Top Story: Public Safety

Homeboy counting on a comeback

Last May, Homeboy Industries was in serious peril. The recession and a costly expansion had crippled the renowned gang intervention program financially. Three-quarters of its staff had been laid off and Father Gregory Boyle, Homeboy’s Jesuit founder, was relying on volunteers just to keep the doors open.

What a difference a year can make.

With a push for federal funding, a barrage of new initiatives, and—crucially—a key $1.3 million contract from Los Angeles County, “we’re still struggling, but we’re back on our feet,” says Veronica Vargas, Homeboy’s chief operating officer.

Not that they’re unscathed. The organization is accepting only about half the in-house job trainees it used to. Health insurance has been cut for trainees in its Chinatown headquarters. The waiting lists for tattoo removal, mental health care and other services are so long, “we’re doing triage,” says Vargas.

But in the past year, Homeboy, which says it helps 12,000 gang members a year with educational, mental health, legal and job training services, has not only dramatically ramped up its business, but also begun to see the fruits of a county-funded initiative to objectively measure the success of its programs.

“I’ll be blunt—so far, it’s not at all what I expected,” says Jorja Leap, one of two UCLA School of Public Affairs scholars who have been monitoring Homeboy both for a separate longitudinal study and as part of the county’s 9-month contract.

Since September, at the county’s behest, Homeboy has been providing job counseling and development, mental health care, tattoo removal and other services for 665 probationers and other high-risk individuals between the ages of 14 and 30. This week, Leap and her colleague, Todd Franke, submitted the second of three progress reports to the county.

Six months into the contract, Leap says, demand has been strong—and growing, particularly among county probationers and parolees under 30. Early figures show that about 100 county clients per month have volunteered for tattoo removal, and about 300 a month have been taking advantage of Homeboy’s employment counseling services. Another 150 or so each month have attended life skills, GED, 12-step and other classes.

Those numbers—and that word “volunteer”—are important because they reflect the extent to which the county might, over time, reduce duplication between Homeboy and its own gang re-entry programs.

Cal Remington, chief deputy of the county’s Department of Probation, says the reports have been encouraging so far, and Homeboy’s success is well-known, but savings ultimately could be limited.

For example, he says, most Homeboy programs are based on the belief that people don’t change unless they want to, and the organization “wants people to come on their own.” But probation and parole are, by their nature, involuntary. Many probationers and parolees do seek out Homeboy, he says, but unless the entire county caseload volunteered, some would still require county-run re-entry programs.

“I think they provide a real service that benefits the county,” he says, “but we’re interested in finding out how many [probationers] voluntarily take advantage of that, and then how they’re doing in the community.”

Additionally, the report has tracked a smaller cohort of job trainees whose positions are also funded under the county contract.

So far, Leap says, about 50 former gang members, two-third of them male, have cycled through those 30 trainee positions. And though gang populations nationally have a 70% recidivism rate, she says, only three of the county’s Homeboy trainees have been re-arrested and none have gone back to prison so far.

On the other hand, she says, one of the 50 has now entered college, four have gone on to full-time jobs with employers outside Homeboy, about 20 have worked their way up to employment at one of Homeboy’s various businesses and another 22 or so are continuing to progress through the program.

Leap cautioned that the numbers are preliminary. And, she says, the data has not yet come in for a planned comparison with retention and recidivism rates in two county-run gang re-entry programs.

“But,” she says, “you don’t need a Ph.D to tell you that these are phenomenal, phenomenal results.”

“This is why I can’t wait for the county to see how well this program works,” exults Vargas. “Nobody back in prison? That’s huge.”

Although four outside placements and a college enrollment may not sound like much after six months, she says, just sticking with the program is an achievement for many gang members.

One young man profiled in Leap’s report had come to the Homeboy program after an 18-month stint in state prison on an armed robbery conviction. The son of a drug-addicted mother and absentee father, he had grown up in a 3-bedroom apartment shared by 30 people in the Nickerson Gardens Housing Project.

He had thrived as a Homeboy trainee, the report says, and was working with young adults just out of probation camps within three months of his arrival. But his family’s gang ties were a constant source of conflict.

“Some family members would openly mock his efforts, while other relatives would pressure him to get back involved in the streets and the gang life style,” the report says. For a while, the young man slept in his car to escape the pressure, but his struggle has been apparent.

“He continues to be an excellent worker,” according to the report, but “he has not kept all his appointments and seems very conflicted about gang involvement.”

It’s a common pattern, says Vargas. Indeed, one of the county-funded trainees—a 22-year-old who had diligently worked his way up to an office assistant job at Homeboy—was shot and killed last month at a late-night party in Hollywood during what authorities said was a gang-related argument.

According to Leap’s report, the vast majority of Homeboy’s clients are county probationers and parolees who are struggling to regain their footing. Many have spent years in and out of probation camps where, the report notes, they missed out on learning even such basic life skills as how to look employers in the eye and offer a firm handshake.

“Says Vargas: “You can’t rehabilitate someone in six months when they’ve been raised all their lives in violence.”

This, she says, is why she hopes the county will consider renewing its relationship with Homeboy when the current contract expires at the end of next month.

That may not be easy, given the county’s own struggles.

“As you know, we have our own deficit to deal with,” says Sheila Williams, who helps oversee the county’s public safety agencies for the Chief Executive Office. But, she adds, so far, there have been no complaints about Homeboy’s performance and “discussions are continuing.”

Meanwhile, Vargas says, Homeboy has been hustling.

The organization has won a federal grant that will to bring in about $400,000 a year for the next three years. Father Boyle has been on a book tour, promoting his acclaimed memoir, “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion” ; those proceeds all go to Homeboy as well, Vargas says.

