Stories From Skid Row: Homeless in High School

Jazzmine was told she wouldn’t graduate after her family became homeless. Hope Gardens helped her get her life back.BY UNION RESCUE MISSIONSTORIES FROM SKID ROWEditor's Note: Jazzmine's story is part of the Union Rescue Mission's "Stories From Skid Row" videos available on the organization's website, URM.org.

Hope Gardens

We believe no child should be raised on the dangerous, unforgiving streets of Los Angeles. Yet economic circumstances, illness, and abuse are forcing more mothers and children onto the street. The numbers are tragic. Women and children now make up 40% of all people experiencing homelessness.That’s why we created our Hope Gardens Family Center — an oasis of hope on 71 acres in the foothills of Sylmar, California. This transitional housing campus offers sanctuary to single women and children who are experiencing homelessness. In addition, we offer permanent supportive housing for senior women in our Sequoia Lodge.Hope Gardens helps women transition from homelessness to independence within 12 to 36 months by offering long-term rehabilitation programs, services, and spiritual care.Precious women and children have a safe place to live while they receive counseling, training, encouragement, and the real help they need to escape homelessness forever.

Family Program

The Family Program is designed to help single mothers gain the skills, support, and necessary resources to recover from past trauma — while planning for the future and preparing to maintain permanent housing. They receive the following support and services:

• Onsite therapy
• Life skills education
• Financial and job training
• Educational and social support
• Child care
• Three daily meals
• Access to medical and dental care
• Transportation

Youth Development Program

The Youth Development Program provides a supportive and empowering environment for children who live with their mothers at Hope Gardens. They receive the following support and services:

• Onsite tutoring
• Social and character education
• Mentoring
• Leadership development
• Family therapy
• Planned recreational activities
• Infants and preschool-aged children participate in PEEPS, our onsite childcare and early childhood development program.

Senior Care Program

The Senior Care Program offers affordable permanent housing for elderly ladies who have been devastated by homelessness — allowing them to live with dignity in their twilight years. They receive the following support and services:

• A single-occupancy room with a personal bathroom
• Three meals a day
• 24/7 security
• Transportation
• Medical and legal referrals
• Access to a library, computers, dining area, kitchen, sewing room, living/community room, atrium chapel, patio, and garden grounds

Our goal is to move every precious senior woman, mother, and child off the streets of Skid Row and into the safety of Hope Gardens Family Center.

On the Web

https://urm.org/services/hope-gardens/

4-Year-Old Gives Sandwiches and Love To Homeless [VIDEO]

Delivering chicken sandwiches to the homeless is "just the right thing to do," said 4-year-old Austin Perine of Birmingham, Alabama, in a video interview with a CBS Evening News reporter that's gone viral.Austin, who dresses up with a super hero cape for his weekly rounds among the homeless, tells each person, "don't forget to show love" after he gives out a sandwich.When Austin first learned that people were homeless, he asked his parents to dedicate all his allowance and money they’d spend on toys to buy chicken sandwiches to donate, according to CBS Evening News.Austin also introduces himself as “President Austin.” Austin’s father, TJ Perine, said Austin believes it’s the president’s job to help feed the homeless.“Feeding the homeless is the highlight of my life,” Austin said.He’s also working to establish a shelter facility with hopes to expand nationwide, according to the boy's Twitter account managed by his dad.

Skid Row: Not By Bread Alone

The homeless on LA’s Skid Row are in desperate straits, but giving them more food will not solve their problems

Editor's Note (World Magazine): This article includes disturbing and graphic descriptions of homeless life in LA’s Skid Row.On a warm Friday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row, the acrid stench of fresh-spilled blood stung the congealed odors of fossilized urine and unwashed feet. A man whom locals call Turban stabbed three individuals, leaving a half-mile trail of blood and screams until police officers shot at him six times.

