Homelessness

From this day forward

This is not a fairytale love story.

Over the course of 23 years together, Denny Lyons and Terrie Madrid have lived in an improvised lean-to on a deserted restaurant patio. They’ve had—and lost touch with—a now-teenaged daughter and son. They’ve battled illness, unemployment, substance abuse.

In short, this chronically homeless pair has lived on the bleak side of “for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health” in a way most couples can’t begin to imagine.

But now, after more than two decades of bad choices and bad breaks—and with a big assist from an initiative called Project 60—they just took a step in a new direction.

They got married.

Their wedding, celebrated Friday on the beach in Santa Monica and captured in the video above, clears the way for them to live together in their own apartment under a recently-issued federal housing voucher.

Beyond that important practical benefit, the ceremony also marked something of an emotional milestone—a tribute to staying together against long odds.

“It’s time,” said Lyons, 58. “She stood by me through thick and thin. It’s been real hard on her.”

Or, as the V.A. chaplain who performed the wedding put it: “This is a good example of love in action.”

Things started looking up for the couple about 11 months ago, when they entered the Santa Monica shelter called Samoshel, run by the Ocean Park Community Center. For now, and until they get their own apartment, they bunk down every night in separate men’s and women’s sleeping facilities. But they were able to bring their little dog, Bambi, with them into the shelter—a crucial point as they debated whether to come in off the streets last winter.

Progress has accelerated in recent weeks with Lyons’ admittance into Project 60. The initiative is devoted to finding what’s known as permanent supportive housing for homeless veterans like Lyons, who served in the Navy Reserve. It’s a spinoff of the better-known Project 50, which has targeted some of the most chronic cases on downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row with a holistic approach to housing, health care, mental health and substance abuse treatment.  It’s estimated that 7,000 veterans are now homeless on Los Angeles County streets. Project 60 aims to help some of the most vulnerable among them, like Lyons, through a partnership of the West Los Angeles V.A., Los Angeles County and other government and nonprofit agencies.

Lyons  is now receiving veterans’ benefits. He has been granted probation for what he described as old drug warrants that had him “living the life of a fugitive, more or less.” And he’s no longer panhandling on the street with a sign reading: “Smile. It could be worse. You could be me.”

Lyons, who said he once worked regularly in construction, said he’s been unable to find employment since he developed vascular necrosis in both hips. “It wiped out my ability to work,” he says.

And Madrid, 56, said she has lost touch with family—the18-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son she and Lyons had together, and her six other adult children. She said wistfully that she has tried unsuccessfully over the years to get back in contact with her mother and youngest child, who she thinks are living in Whittier. As she and Lyons sat down on their wedding day to list some of the good things that have happened to them lately, she said all that was missing was a reconnection with her family.

Still, “compared to where they were a year ago, it’s just night and day,” said Ben McAvay, who served as Lyons’ best man.

McAvay said he first met the couple 2½ years ago when they would stand every day at his bus stop as he headed to law school classes at UCLA. He said the wedding is just the “icing on the cake” in a saga of struggle and life changes.

“This is just like the cool part of the story,” McAvay said.

The wedding ceremony took place just south of the Santa Monica Pier—not far from where Lyons and Madrid once settled their sleeping bags into makeshift foxholes they’d dug in the sand to sleep each night during a particularly tough 8-month stretch.

A small knot of friends (human and canine) gathered to watch, as cyclists, rollerbladers and Hot Dog on a Stick customers wandered by, oblivious to the big occasion playing out in the shadow of the pier’s carousel. Lyons wore a tie and jacket (courtesy of a local thrift shop) and Madrid arrived in the wedding dress that the residents’ council at Samoshel bought for her, using money earned collecting bottles and cans. The bride had to keep reminding herself that she could now smile broadly for photos, thanks to a gift of dental work funded by her maid of honor, Linda Nixon.

Bambi, prompted by Samoshel project director Patricia Bauman, delivered the rings at the appropriate moment. Then it was time for retired U.S. Army Chaplain Herman Kemp of the V.A. to pronounce the couple husband and wife. There was applause, and a few happy barks.

