The wedding of Denny Lyons and Terrie Madrid was less a storybook ending than a new beginning.

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

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

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

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 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

Residents had long complained about crime problems and fire hazards associated with the impoverished community. “I know one of them came and jumped in our hot tub once,” said condo-dweller Jerry Shandy.

The Sheriff’s Department, which last year assumed policing responsibilities from county’s the Office of Public Safety, recently had its Parks Bureau set up shop at the county-owned Bowl, with a mandate to resolve the situation in a way that would help the homeowners as well as the homeless.

Sheriff’s Capt. Stephen Smith called in the department’s special problems team, which confronts crime and quality of life concerns in and around county parks. In addition to figuring out the logistics of shutting down the camp, the team created a plan to provide food, clothing and offers of shelter for the displaced.

Deputy Jason Elkins, a 10-year sheriff’s veteran, twice walked the hillside and notified the homeless that, in the coming weeks, the area would be cleared. The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which manages the public land where the homeless had taken up residence, was brought on board, along with the county Department of Mental Health, Caltrans, the CHP, the Los Angeles City Fire Department and the nonprofit organization PATH (People Assisting the Homeless), among others.

The effort was given a name that stressed its mission: “Hollywood Bowl Homeless Outreach Project”

“We didn’t want to leave anyone displaced,” Elkins said.

The operation began on October 27, with the team making its way up hillsides so steep that the homeless had created rope pulls to make the climb easier. Authorities had expected to encounter 30 homeless people but found that many, including one who’d been there for a decade, had left as a likely result of the notifications.

Of the 14 who remained, ten accepted emergency shelter and the others voluntarily left, sheriff’s officials said.

Caltrans workers filled four trucks with the remains of the dismantled campsites. Follow-up work to remove overgrown vegetation took place Wednesday.

“From our perspective, unfortunately, we have to deal with these kinds of things quite a bit,” said Dash Stolarz of the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which now is working to restore the property and prevent new encampments. “It’s just a constant battle to make sure the parklands are safe.”

On Tuesday, Elkins and another team member, Deputy Nisha Sehdev, went back through the neighborhood Tuesday, talking to appreciative residents about the operation. One of them, Jack Calnan, spoke for the many when he said, “We really appreciate you being on top of it.”

It’s been nearly 18 months since nine homeless women picked up cameras and set out to tell the stories of their world.

From Santa Monica to Skid Row, the women captured striking images: A street-weathered face against a backdrop of palm trees. Haunting yet hopeful interiors decorated with stuffed toys. A Ferris wheel turning under a blue sky as a hand grips a cigarette in the foreground.

The project, under the auspices of Venice Arts in collaboration with the Ocean Park Community Center, came to be called “Got Caught Up Out There.” (See gallery of selected photographs below.)

For some of the women, the experience was transformative. Two have enrolled in Santa Monica College. Among the others, there’s been a reunion with a long-lost friend, a volunteer job, a relocation to Hawaii.

One of the college students, Althea Anderson, is pursuing a career in photojournalism. The other, Rita Elzy, aspires to a master’s degree in fine arts. “My vision is to work with the special needs population,” says Elzy, 57, who at one time was sleeping in a car in Beverly Hills.

“It was fabulous,” she says of the experience. “We were working with professional people. The equipment we used was state of the art. It was just a great way to tell a story.”

Like Elzy, all but two of the women are now in apartments or other housing and receiving services.

Even those who’ve drifted away took something meaningful from the 10-week photo workshop, says Amy Turk, project director of OPCC’S Daybreak program for homeless women with long-term mental illness. “I think it was maybe one of the most professional opportunities they had had for a while.”

Photojournalist Jim Hubbard, creative director at Venice Arts, ran the program with photographers Giselle Macfarlane and Maya Myers. The project received funding from the county Arts Commission.

Hubbard called the participants “an incredible group of women” who brought depth and humor to their work. “Instead of being depressing,” he says, “this was one of the most entertaining projects I’ve ever worked on.”

The women’s photos, which can be viewed online, have been featured at the Venice Arts Gallery and the Sam Francis Gallery at Crossroads School. They also were showcased in a limited edition book that includes quotes from some of the women, including Althea Anderson, who says: “I feel like I got my self-esteem back.”

Posted 8/25/10

The photographers

Philosophical arguments for—and against—an innovative initiative to combat homelessness surfaced Tuesday as Project 50’s most passionate proponent on the Board of Supervisors exchanged views with its leading skeptic.

Their comments came in response to the Los Angeles Times’ four-part series on Project 50, which began in late 2007 and has provided housing to those deemed likeliest to die on Skid Row. It has done so without requiring participants to agree in advance to treatment for substance abuse and other problems, although clients are continually pressured to avail themselves of a range of medical, psychological and drug treatment services once they enter the program. So far, 100% of those who have been housed have received at least one of those services.

