Light in Darkness
Homeless kids find nonprofits fill in for L.A. Unified
Nestled away on Sixth Street and San Pedro on Skid Row, the Central City Community Outreach is easy to miss. There’s no sign, and the green doors – big and metal – open up onto sidewalks frequently congested with the sleeping homeless.
Inside, though, a completely different story unfolds. In one room, kids sit around reading to each other, with their individual lockers lining the walls in the kitchen. In another, teenagers laugh at viral videos on the brand new computers, while others man the PlayStation 3 hooked up to the plasma screen in front of the brand new couches and the brand new kitchen.
Central City, a Christian organization, operates two programs that help catch some of the homeless students who arrive on the doorsteps of public schools around Los Angeles, a problem described in a story in last week’s CityBeat, “Ailene’s 11 and Homeless: Where Will She and 13,000 Others Go To School Today?”
“Say Yes!” is for elementary school students, most of them from Ninth Street, while the Youth Development Program targets junior high and high-schoolers, who hail from all over the county. It’s part of a small network of small nonprofit organizations downtown that help out, as best they can, schools beleaguered with plentiful homeless students and less than plentiful funds. Offering after-school services to their 50 registered students four days a week, Central City maximizes its help by coordinating its efforts with the schools and focusing on the one-on-one learning experience, while creating and maintaining close relationships with parents as well.
“It’s about relationships and it’s about dignity,” said Grady Martine, Central City’s executive director, discussing its mentoring, homework help shops, and its regular field trips. “We say, confidently, that we know every single family in the skid row area personally.”
Despite having at least one brand new renovated room (the one with the plasma screen and PlayStation, naturally), which was paid for by another church, the center is severely strapped for cash, with most of its staff working as volunteers. The volunteers are kept busy with kids referred to them by local missions, schools, from the organization’s own outreach efforts, and word-of-mouth.
Mario is a lanky, gregarious 6-foot-5, 17-year-old African-American kid with a black doo rag, some peach fuzz and an easy charisma about him. He lives at the Huntington Hotel on skid row in a one-room apartment with his mother and his two younger brothers; they moved down here from Van Nuys about three years ago, when Mario’s mother lost her job. “Wrong place, wrong time,” he sighed, his deep voice reverberating around his throat. The change in atmosphere was a shocker for Mario, who was unprepared for the harsh living downtown. “I was like damn … . The whole world is not nice and pleasant,” he said with a chuckle, remembering when they moved down to the Union Rescue Mission, where they were before the Huntington. “Pros[titutes], drugs, everyday everywhere … . You learn a whole lot when you come down here. [Skid Row] hardens me a little, yeah, but you persevere with God, nothing’s impossible here.”
Mario goes to school at the Metropolitan Skills Center, which is an L.A. Unified school that offers him a little more freedom in his course choices and his schedule. He hopes to become a kindergarten teacher, and is looking toward getting his GED by Christmas. He is optimistic about the future.
“Everybody around here, they used to go to my school and stuff,” Mario said. “I was like, ‘Where y’all going after school?’ They just be disappearing, and so obviously they be going to the Say Yes! program … . They got couches and shit, shoot, I’m down to go. Now they hooked the whole thing up, it’s like a party now, man,” he said with a laugh.
Nonprofits have been of great help to L.A.’s homeless schoolchildren, and these organizations also have tutorial programs similar to the outreach center, like Schools on Wheels, Las Familias del Pueblos, and Para Los Niños. Different organizations help out in other ways as well – the Los Angeles Food Bank, for example, donates 125 food backpacks to Ninth Street Elementary every second Friday, the contents of which go back with the kids to their homes so they can eat properly.
Their efforts only stanch the wound though, rather than stitching it up. Without any large-scale efforts by the federal, state or local governments to address the ongoing crisis of homeless schoolchildren, this problem will only continue to hemorrhage with untold, and dire, consequences.
One question begs to be answered – without any large-scale, comprehensive help, how many of these kids will be able to break out of the cycle? The answers given aren’t hopeful – Ninth Street
Elementary Principal Patricia Hughes, who is about as optimistic as you can get, isn’t too sanguine about these kids’ chances.
“Some I am [hopeful will break out of the cycle], some I don’t think have a chance, because it’s cyclical,” she gloomily notes. “Their parents are in it, their parents’ parents were in it … . No one seems to think that we need mentors for these kids, for them to see what it can be. They never get to see what it can be. They just know what it is.”
Published: 04/09/2008
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I had a couple of interesting conversations
today. One was with an assistant of Mr. Yaroslavski. The other was with 'a customer service rep' for The Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services.
Both were asked about whether The County is allowed to pay less than the State-specified minimum level of Cash Aid to a General Relief client when The County is already operating under a State-approved Distress Waiver to allow reduction of the normal level of Cash Aid to the rock-bottom minimum.
The County is paying less than that by falsely claiming the value of a client's Shared Housing (living with others either not related or not legally responsible to the client) as the same value as Free Rent, which is defined as a landlord supplying a client with his/her own private residence out of pocket with a loss of market value to the landlord,as an in-kind aid which, according to The County, can be deducted from the client's benefits and can also be used to disqualify any applicant, even though these rules are not found in the State Code which requires The Counties of California to take care of it's poor childless singles while the State takes care of families and children.
According to both persons, the County General Relief program is separate from the State and administered independently by The County of Los Angeles with no obligation to any State laws, in spite of being created by the State Welfare and Institutions Code commencing with Section 17000 and in spite of the decision by Gardner vs. The County of Los Angeles(1999) where the judge determined that The County is a contractual division of the State and failed to abide by the very same State Code. The County and the Supervisors, including Mr. Yaroslavsky, were directly sued in court and lost and now they are at it again while the clients who ask about the State Code and County compliance issues are given the run-around
by 'duty-bound' County point scorers eager to earn advancements in their profession by saving The County some money against The County's legal obligations.