Many challenges lie ahead, including surgery to replace both of Lyons’ hips.

But on Friday, there were blessings to be counted—among them the resilience to keep moving forward together over the course of many years.

“Hope,” Lyons said, “is the one thing you’ve got to keep.”

Posted 11/22/11

Kobe jumps in to help homeless kids

Turning life around for L.A.’s homeless youth is a tall order. Now there’s an NBA star in the arena.

Game on.

Kobe Bryant and his wife, Vanessa, announced this week that they are throwing the resources of their family foundation into making a difference in the lives of homeless kids.

“We’re going to attack this,” Bryant said during a news conference at My Friend’s Place, a drop-in center for homeless youth in Hollywood. “We’re going to go after it and we’re going to solve it.”

The Lakers guard said he was moved by the life stories of kids he met there. “It’s heart-wrenching stuff,” he said.

Getting involved means more than just financial support, he said; it also means forging a personal connection with homeless young people.

“Basically we want to help them kick butt,” he said. “What I do in the game of basketball is easy compared to what they have to go through. What they have to go through, that’s real determination.”

Bryant said some of the specifics of what the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Family Foundation will undertake are still being worked out. “We’re still educating ourselves on the issue because we’re kind of brand new to it. But we sunk our teeth into it, man, and we’re going to go after it.”

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents the area and is one of Los Angeles’ leading advocates for homeless issues, praised the Bryants for getting involved—not just for their foundation’s support but for their star quality, which helps draw greater public attention to the problem.

“Homelessness is one of the great stains on American society to this day,” Yaroslavsky said. “The richest society on earth still has hundreds of thousands of people across the country who live on the streets. Here in Los Angeles County, 48,000 homeless persons live on the streets. Almost 20% of them are veterans of the United States military; 7,000 of them are youth.”

He said the county, along with a network of nonprofit service providers, is committed to working with the Bryants to help turn those statistics around.

“This is the center of youth homelessness in Los Angeles County. And if we can solve youth homelessness in Hollywood, we’ll be a long way to solving it for the county as a whole,” Yaroslavsky said.

Bryant said it is possible to drive past homeless people on the streets of Los Angeles and not have their plight register.

“After a game, driving home, you see the issue around you but you don’t see it. It’s kind of one of those things you glance over… It’s all around us. And it’s not fair. And it’s something that we can solve, so let’s do it.”

Posted 6/8/11

An heiress with heart

There’s not a whiff of wealth around Aileen Getty. Her fingers are circled not with diamonds but with intricate tattoos. She wears bright yellow sneakers and sanely-priced jeans. Her face is free of makeup, warm and welcoming.

Aileen Getty’s grandfather was the billionaire oil baron J. Paul Getty. But these days she has found richness in her life on the far margins of society. A former heroin and cocaine addict who has been living with AIDS for more than two decades, she has emerged as arguably the most influential friend and benefactor of the homeless of Hollywood.

“I’ve been able to grow alongside them,” she says, “while they grow alongside me.”

During the past five years, Getty, 51, has quietly contributed millions of dollars to provide housing and food for Hollywood’s entrenched homeless population through her Gettlove organization and through gifts and loans to several other advocacy groups. By all accounts, she’s changed the landscape.

Getty says her own “inability to get well” has created in her a natural affinity with those struggling on the streets, most of whom are plagued by mental health and substance abuse problems.

“I’ve been an addict most of my life,” says Getty, who celebrated five years of sobriety on Valentine’s Day last month. “In my own journey, I really felt like I could either die or say, ‘Thank you and I’m sorry.’ I felt I had taken far more than I’d ever given. I didn’t want to go out that way…I rewrote my interior geography. That geography is now about others. ”

Gettlove, founded in 2005, has provided a variety of housing alternatives, depending on the needs of its clients. That includes refurbishing 30 rooms at two 1920s-era Hollywood hotels and lining up apartments for nearly two dozen homeless people in an aging Santa Monica Boulevard building. There, Gettlove staffers help tenants manage their finances and adjust to life with a roof.

