Homeless Aid Effort Called a Success

by Richard Guzmán
Downtown LA News

Twenty-three of the 50 homeless people deemed most likely to die on the streets of Skid Row have been moved off the sidewalks and into apartments, county and other officials announced last week. They expressed optimism that 27 others would soon be receiving aid from social service providers.

At a Wednesday, April 16, update on the progress of a program called Project 50, county officials and others spent ample time congratulating each other on the initial success of the effort. None of the people enrolled in the program attended, and their identities were not released.

The $5.6 million, three-year pilot program began about four months ago, when officials with Common Ground, which won a county contract to run the program, began fanning out across Skid Row. They interacted with 471 people sleeping on the sidewalks, inside tents and under cardboard or blankets while searching for the area's most vulnerable homeless residents.

Read the full article over here.

Congrats to OG

Last Friday (April 11th), OG was honored by the folks at City Hall with an award for the Skid Row Streetball League 3 on 3 and the positive change its creating within the community.

Impromptu protest cuts in on mayor's skid row speech

OG is on the LA Times...ah yea! Go OG!

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By Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 2, 2008


As the event wound down, the disruption finally appeared to get at Villaraigosa. Briefly acknowledging the protesters, he said: "The folks behind me, almost none of them live on skid row."

As it turned out, Villaraigosa was right. The protesters were volunteers at the Los Angeles Catholic Worker soup kitchen. Two of them live at a Catholic Worker home in Boyle Heights, another lives in West Covina. In addition to the "hippie kitchen," as the skid row site is known, the group runs a medical and dental clinic.

Their Catholic Worker protest emerged out of thin air.

After the news conference, a few longtime skid row residents condemned the dissenters, saying Villaraigosa and the city have made positive strides to reduce crime and clean up one of L.A.'s dirtiest pockets.

"You can't speak for me. I live here," Emanuel Compito, wearing a suit and a large cross, said loud enough for everyone to hear. "They're only here from 9 to 5. They're gonna go home to their nice, comfortable conditions."

Light in Darkness

Homeless kids find nonprofits fill in for L.A. Unified
By Matthew Mundy
Los Angeles City Beat


Mario is a lanky, gregarious 6-foot-5, 17-year-old African-American kid with a black doo rag, some peach fuzz and an easy charisma about him. He lives at the Huntington Hotel on skid row in a one-room apartment with his mother and his two younger brothers; they moved down here from Van Nuys about three years ago, when Mario’s mother lost her job. “Wrong place, wrong time,” he sighed, his deep voice reverberating around his throat. The change in atmosphere was a shocker for Mario, who was unprepared for the harsh living downtown. “I was like damn … . The whole world is not nice and pleasant,” he said with a chuckle, remembering when they moved down to the Union Rescue Mission, where they were before the Huntington. “Pros[titutes], drugs, everyday everywhere … . You learn a whole lot when you come down here. [Skid Row] hardens me a little, yeah, but you persevere with God, nothing’s impossible here.”

Nonprofits have been of great help to L.A.’s homeless schoolchildren, and these organizations also have tutorial programs similar to the outreach center, like Schools on Wheels, Las Familias del Pueblos, and Para Los Niños. Different organizations help out in other ways as well – the Los Angeles Food Bank, for example, donates 125 food backpacks to Ninth Street Elementary every second Friday, the contents of which go back with the kids to their homes so they can eat properly.

Their efforts only stanch the wound though, rather than stitching it up. Without any large-scale efforts by the federal, state or local governments to address the ongoing crisis of homeless schoolchildren, this problem will only continue to hemorrhage with untold, and dire, consequences.

One question begs to be answered – without any large-scale, comprehensive help, how many of these kids will be able to break out of the cycle? The answers given aren’t hopeful – Ninth Street

Read the full article over here.