BY SOPHIA LEE

Ronald Troy Collins heard the shrieks from the store he manages at the corner where Turban stabbed his first victim—then his second, and then the third (all, including Turban, survived). Collins knows Turban as the guy who sells cigarettes on the streets, relatively harmless until the day he smoked spice, a synthetic marijuana that regularly sends people to emergency rooms. As sirens blared and the police swarmed over in cars, bicycles, and helicopters, Collins prayed, “Oh Lord, help him, help them, help us.”Such savagery doesn’t surprise Collins, who calls it “another normal-day event in Skid Row.” It only made news because the police shot a man. As someone who’s lived homeless sporadically for 35 years and is still homeless, the 50-year-old Collins has witnessed a multitude of base acts in Skid Row: that deranged, reeking man with an unzipped fly who harasses women with his exposed crotch; drug sale transactions right outside of drug-rehab facilities; spontaneous combustions of shrill arguments and brutal fistfights; public urination and defecation; sex between men and men, women and women, even some bestiality. “There are no rules or regulations down here, nothing! A modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, pretty much.”I’ve also heard locals refer to this 11,000-resident territory as “Devil’s Den,” “man-made hell,” and “where people go to die.” If LA is the homeless capital of America (see “Homeless on the streets of LA,” April 1) , Skid Row serves as its junkyard, collecting the rusting heap of issues that encompass the city’s homelessness crisis.... READ FULL STORY AT WORLD MAGAZINEPhoto: Edward PadgettLA Pastors’ Bottom Line: We Want to Help the City That We Live In

Jewelry Company The Giving Keys Employs LA Homeless

Jewelry company The Giving Keys offers hope, strength by employing the homeless

Last Sunday's Closer, NBC’s Morgan Radford visits the Giving Keys factory in Los Angeles, where the company is helping people transition out of homelessness and offering a chance at redemption.

On the Web:

The Giving Keys - A Pay It Forward CompanyPhoto: The Giving Keys Facebook page

Salvation Army Breaks Ground on 64-Unit Bell Oasis Apartments For Vets, Homeless

BELL — Construction of 64 affordable studio apartments for the homeless began in earnest on Monday as the Salvation Army hosted the official groundbreaking ceremony adjacent to the organization's existing Bell Shelter.The permanent supportive dwellings, named the Bell Oasis Apartments, are planned for U.S. veterans, including those facing chronic mental illness or disability and chronic homelessness. The complex is scheduled to open in Spring 2018.

Salvation Army So Cal: Not Just Bell Ringers and Thrift Shops [VIDEO]

“A project like this doesn’t just happen in a vacuum,” said Major Osei Stewart, General Secretary for the Southern California Division, at the ceremony as reported by New Frontier Chronicle. “It happens because of many like-minded people in the community come together for a common cause and for the common good.”The New Frontier Chronicle, The source of news and networking for The Salvation Army, reports:

Over the past few years, Los Angeles has been working to increase low-cost rent throughout the city to address the growing homelessness population. The city declared homelessness to be a state of emergency, with an estimated county homeless population of 47,000 people.The 68,000-square-foot Bell Oasis complex will allow the Bell Shelter campus to offer facilities for people in all stages of housing transition such as crisis housing, transitional housing and, once completed, permanent supportive housing. The apartments will also have an on-site health clinic, employment services, an exercise room, gym, and community room. Residents of the apartments will be allowed to stay as long as they can pay rent. Residents will also have access to on-site case management and supportive services through referrals and partnerships with other organizations.

“The only reason we knew this project was going to happen was because there was the support of the community,” Salvation Army Lt. Col. Kyle Smith said. “None of us just woke up one day and had a whole lot of money. It didn’t fall from the sky. The Salvation Army is representative of the support of the community in which we are in."Smith added, “I’m excited about this and the lives that are going to be changed.”At the ceremony, Territorial Commander Commissioner Kenneth G. Hodder challenged the idea that the 64 units will not make a sizeable difference in the fight against the rampant homelessness in Los Angeles County.“The victories for which we fight in The Salvation Army happen one at a time,” said Hodder, as reported by the Chronicle. “Whenever a person comes off the street at night, it’s a victory. Whenever a hungry person receives a hot meal, it’s a victory…whenever one person has a roof over their head and can live with dignity and with hope, and a future, it’s a very big victory indeed.”

The Salvation Army, an international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church, according to its mission statement. “Its message is based on the Bible. Its ministry is motivated by the love of God. Its mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination.”