LA patient dumping settlement misses Skid Row

LA patient dumping settlement misses Skid Row

By SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER (AP) – 20 hours ago

LOS ANGELES — The city attorney stood on the roof of a homeless shelter high above the human misery of Skid Row in April and announced a $1.6 million settlement from a hospital accused of dumping about 150 mentally ill patients on the streets.

Rocky Delgadillo trumpeted the penalty, castigated those who took advantage of society's most vulnerable and praised the Union Rescue Mission's chief executive as an inspiration for the investigation that led to the settlement.

What seemed like a big payday for the shelter and other nonprofits that have fought homelessness, mental illness and drug abuse on Skid Row for years, however, turned out to be no such bonanza. Instead, the lion's share went to an organization in Pasadena — a suburb a dozen miles away — to provide grief counseling to school children.

Three months later, the shelters say they can't figure out why Delgadillo, who finished his term of office last month and is considering a run for state attorney general, let $900,000 go outside the community they serve.

The Mission and three other Skid Row providers received $50,000 apiece, and another group got $100,000. Another $400,000 in fines went to the city and county.

While Delgadillo was still in office, his staff refused to discuss how Hathaway-Sycamores Child and Family Services came to reap the award. His office rejected a California Public Records Act request by The Associated Press on the grounds that negotiations in the case were secret.

When contacted by The AP on Friday, Delgadillo said donating to Hathaway-Sycamores was a preventative approach to what ails Los Angeles' youth, and will prevent them from "ending up in a cemetery, jail or on Skid Row."

Delgadillo said Skid Row providers face "an uphill battle" in rehabilitating homeless people, so funding the children's mental health organization was "much better than a passive, Band-aid, back-end approach."

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2 LA Worlds? Colliding?

Collision of 2 L.A. worlds may have led to girl's death
Tue 28 Jul 2009
By Richard Winton, Ari B. Bloomekatz and Joel Rubin
LA Times
(images courtesy of LA Times)



Lily Burk and Charles Samuel walked in separate worlds.

Burk was a bright, bookish 17-year-old, whose future was ahead of her.
After a summer in which she was to appear on stage as the lead in a
play and volunteer at a skid row needle exchange program, she was to
have started her final year of high school.

Samuel, 50, had been in and out of prisons for decades. He was a
transient with a long record of criminal activities and drug abuse.

Friday, on a hot, bright afternoon, chance brought the two together on
a quiet, tree-lined street.

Burk walked down Wilshire Place about 3 p.m., leaving the former
Bullock's Wilshire department store that today is home to Southwestern
University School of Law. Under her arm, she carried a box of
paperwork that her mother, who taught at the school, had asked her to
pick up. Samuel had walked out of a nearby residential drug treatment
program earlier in the afternoon. He had been ordered there after a
recent arrest but had been given permission to leave for the day. As
Burk approached her Volvo sedan near 7th Street, Samuel confronted
her...



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The State of Homelessness in the US

By MJ Stephey
Time Magazine
Monday, July 13th, 2009

There are few economic indicators as grim as homelessness, as the Department of Department of Housing and Urban Development demonstrates in its 4th annual report on the topic, which found that some 1.6 million Americans stayed at homeless shelters from October 2007 to September 2008. The Department also noticed some troubling trends: more families seeking shelter — particularly in rural and suburban areas — and more people going to shelters from stable living arrangements (instead of jails, institutional settings or the military).

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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1910070,00.html

Law Center slams L.A. as America's 'meanest city' toward homeless

From the staff of the Los Angeles Times and… 2:58 PM | July 14, 2009

Los Angeles tops the list of America's "10 Meanest Cities" in its treatment of the homeless as criminals, two legal advocacy agencies for the poor say in a report proposing alternatives for handling the down-and-out.

The survey of 273 cities by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless based its rankings on the number of laws targeting the homeless by making it illegal to sleep, eat or sit in public spaces.

"Homelessness in America is a human-rights crisis right here at home," said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the law center. "As foreclosures continue and the recession deepens, the crisis is affecting more and more Americans. But while some cities offer a helping hand, too often, as documented in our report, cities adopt unjust laws and practices that punish people simply for being poor and homeless."


Check out the full article here.