Article re Getting Rid of Tents from Skid Row

Plan Would End Homeless 'Tent Cities'

A compromise by the LAPD and ACLU limits the hours and skid row areas where people could sleep. Skeptics say it wouldn't work.

By Richard Winton, Times Staff Writer
September 19, 2006

Los Angeles officials and the American Civil Liberties Union have reached a compromise to settle a lawsuit that has prevented police from arresting homeless people who camp on the streets and sidewalks of skid row, Police Chief William J. Bratton said Monday.

Bratton, speaking to The Times' Editorial Board, declined to provide details. But sources briefed about the compromise said it would allow police to arrest people camping, sleeping or lying on sidewalks between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.

The sources said the settlement also would prohibit encampments at any time within 10 feet of any business or residential entrance.

Such rules would effectively prevent homeless people from creating "tent cities" that the Los Angeles Police Department and downtown business leaders have been trying to remove.

The complete article can be viewed here.

Carjacking Can't Make a Dent in Aid to Homeless

An L.A. woman's daily deliveries to the needy go on with the help of volunteers with vans.
By Erika Hayasaki, Times Staff Writer
September 11, 2006

Gloria Kim did not see the carjacker coming.

On a recent morning just before 4 a.m., Kim was gathering bottles of water and kettles of homemade soup to load into her pickup truck to feed the homeless, as she does each day. She heard the rumble of an engine, turned around and saw a man sitting in the driver's seat of her truck.

"No, no, no!" she shouted, running toward the man. She tried to open the door but he sped away.

"I prayed immediately," said Kim, 65, a frail woman with white hair. "Lord, I don't know about him. Forgive him. Let him repent."



For 20 years, Kim has been feeding the homeless of Los Angeles, rising each day at 2 a.m. to cook vegetable soup and bundle bunches of bananas, grapes and bagels into plastic bags. She distributes the food to people living under bridges, in parking lots and on street corners. The homeless greet her with hugs and call her "Mama." They pray together and sing "Amazing Grace."

The April 30 carjacking was the latest snag for Kim's one-woman mobile soup kitchen. In February, a white Ford van that Kim had used to distribute clothes and food was totaled in a car accident. Kim said she cannot use a third vehicle she owns, an old Dodge van, because it barely runs, a door is broken and it is not insured.

Now, she is relying on volunteers with vans to drive her around to MacArthur Park, Lafayette Park, Koreatown, Griffith Park and downtown.

On days when volunteers cannot help, Kim drives a Toyota station wagon she owns. But she said it is not big enough to carry her daily load: two boxes of bananas, seven gallons of water, 400 bagels, several pounds of grapes, a few bags of socks and other clothes, and enough soup to feed 200 people.

It is a lot of work each day, said Kim, who has cataracts and cannot drive too much on her own. But she said she is getting on with her mission.

"We've done this for many, many years," Kim said Sunday morning before making her rounds with a volunteer who had offered his van for the day. "This never happened."

Kim said she was shocked by the robbery, but figured "he might need a truck. Let him take it. Let him go."

She filed a police report for the white 1998 Toyota pickup with the license plate 5R12164. So far, it has not been returned.

In 1976, Kim emigrated from South Korea, where she had helped a community of leprosy patients. She moved from Florida to Los Angeles with her mother in 1984. Two years later, they started a ministry, becoming familiar faces in the parks and alleys of the city.

When her mother died in 1990, Kim continued on her own. She runs the Zion Gospel Mission Church out of a building on Venice Boulevard that bears the inscription, "Come ye here the sick and brokenhearted." It is there that Kim cooks, holds prayer services and allows homeless people to eat and take showers. She supports herself with the help of donations.

On Sunday, Kim hopped out of the van with a plastic bag filled with plums, bananas and bread, and a pair of new socks. She hurried toward a man sleeping in a parking lot off Blaine and 11th streets, near the Los Angeles Convention Center.

"Hi, brother!" she shouted, waking up Calvert Tillett, 52, who was sleeping beneath a piece of cardboard.

"Hey, Mama," he said. "How you doing?"

"Someone stole my truck," Kim said, handing him the bag of food and socks.

"Oh, no," Tillett replied.

Kim knelt beside him and said a prayer to keep him safe.

"Her mother used to do this, too," Tillett said. "She was an old lady. I remember."

Then Tillett closed his eyes. He prayed for Kim, "Father God, give her strength to continue her work."

