The news has been scary lately with so many people in trouble due to our economy. At ground zero here on Skid Row in Los Angeles the reality is even more incredible. Real unemployment in Los Angeles is at nearly 21% according to Jack Kaiser of the Los Angeles Economic Corporation. It is no wonder then that families coming to Union Rescue Mission are up over 340% since last year, and our meals are up 32% from 18 months ago. 47% of the families needing shelter throughout the city are homeless for the first time ever in their lives.
And it’s not just Los Angeles, it’s everywhere. I was contacted by a friend of Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, a former NBA great, asking me what could be done about the tent cities springing up in Sacramento and around our country. Sacramento’s tent city has grown to 1200 people and there is talk of demolishing it. But that will not solve the problem.
I have come up with a plan, and though I can’t say that it originated with me, I believe that it is a tremendous alternative to letting folks sleep on the streets or in tents. First of all, the Governor should declare a state of emergency and ask that all armories be opened to house people as we do in the Winter Shelter months. Non-profits like Union Rescue Mission and our EIMAGO public benefits charity should be commissioned to operate them. We could provide emergency housing for 200 people each night, along with meals, a cot, a shower, and bathroom facilities for $1.2 million per armory a year.
Secondly, I received this note from a friend concerning a dream of hers. She told me, “One morning I awoke about 5:30 am to the words, ‘Hotels will be given to house the homeless, restaurants will be given to feed the hungry.’” I considered her dream—the empty hotels/motels in our area that are struggling to do business, and the nearly abandoned restaurants on the brink of closing. Then I thought of the tsunami of families coming our way seeking assistance and experiencing homelessness for the first time in their lives. What if we exchanged hotel/motel vouchers and restaurant vouchers for a small fee? Whatever a family could afford to pay, we put roofs over the heads of children and good food in their bellies while at the same time assisting the hotel and restaurant businesses in keeping their doors open and their employees working. We could provide case management to assist the families in pursuing permanent housing and employment. For those without a partnering family to turn to as they struggle through this ordeal, we could connect them with a church family to encourage them along the way. Some churches could possibly even step up and provide a gym for housing or an empty apartment that they could sponsor. Could we as a city, state, and country find it in our hearts to join in a bit of a bail out program for desperate families—along with some accountability and dignity to boot?
I want to encourage all in authority that this is an increasing emergency situation and needs an emergency response. We should not allow anyone, especially children to experience the devastating effects of homelessness.
Blessings, Andy B
Take a moment to watch this report from NBC Nightly News about Sacramento’s tent cities.
It is difficult to describe the heartbreak I feel as our Winter Shelters close. This weekend 450+ souls were asking, “Where can I go?”The very sad part is that many of these folks have never experienced homelessness before.We saw our economy crumble during the months the emergency Winter Shelters were open (Dec-March).Now as they close, these fearful folks will be on the streets for the first time in their lives.
Friday evening I stopped by the Burbank Winter Shelter to be a part of the very special meal of chicken and ribs our kitchen prepared for the guests.California Assemblyman, Paul Krekorian was there with our other faithful volunteers serving the special meals to the guests at tablecloth covered tables.That night many folks were asking me, “Where can I go?”One of our guests–a tall, handsome, and very polite man–asked me to lead them in prayer before they began eating.I was touched by their spirit of thankfulness even as they were about to face absolute homelessness.Another man called me over to his table. I thought he wanted another plate, but instead he thanked me and said that our Winter Shelter staff was incredibly helpful.
My wife and I visited the West LA Winter Shelter Saturday night.There, I asked Lucy, a lovely redheaded woman to come to URM downtown today so that we could assist her.She responded, “I can’t come downtown! The last time I did I was attacked on the street!”I asked the same to a lovely older woman, Annie, and she agreed to come down and give us a chance to assist her in finding housing.Another fellow hugged me in the parking lot and thanked me for the Winter Shelter.
With a real unemployment rate of 20% in Los Angeles, I have been pleading for help.I have been hoping against hope that Governor Schwarzenegger and other leaders would recognize the emergency we are in during this Great Recession—that they would keep the National Guard Armories open and continue the Winter Shelters year round.Unfortunately, no such leadership or help has come forward.Instead of finding partners to step up with an emergency plan to assist, we find ourselves battling some neighbors and a Burbank City Councilman just in order to open the Burbank Winter Shelter again next year.As a result, the majority of the 450+ people at our Winter Shelters, along with many others from Winter Shelters in the area, will find themselves without a roof tonight.
To add insult to injury, on Sunday I received word that the Sergeant on duty at the Burbank Armory decided to close one day early.Our staff found out at 3:40pm when they showed up to go to work.Our team scrambled to move the folks quickly to our downtown URM gym for the night.