At the same time, Getty individually has funded other organizations—Step Up On Second, PATH and Housing Works—to help them develop permanent housing for residents who simultaneously receive such services as health and mental health care. This month, Getty’s efforts led to her being honored as “woman of the year” for Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s Third District.

Underlying all of Getty’s financial and logistical contributions is her core belief in the power of one-on-one relationships to, in her words, “rekindle the part of a human being that wants to find its best self.”

“Just because we’re housed doesn’t mean our spirit is comfortable,” says Getty, whose organization has taken clients on outings to, among other places, the L.A. County fair and the horse track.

Beyond housing, Gettlove serves hundreds of breakfasts and lunches each week at a social services agency founded by Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood. Gettlove shares the Selma Avenue building with several other homeless advocacy organizations, a reflection of the growing coordination among non-profits, business owners and government agencies to reduce homelessness in Los Angeles’ most famous neighborhood. A 2009 count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority found more than 1,000 individuals living on the streets of greater Hollywood, half of them young people.

Getty can often be found at Blessed Sacrament’s social services facility spooning out food in the industrial-sized kitchen or mingling with clients in the dusty courtyard. Most have no clue about the family ties of the soft-spoken woman, who treats them as though they were her only family. But some have heard the buzz.

“I hear you’re one of the Gettys. Is that true?” they’ll ask. When Getty says yes, the matter quickly passes because her commitment to them has already become the defining characteristic of their relationship.

“The clients know me for what I do with them each day,” Getty says, “not what I give to them each day.”

That said, Getty also knows her wealth is central to Gettlove’s effectiveness, giving her an edge over traditional service groups that must be accountable to the agencies that fund them. “I’m not dependent on anyone else’s expectations,” she says.

This extraordinary financial freedom allows Gettlove to experiment, to learn what works and then collaborate with government agencies to bring to life these “best practices” models.

Says Getty’s longtime friend and fellow Gettlove board member, John Ladner: “We’re taking advantage of our inexperience. We have the advantage of not too many set-in-stone obstacles.”

Looking ahead, Getty believes that providing homes to the homeless should not be embraced as an end in itself. “Nothing is solved,” she says, “unless we nurture a sense of community.” To that end, she envisions the development of community centers, where the homeless and the newly housed can gather during the day and enjoy the restorative powers that come with companionship and “a true sense of belonging.”

Among other things, she says these centers would offer everything from movies to gardening. “Someplace where people get to laugh,” Getty says—something that, these days, comes much easier in her own life. Says Getty: “I’ve become a more comfortable human being.”

Posted 3/24/11

They count. Will you?

At last count, some 42,694 homeless men, women and children were struggling on the streets of Los Angeles County.

That last count was two years ago. The next count begins later this month, when cities and counties across the nation—Los Angeles among them—will take to the recession-wracked sidewalks, shelters, hospitals, jails and underpasses in a crucial, federally mandated effort to attach hard numbers to the vexing issue of homelessness.

To that end, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which conducts the biennial head count for the city and county, is looking for a few thousand sharp-eyed volunteers. Enumerators will be asked to donate five hours during the week nights of January 25-27, or during the morning of January 27, to fan out across the county in search of homeless people and help document their existence. Training and security will be provided; volunteers won’t interact with the homeless, just observe and tally.

“We need 4,000 people,” says LAHSA Communications Director Calvin J. Fortenberry, noting that the opportunity is open to any volunteer over 18.

“These counts are aimed at assessing the severity of the problem here and then moving people into housing. It’s a unique volunteer experience, one that goes beyond the usual clothing or food drive.”

 The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has required the count since 2005 as a condition for federal funding for homeless programs, despite the inherent difficulties in tracking people who, by definition, have no fixed address.

The challenge is particularly tough in Los Angeles County—a metropolis the size of Rhode Island and Delaware put together—but the data have offered one of the few sources of hard information on the issue, and the count has helped local authorities determine how best to allocate services for the homeless.

The 2009 count revealed, for instance, that two-thirds of the area’s homeless had no shelter, that about a quarter were mentally ill, that a third were women and that about one in six were veterans. It also confirmed that homelessness extends well beyond Skid Row to every corner of the county.