An Article from New Yorker re Solving Homelessness

Here's an interesting article ("Million-Dollar Murray") from the New Yorker Magazine about what some of the cities are doing to "solve" homelessness instead of "manage" homelessness. I am not sure if I agree completely, but it is interesting.

Follow this link:
http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html

Impressions

(All photos courtesy of Dora Na)

‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
(Gospel of Matthew 25)

An Article in Christian Newspaper Mentioning Love LA

Skid row controversy welcomed by faith-based groups
Competing issues of homelessness, redevelopment prompt essential dialogue
Christian Examiner

By Sue Sailhamer

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LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Recent efforts by the Central City East Association to steam clean the streets, pick up trash and hose down the sidewalks of Skid Row were applauded by local business owners. But the project drew headlines when the homeless and many of their advocates protested the cleanup and called it a campaign to harass the homeless and push them out of the area.

The Union Rescue Mission and other area ministries are welcoming the headlines as the controversy brings to light the plight of those they serve.

Whose neighborhood is it? Some argue that it belongs to the business and property owners who have invested time, effort and money to reclaim LA’s blighted urban core. Others call it a necessary community for the homeless and downtrodden souls that find themselves, for whatever reason, living on the fringe of society. The city is searching for common ground where the opposing viewpoints can meet.

A 50-square-block area that makes up Skid Row, renamed Hope Central, by several of the area ministries, has the largest concentration of faith-based agencies operating anywhere in the city. Yet the ongoing debate over how to clean it up reveals the sad truth that, despite the best efforts of ministries, social agencies, the police and business associations, Skid Row remains largely unchanged.

“There are more people (living) on the street than there were a year ago,” said Andy Bales, president of the Union Rescue Mission. “It is a very complicated problem.”

Bordered by Third, Alameda, Seventh and Main streets, Skid Row has been a way station for a transitory population since the railroad first brought workers to the city in the 1880s. It is where, on a typical night, 11,000 people make their way to shelters and 1,700 sleep on the street in tents or boxes just a few blocks away from where the state’s penal system releases inmates. It is where heroin addicts die on the sidewalk and the smell of urine can be overpowering.

Prosperous parcels
LA’s red-hot real estate market has put the squeeze on Skid Row as developers rush in to turn run-down properties into loft apartments and trendy retail space. Efforts to gentrify what some prefer to call the “Central City East” district have picked up steam. As California property values have skyrocketed, so have rental prices and the number of people who can’t afford to pay them.

But the gentrification process is on hold for now. In May the City Council put a one-year moratorium on development projects that eliminate existing housing, largely single-room occupancy hotels, called SROs, while it seeks a fair policy that will serve the interests of the community.

“We are thankful for the attention the real estate market is bringing,” Bales said.

He emphasized that he shares the same goal as others—to get people off the streets. But for him and the ministry he leads, it means more than simply moving them out of the area. Bales described the mission’s approach to helping the homeless as wholehearted, treating people with dignity, “one relationship at a time.”

Limited shelter
Getting people off the street requires creating a new place for them to go. And right now, Bales explained, there is no place to send them. Last year the Union Rescue Mission purchased a 71-acre property in the foothills of the San Fernando Valley to use as transitional housing for women and children. Named the Hope Gardens Family Center, the project has stalled due to opposition from area residents who are afraid it will have a negative impact on their neighborhood.

Los Angeles County’s plan to reduce the concentration of homeless on Skid Row by establishing five regional homeless centers across the county has also been greeted with complaints from a number of local communities. The Board of Supervisors backed the plan with a pledge of $100 million for the proposed centers that would provide shelter and services.

The homeless aren’t the only ones living on Skid Row. In some ways they are the newcomers.

“Skid Row is not completely transient. A lot of people get stuck there,” said Kevin Haah, pastor of Love L.A., an open-air church that meets in the parking lot of the Union Rescue Mission.


On the fringe
The onetime corporate attorney explained that the SROs have become permanent housing for many and estimated that 60 percent of his congregation lives in single-room occupancy hotels. Haah said there needs to be more shelters and more low-income housing near the area.

“You can’t just displace the 11,000 people who live there,” he said as he offered his perspective on the issue that is on the minds of many in his congregation.

“They constantly talk about it,” the pastor said. “They are concerned about what is going to happen to them.”

Haah emphasized that the upturn in real estate prices has been devastating for people living on low incomes and has caused many working poor to be pushed out onto the street.

“I think development is a good thing,” Haah said as he summed things up. “But they can’t displace—they must replace.”

Published by Keener Communications Group, September 2006