andy bales

Thanksgiving

At this time last year I did not believe I would be blogging about Thanksgiving in 2011.  On November 20th after a busy night of deep-frying 200 turkeys from 11p.m. until dawn at Union Rescue Mission in preparation for our big Thanksgiving event, my kidneys failed and for a few weeks I wasn’t sure I would make it.  I certainly believed I would have to retire and go on disability, as I signed up and began the necessary testing process to determine if kidney dialysis or a kidney transplant were options I could consider.  My world was turned upside down.

However, with some encouraging words by Dr. Nirmal Kumar that I needed to “work until I dropped”, strong support from my wife and the Board of Directors & team at URM, tripling of my medication, drinking two glasses of water with a tea spoon of baking soda each day, and going on a strict low phosphorous and low potassium diet, mostly made up of vegetables, fruits and water, along with several rounds of shots of Procrit to boost my red blood cells and rid me of dizziness I was experiencing, my kidney function has improved from 15% to 24%, moving me far away from dialysis for the time being.

I’ve not only improved remarkably in kidney function, but I’ve lost 34 lbs, my red blood cell count has improved  and my cholesterol is so good that hopefully the  blockage in my heart and arteries is being reduced!  I’ve tightened the control of my type 1 diabetes to the point that my tests almost ring true of a normal healthy person!

This strict regimen is the only way for me, as I’ve been dropped off the transplant list.  It seems that I cannot get a transplant until I have an angioplasty to remove a blockage in my heart, and the dye put into my body for the angioplasty would destroy the rest of my kidney function. So I am stuck in a bit of a quandary, but I’ve decided to stay on the strict diet and regimen, and keep doing this work that I love so much.

I haven’t had a diet soda, chocolate, cheese, dairy of any kind, chips, potatoes, and my favorite sweet potatoes or baked beans in nearly 1 year, but it is easy to follow a diet when it keeps you alive and doing the work that you love!

I lost a dear friend this week, a hero of mine, who fell ill at the same time that I did last year.  I don’t fully understand God’s grace to me through this difficult time, but I am so thankful.  My wife shared with me last week, “that we have so much to be thankful for!”

So, again this year I will be up with the URM team, strong, and deep-frying 200 turkeys overnight on Friday and early Saturday morning, preparing to feed 4500 precious friends at our big Thanksgiving event at URM.  And to top it off, I’m feeling well enough to spend the night on the streets with my precious friends tonight to raise awareness of the plight of our neighbors experiencing homelessness. The honor of serving in this ministry and spending time with my family and friends has driven me to do what it takes to survive, and I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Thanks, again, for your faithful prayers!

My Benefit Plan

When folks think of working at a Rescue Mission on Skid Row, they might first think of the heartbreak involved or the tough environment surrounding us on Skid Row, but I think about the amazing “recession proof benefits” that come with the job.  It’s a long list but I think my top three are Life Transformation, Joy and Gratitude…benefits I enjoy each and every day.  Let me share just a few examples of what I mean.

On Monday a graduate of our program that had been working/learning as an apprentice in our Development Department for a number of months walked into my office. He’d been hired full-time, and it was his first day. With tears in his eyes and a broad smile, he walked in with a bottle of Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider (non-alcoholic), and asked a co-worker and me to join him in a toast celebrating his first day as a URM staff member.  How often do you get that reaction when you hire someone?

Another young man, a graduate of our program, and currently in our post graduate transition stage at URM, who is a straight A student, was hired as a part-time graphic artist.  In addition to receiving a badge with his name, photo and the word STAFF on it (standard issue for all URM employees) he was provided with a cubicle in the Development Department to do his work in.  Based on the huge smile, his sincere gratitude and genuine excitement over having a work space to make his own, you’d have thought he been given an executive office with an ocean view.

In chapel this week we received a double dose of Joy, Gratitude and Life Transformation!  First of all we named one of our EVS guys, a custodian, as the employee of the month at URM.  With that, Al received a standing ovation, his picture posted by the HR office, a free parking space next to our elevators, two $20 gift certificates to Subway, his name thrown into a raffle for a 1 week vacation at a nearby resort hotel, and lunch with me the CEO (which according to Al’s boss, is the punishment part of the awardJ). But what touched Al the most was the cheers he received from the men in our program, and the certificate that he received as the Employee of the Month.  He carried it around as if it was an Academy Award proudly sharing it with his friends and colleagues.

After celebrating Al, we were blessed by hearing the testimonies of three men preparing for graduation from our Life Transformation Program.  Each man shared a bit about what their life was like before coming to Union Rescue Mission, the journey they’ve been on for the last 12-18 months as a resident here at URM and most importantly what their life is like today.  It was a solid hour of cheers, tears and inspiration!

It is the thankfulness, gratitude for the little things that we experience every day that makes this such a fulfilling place to work and be involved.  And the best part is…you don’t actually have to be on staff to receive these benefits! Please join us for a graduation (we have one this Sunday, November 6th at 3 p.m.) schedule a tour or become a volunteer, to experience the joy that comes from seeing lives transformed every day.

Blessings,

Andy B.