Ralph’s markets began offering Homeboy’s signature chips and salsas in its supermarkets nationally this year, and another initiative is promoting Homeboy products at farmers’ markets.

The conviction of KB Home’s former chief executive, Bruce Karatz, on charges that he lied about backdating stock options resulted in an unusual sentence in which Karatz—who in the run-up to his trial had already pledged $1.1 million to the organization—would bring his experience and contacts to bear as an unpaid Homeboy consultant. Vargas says they’ve only received about $200,000 of the pledge so far, but credits Karatz with the nailing the Ralph’s salsa deal in just a few phone calls after years of conversations.

And City Hall will soon be getting a new Homeboy café.

“We’re doing everything we can think of,” Vargas says. “We have to. You should see our waiting list.

“There are hundreds of people coming through our doors every month, asking for employment, and right now, we can’t provide it for them.”

Posted 5/5/11

Practicing for peril in paradise

Topanga Canyon is one of the most storied and bucolic nooks in Los Angeles County. It is also one of the most fire-prone.

The only way in or out is via a winding and often-gridlocked blacktop. Gardens and yards intertwine with flammable chaparral and tinder-dry wildlands. Past fires have shown over the years that the canyon could burn end to end in less than half the time it would take for its 12,000 inhabitants to get to safety.

“There’s a reason we call Topanga the ‘Perilous Paradise’,” says Maria Grycan, community services liaison for the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

 “It’s one of the most beautiful places to live and play, but with that beauty comes a great deal of danger in terms of wildfires.”

This is why Topanga has adopted one of the more aggressive strategies in Los Angeles County when it comes to drilling for fire safety: On May 7, for the second year in a row, residents will practice evacuating the entire town.

Sometime in the morning, Topangans will be roused by the sort of “emergency” phone call they could expect in the event of a fast-moving brushfire. If they’ve done their homework, they’ll know what to do next; if not, they’ll have plenty of firefighters around to help them.

Either way, within a few minutes, if all goes as planned, thousands of canyon dwellers will show up and sign in at an assortment of designated addresses where they could survive a wildfire if the canyon’s escape routes were blocked or congested.

Think of it as a massive dry run for an ongoing threat, but don’t call it a fire drill, says Grycan.

“Drills are just to get people out of a burning building,” she says. “This is way beyond that. We’re dealing with a whole canyon here.”

The exercise, which drew nearly 1,100 participants last year, is considered a crucial link in Topanga’s emergency planning. With the serpentine Topanga Canyon Boulevard as the only main road in or out, Topanga is vulnerable to bumper-to-bumper traffic even on better days. Authorities have estimated that evacuating the whole community could take close to six hours—enough time for the town to burn more than twice over, says Grycan. “A fire that started on the north end of Topanga could get all the way through town and to the coast in less than two and a half hours.”

Also, despite its rural reputation, some parts of Topanga are densely populated.

“We live in the Fernwood area, which has so many trees and so many houses that if a fire came to Fernwood, it would be like Armageddon,” says Debra Silbar, who took part in last year’s drill with her then-14- and 9-year-old children in tow.

So at the county’s behest, the unincorporated community has sought in recent years to become a model for preparedness, splitting itself into nine “tactical zones” for easier evacuation, publishing a “Topanga Disaster Survival Guide”, designating safe – or at least survivable – meeting points throughout town for times when evacuation won’t work and educating residents with an annual Topanga Safety Week and evacuation exercise.

This year’s Safety Week will begin May 2 with a series of daily activities to promote awareness. Grycan says a workbook will be mailed to every household to help locals freshen their knowledge. Topanga Elementary School will drill on Wednesday, and county firefighters will demonstrate firefighting techniques.

The week will culminate with the community-wide evacuation exercise from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, May 7. Led by the county fire department, the drill will involve an array of local law enforcement, first responders and government and community volunteer organizations, says Grycan. “The premise is, there’s a fire, the road is in gridlock, evacuation is not an option. Where do you go?”

The exercise, she says, will help residents remember the answers to that question.

“Our first preference in the event of a fire is that people leave early enough that they can get out of the canyon,” says Grycan. “Plan B is, if you can’t get out, then get to a safety area. And Plan C is, if you can’t do Plan B, then at least get to a neighborhood survival area where, say, a fire is more likely to blow over you, or where, if you were caught in a fire, you’d be more likely to survive.”

Additionally, she says, the drill will allow local emergency workers to practice their internal coordination, and will offer a chance to test Alert LA, the mass notification system that they were unable to use last year. Grycan says a last-minute glitch forced emergency workers to use a fallback notification system that only allowed notification of residents with landlines. As a result, many Topangans failed to get the reminder, particularly in less densely populated areas of the canyon.

“We were one of the evacuation sites but nobody showed up at our place,” says Patricia Moore, whose 6-acre Eden Ranch has been designated a neighborhood survival area because of its flat terrain and ample access to water. “There were two people here to take names, and they just kind of sat there, which was kind of sad.”

Pat MacNeil, former chair of the volunteer Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness, says she expects turnout to be even better this year.

 “With all the disasters in Chile and Japan and Louisiana, people are becoming more aware of the fact that they have to take care of themselves,” she says.  

Meanwhile, locals like Silbar say they are looking forward to reprising their civic duty.

“Last year, I put my kids in the car, we drove down and checked in and it literally took one minute,” she says. “It was a simple way to help out the community. But we’ve also had to evacuate before, and we know how crazy things can get in those situations. Drills like this, I think, help our kids realize what happens when there’s an emergency in the canyon, and will give them a better sense of control.”

Posted 4/28/11

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