Though my heart is breaking, I am also burning with a bit of (I hope) righteous anger at leaders who seem to be caught like a deer in the headlights instead of responding to the needs of fellow human beings.We at Union Rescue Mission are doing what we can.We are leaving most of our Winter cots up at our downtown facility, though we absolutely do not have the funds to do so. Our faithful staff are meeting with people that we referred from area Winter Shelters, many of whom are rightly scared to death of life on the streets.We are doing our best to assist them in finding a place to go.
Please pray for these precious souls.Pray for our leaders to wake up to the emergency we are in.Pray for Union Rescue Mission and our response.Pray for me.Thank you.
There is no question that this has been a challenging year for Union Rescue Mission, as the number of families needing our help has risen 400 percent;the number of meals served per day nearly doubled; and the number of food boxes given out to local residents is up 7 times.This has been especially true for EIMAGO, our public benefits charity, who has been responsible for opening 4 Winter Shelters.We operate these shelters from December to March in LA and neighboring communities because we strongly believe that everyone deserves a roof overhead, especially during the rainy cool months of the year.We also believe that it is important to regionalize services, and localize the solutions to homelessness so that the incredible number of homeless persons on Skid Row does not continue to grow out of proportion to available services.Each region should be taking care of their own brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts who find themselves homeless and in an incredible situation of need.
Our operations in West LA, Culver City, and at our downtown facility have been praised by their communities.Each of these shelters has received an A+ rating!Our Burbank shelter has had incredible support from most of the community; hundreds of volunteers, including a member of the Academy and her friends have not only volunteered at the shelter several nights a week, but brought tremendous movies for our guests to watch each night.A number of Burbank area churches and agencies enhanced our hospitality by bringing special meals and gifts that had a huge positive impact on our homeless guests. We served several hundred Burbank residents who found themselves without a place to lay their heads from December 1st until this coming March 15th. Included in these several hundred people were 23 Burbank area families with children who arrived at the Burbank Armory with nowhere to turn for shelter.We assisted them with hotel vouchers and connected them with long term help thanks to our own Hope Gardens Family Center in Sylmar, the Door of Hope in Pasadena and other helpful partners.
We thought our biggest challenge at this point in the year would be connecting our guests with long term help between now and the day the Armories close on March 15th, and this is a challenge.However our biggest challenge has come in the form of a blind side from a few neighbors in Burbank who happen to have the ear of some City Council members during an election year.They have made unfortunate and untrue statements about our guests, claiming that all of the guests are addicts, sex offenders and criminals.All of this has been complicated by the local press in Burbank and Glendale printing some of the neighbor’s misleading statements as if they were fact, and I have had to ask and get retractions for their mistakes.
I’ve decided to take this classic NIMBY (not in my backyard) struggle to the local and national media not because Union Rescue Mission will lose an opportunity to assist Burbank in housing their citizens in an Armory for 3 months, and not because this effort is actually costing URM in the areas of funding, time, effort, and now stress. I am going to take a stand because this Winter Shelter opportunity is the minimum that the people in Burbank facing the devastation of homelessness deserve.The discussion should not be about whether to continue to provide the Burbank Armory or even whether to have URM operate it.The discussion should be about what is the City of Burbank going to do to provide a year-round option, a place to live, for the hundreds of individuals and dozens of families who are losing their homes to foreclosure, eviction, and unemployment in what is becoming not only a local emergency, but a national emergency that some are describing as the Great Recession.
At a time when some leadership needs to emerge to deal with the tsunami of people in need (I was actually hoping the Governor would open the armories year round), not only is no one rising up with a plan, but it appears that some leaders in Burbank are readying to pull back on the few services that have been offered.
I am hoping and praying that the majority of citizens in Burbank, especially the ones who have volunteered and met their homeless brothers and sisters face-to-face, will speak up to their leaders and come out on Thursday, March 19th to the Burbank Fire Training Center Meeting Room, 1845 N. Ontario Street, Burbank (1 block north of Victory Blvd., above Ralph Foy Park, 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. to speak up for a local solution to the homelessness faced by many in the Burbank area.
UPDATE
Notice from Burbank neighbors and one City Councilman.
I’m saddened that our guests are being generalized as criminals, addicts and sex offenders when the truth is that many are plumbers, carpenters and writers–out of work and homeless for the first time! We have also had 23 families from the Burbank area arrive at the Winter Shelter seeking refuge. Many of these families have recently become unemployed, foreclosed on or evicted. And nearly 50 percent are experiencing homelessness for the first time ever! After the devastating circumstance of losing a home, how painful to also be defaced by the destructive labels of “criminal”, “drug addict” and “sex offender.”