Tuesday’s debate turned on the question of housing people without first requiring that they give up drugs.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, a longtime critic of Project 50, spoke first, followed by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the program’s sponsor and most vocal supporter on the board.

Here is a summary of what each supervisor had to say:

Antonovich started by reading from the newspaper’s first installment, which offered a range of anecdotes about the program’s successes and failures, and ended with an account of the difficulties one long-time drug user was experiencing. It centered on a woman who was beset with “psychological triggers everywhere,” including the smell of crack cocaine vapors as she tried to resist  temptation. At one point, she tried to turn her money over to a program official so she would be unable to purchase the drugs that were tempting her. But the official explained she could not legally take her money, and instead helplessly watched as the woman went in search of drugs. “Was it possible to keep people under a roof, even if their addictions and mental illness remained untreated?” Antonovich read, quoting from the article.

Antonovich then reprised some of the questions he had asked when Project 50 came before the board in 2008. He said that assurances he had received then were being proven wrong by the latest quarterly report from Project 50, which he said indicated that “two years into the demonstration, half of the residents with a history of substance abuse are not being treated, which is warehousing without healing.”

He asked Chief Executive Officer William T Fujioka to report back in 14 days on “prohibitions currently in place against Project 50 residents continuing to abuse substances while being housed at taxpayers’ expense.”

Then it was Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s turn.

“I think everyone within the sound of my voice should understand a few things about this program,” Yaroslavsky said. “No. 1, nobody was required as a prerequisite of entering the program [to submit] to a substance abuse test or treatment or see a shrink or do any of the other things as a precondition of entering the program. This is what is revolutionary about this program…If you take the 50 most vulnerable…people on Skid Row or anywhere else in the county and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a unit for you but we want you to go see a psychiatrist first,’ he’ll tell you to take a walk. That’s been the experience.”

Yaroslavsky noted that the participants “were the 62 most chronically homeless people on the streets of downtown Los Angeles at the time they were selected.” He added that “100% of the people who were part of this program got [at least one kind of] treatment—100%. If we had not done this program, none of them would have gotten treatment. They would still be living on the street. And many of them would be dead.”

He said he was reminded of “President Kennedy’s comment when he launched the project to the moon, where he said, ‘We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard.’ This county chose to do Project 50 not because it was easy but because it was hard.”

He concluded by praising Fujioka and others involved in getting Project 50 launched for “having the courage to risk failure.”

“That’s what we don’t do enough of in the public sector…When you try something different, you risk failure. And nobody wants to be associated with a failure. This is not a failure. This is a success—a risk worth taking.”

To date, 84% of the Project 50 participants are still being housed.

Read Zev’s blog on Project 50 here.

Federal housing officials last week awarded more than $4.7 million in housing subsidies to three Third District non-profits that are developing cutting edge programs to house the chronically homeless.

The winners of the competitive “Shelter Plus Care” grants were the Venice Community Housing Corporation, Step Up on Second and Ocean Park Community Center, or OPCC.

The grants from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Department provide apartment rental subsidies, or vouchers, for a five-year period. To qualify, the providers must match the value of the vouchers with spending on health care, case management or other services.

All three winning organizations are committed to the concept of permanent supportive housing—combining long term residences with customized health care and social services for homeless people with the greatest risk of dying on the streets. In Los Angeles County, this approach is the hallmark of the successful Project 50 on Skid Row. Since then, programs based on Project 50 have spread to Santa Monica, Venice, Long Beach, West Hollywood and Van Nuys.

“People are homeless because they have underlying problems that, if not addressed, will keep them homeless,” says Howard Katz, a commissioner with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which will distribute the new funding. “These three organizations have shown that they understand this relationship and know how to effectively address it.”

In addition to the three grants to non-profits, the City of West Hollywood received $1.25 million and the County’s Department of Mental Health $4.13 million in Shelter Plus Care funding.

Here’s how executives of the Third District non-profits say their organizations—and their homeless clients—will benefit from the infusion of rental subsidies:

Steve Clare, executive director of the Venice Community Housing Corporation, which provides housing and services to low income individuals. The organization received $1,133,220.

“That money will allow us to house 20 homeless people with disabilities who have essentially no income. They’ll live at a new project of ours. It’s called Horizon Apartments, and it’s a 20-unit building we’re renovating that’s located a half block from the beach. It’s a beautiful building; it used to be a short-term tourist hotel and it needs relatively little renovation. We hope we’ll have the building ready next winter. The residents will receive case management and other services, and we’ve contracted to provide mental-health services. We have the building and the services lined up, but the rental subsidy this grant provides is critical. Without it, we’d have to be charging residents $800 or $900 a month per person to cover our basic operating costs. The project would be impossible.”