At the same time, however, it indicated that although the homeless population in Greater L.A. remains the nation’s largest, the problem appears to be shrinking.  Volunteers counted 88,345 homeless people in 2005, but found only 68,808 in 2007 and just 42,694 in 2009—a drop of nearly 52% in four years even though the area was reeling from financial collapse and record foreclosures. Some of that drop, however, can be attributed to a shift in the count methodologies. In the first counts, the results relied mostly on extrapolations. More recently, there have been growing efforts to increase the accuracy of those numbers by conducting full counts–an effort requiring even more volunteers.

Some advocates for the homeless took issue, concerned both that the statistics were not reflecting the demand they were experiencing on the front lines, and that falling numbers might translate into diminished funding.

Fortenberry says all this just underscores the importance of the count in 2011.

“This is all the more reason to get involved,” he says. “We’re focusing on the need, and the need is more than 40,000 people with no permanent place to live.”

Interested in helping? Click here, or contact LAHSA at (213) 225-8433 or go to theycountwillyou.org.

A five-year plan to end homelessness

A growing number of business and political leaders in Los Angeles are rallying behind a plan that boldly promises to end chronic homelessness within five years—a plan that on Wednesday got an announced boost of $13 million from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

The plan, Home For Good, calls for a sweeping reorientation of strategies and expenditures in Los Angeles County for the chronically homeless and military veterans living on the region’s streets.  The goal is to provide permanent, rather than temporary, housing to these individuals, who would then immediately have access to a stream of health and mental health services to help them restore their lives.

At the same time, according to the plan, taxpayers would be saved millions of dollars now being spent by the criminal justice and emergency health care systems to cope with the county’s huge homeless population.

“We need to shift the paradigm away from a system that has been cumbersome and confusing to an efficient system focused on finding people homes,” states the report, a joint initiative of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

This model, known as “permanent supportive housing,” has taken root in cities across the nation, including Los Angeles, where a program called Project 50 on Skid Row has shown dramatic results.

At an event on Wednesday to publicize the Home For Good action plan, a number of Los Angeles’ top officials were on hand, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who initiated Project 50 and has backed its replication throughout his district and beyond.

During his remarks at the gathering, Yaroslavsky said that Home For Good “sets the record straight” that permanent supportive housing is the most effective approach to helping individuals who’ve been identified as the most likely to die on the streets.

Once these people are in a home—and a trusting relationship has been established—“we can open their minds and their hearts to the treatment they need, the services they need, so they can function in our society,” Yaroslavsky said. “In order to end homelessness, we’ve got to provide a home.”

Yaroslavsky’s comments were indirectly aimed at critics of the housing first approach, who argue that homeless individuals should not be given publicly supported residences unless they’re first receiving mental health care and substance abuse treatment.

That is not, however, the prevailing attitude among the unprecedented coalition of elected officials, business leaders, philanthropists, religious leaders and housing advocates who’ve endorsed the United Way/Chamber of Commerce initiative.

Permanent supportive housing also is the favored approach of the Obama Administration, as was made clear on Wednesday by Barbara Poppe, executive director of the U.S Interagency Council on Homelessness. She said the Home For Good blueprint could open the door to more federal funding. “It’s not enough to plan,” she said. “It’s only enough if we act.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas agreed, saying: “We must turn Home For Good into action. Measurable results, in the final analysis, is what matters.”

To help ensure that action, Steven M. Hilton announced that the Hilton Foundation would provide $13 million in grants, spread across three years, to fund key components of the campaign. The approach advocated by Home for Good “restores stability, autonomy and dignity and helps the individual integrate back into the community,” said Hilton, president and CEO of the foundation.

Hilton said that $9 million of grants will be given to the Corporation for Supportive Housing to spur the creation of 2,500 new permanent supportive housing units; $3.6 million will be used to identify and house 4,500 of the most vulnerable people on the streets. The rest will be distributed to other non-profit and faith-based efforts on behalf of the chronically homeless.

He called Los Angeles’ homeless problem “shameful,” and said that the homeless man on the street is “somebody’s son, father, brother. In effect, they’re one of us.”

Posted 12/1/10

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