John Maceri , executive director of OPCC, a Westside provider that operates shelters and “housing first” programs for the chronically homeless. The organization received $1,659,900.

“The award is for 40 vouchers and it’s an enormous boost to our ability to house people. It allows us to continue to expand our services to more of the at-risk homeless who have the most to lose by remaining on the street. Ours is a scatter-site application, meaning that we find apartments for clients all over the area, not in a particular building. We already have about 300 units now.  We’ll be working with chronically homeless single adults living with multiple disabilities, from mental health to substance abuse issues and chronic health problems. About 35 percent of the folks we serve are seniors. The length of time on the street ranges from six to 30 years, with the average at 12 years. We have staff who will be intensely involved helping the new clients locate units. I hope we’ll have a start date in the fall.”

Tod Lipka, chief executive of Step Up on Second, a Santa Monica mental health provider, which is launching a new Step Up on Vine project in Hollywood. The organization received $1,980,300.

“We’re converting a three story motel on Vine Street into a 34-unit permanent supportive housing facility for homeless people living on the streets of Hollywood. We acquired the building in August 2009 for $3 million. Our timetable is to begin construction in June 2011 and open in June 2012. We’ll be housing chronically homeless people with mental health disabilities. It’s typically schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression. All of these people will be very low income. The vouchers…are really necessary to cover the gap between the small amounts the residents can pay, which is 30 percent of their income, and the actual operating costs. We’re going to provide ongoing support because housing is a big transition for people who have lived on the streets long-term. As one of our clients said, ‘Getting housing is just the first step’.”

Posted 7/13/10

Vacant for nearly two decades, Building 209 on the Veterans Administration’s sprawling West L.A. property was a one-time mental health ward without a modern mission.

But thanks to $20 million pledged by Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, the three-story, 46,000 square foot facility will get a top-to-bottom renovation and provide chronically-homeless veterans with a new home.

“Ending Veteran homelessness is one of my top priorities, and this building renovation will provide housing and take us one stop closer to achieving our goal,” Shinseki said, referring to a plan he announced last fall to end veterans’ homelessness by 2015. “No veteran should have to face the challenge of being homeless.”

Building 209 will be converted into apartments for 70 to 90 veterans who have long-standing problems with homelessness. The facility will provide not only housing, but also therapeutic services that include medical and mental health care treatment. In Los Angeles County, there are an estimated 6,540 homeless veterans.

The stucco building, built in 1945, was first used as an in-patient psychiatric facility and was later converted for out-patient care. It’s been empty since the early 1990s.

The promise of funding came during a June 16 meeting on Capitol Hill between Shinseki, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Henry Waxman and L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. At the hour-long meeting, held in Feinstein’s office, Shinseki also promised to help the officials find additional funding to convert two adjacent buildings to provide similar housing.

“I’m very encouraged by Secretary Shinseki’s pledge of $20 million to make this renovation project a reality,” Feinstein said in a joint statement with Waxman and Yaroslavsky.

“We so appreciate Secretary Shinseki’s commitment to house our homeless veterans who have already sacrificed so much for our nation,” Yaroslavsky said.

“This action will provide critical long-term therapeutic housing that is long overdue,” Waxman said.

The deal caps an arduous 6-year effort that began in 2004 after Santa Monica Mayor Bobby Shriver, then running for city council, proposed housing the homeless in empty buildings at the VA’s facility.

At the time, the Bush Administration was considering selling portions of the Veterans Administration land, including the property around Building 209, to private developers. The privatization effort failed, and Shriver and other elected officials pushed successfully to have the three buildings set aside for homeless services. In 2007, then-Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson agreed to the plan.

Still, the buildings sat vacant, partly because of a failed effort by VA officials to secure funding from the non-profit sector. Last winter, Feinstein, Waxman and Yaroslavksy pushed the VA to come up with an alternative plan to fund the renovation.

Shinseki’s $20 million pledge will cover seismic retrofitting and a top to bottom overhaul.

“It’ll basically be gutting the whole darned building and redoing it,” said Ronald Norby, director of the VA Desert Pacific Healthcare Network, which covers Southern California and Southern Nevada.

The facility will be the first at the West L.A. facility to provide long-term housing plus therapeutic services for the most difficult to reach veterans, some of whom have been on the street for years.

Additional federal money will be needed to operate the facility, which could be run either by VA staffers or by a non-profit contract provider, according to VA officials.

In a statement Monday, Shriver said the Veterans Administration’s commitment was “fantastic news.” But he added: “We won’t say congratulations until the first homeless veteran is housed and receiving treatment.”