Setback But Not Deterred

November 2010 - Skid Row Clean & Quiet

Something dreadful is happening on Skid Row in Los Angeles, and it seems no one is taking notice or talking about it. I guess I will be one of the first. Most of the incredible work done from 2005-2010 by the community to restore hope, bring order, and reduce the numbers of precious people living on the streets has been reversed over the last 12 months.  After Steve Lopez and the LA Times published Life on The Streets, much needed overdue attention came to LA’s Skid Row, and the number of people on the street was reduced from 2000 to 600.

In the last 12 months the number of people on the streets of LA’s Skid Row has grown from 888 one year ago, to 1662 on the street last week according to the Central Division of LAPD, and crime has risen.

I attribute this to 3 major factors: the worsening economy bringing high unemployment and a lack of services to people in need, the one size fits all move to Housing First which has caused the limited resources available to move away from emergency services and to permanent supportive housing only, and the recent federal court ruling in favor of LACAN which protects the property of people experiencing homelessness to the extreme point that any type of clean up of Skid Row by anyone is not allowed.

Current Condition of Skid Row

Click on this link to take a quick poll and let us know if you think it should be illegal to remove abandoned property from Skid Row

http://client.mobilecause.com/multiple_choice_polls/LTExMzYxODkwNjY

We’ve seen no reprieve since the Great Recession hit hard in October of 2008, as the tsunami of families and individuals continues to pour into Skid Row and into Union Rescue Mission.  Each hot day that we take cold bottles of water out on the streets, we can see newbies, brand new arrivals to Skid Row walking along in a state of shock, as they’ve either lost their  home, their temporary bed, or have been recently released from prison without any substantial support system or any hope of employment.  I believe the only solution for this is a jobs program similar to the WPA and CCC of the Great Depression era that kept families like my own father’s working and alive as they lived in a tent in Azusa Canyon while my granddad helped build the Azusa Canyon Dam.

The move to Housing 1st is a key to ending homelessness among chronically homeless individuals and veterans, and added to other strategies could be a very good thing for the 10 to 20% of people experiencing homelessness who are indeed chronically suffering on the streets. But instead of adding this strategy to others, proponents of Housing 1st have made it a singular focus, one size fits all approach, and garnered the support of government officials, foundations, and corporations, causing a shift of resources away from the services that support 80% of the people experiencing homelessness.  This has caused many service providers to shrink services or disappear completely, leaving more people than ever out on the mean streets while the limited few who can be served by Housing 1st are saved from the streets.   I believe this has greatly added to the number of people on Skid Row, and while the few are served by Housing 1st, many within the other 80% who drop into homelessness, including children, are left unserved, and will become the chronically homeless of tomorrow, in effect adding to the homeless numbers rather than ending homelessness, as Housing 1st advocates intended.  We needed a both/and approach, continuing emergency services while adding permanent supportive housing to the continuum of care, http://youarethemission.org, not a dropping of emergency services and shifting of all resources to Housing 1st!  Permanent supportive is one of the many steps needed to end homelessness, not the one solution to ending homelessness.  Many may disagree, but the numbers speak for themselves.  The number of people on Skid Row has doubled since the shift of resources to Housing 1st.

Finally, LACAN activists, who seem determined to keep Skid Row, Skid Row, played a key role in shaping a Federal Court ruling that now bars anyone from picking up left behind items from Skid Row.  Believing the pendulum had swung too far in police and street crew clean-ups of abandoned property belonging to people experiencing homelessness, the Federal Court, according to police, did not even consider both sides of the argument and ruled that no one can clean up the streets of Skid Row lest they wrongfully remove the property of persons experiencing homelessness.  This has left piles of debris on the sidewalks, human waste now intermingled in the piles of debris creating a health hazard, and according to Captain Chamberlain of the LAPD, “has taken Skid Row back 10 years!”  LACAN activists are even reportedly dropping off old computers and garbage at the debris piles to make a point!  It seems that a compromise for the sake of all is needed.  Perhaps the CCEA could store left behind property and a 3 day notice could be left at the site of the abandoned goods letting people know where they might find their property?

We’ve definitely suffered a setback in ending homelessness as we know it on Skid Row in Los Angeles, but we will not be deterred.  Union Rescue Mission has pledged to do all that we can to see less than 100 precious souls on the streets of Skid Row by June 2016.

Let your voice be heard on this.  Skid Row is in Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard’s district.  Go to https://roybal-allard.house.gov/Contact/ContactForm.htm to contact her.

Then please go to http://youarethemission.org to see how you can become involved.

Blessings, Andy B.

Andy’s End of Month Update: November 2010

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we wanted to fill you in on what’s been happening at Union Rescue Mission so far this holiday season. Not only have we been busy feeding more people than ever and hosting our annual Thanksgiving Celebration, but we’ve also been celebrating many other achievements and honors this month!

Please take a moment to watch this video and catch up on the latest. As always, thank you so much for your support. We couldn’t do what we do without you!

Both And

I believe that advocates for people experiencing homelessness have made a big mistake in taking sides in the Housing First struggle, pushing for an either/or approach to responding to and ending homelessness in the U.S.

This news article from Columbia, South Carolina also spells out the problem:

Columbia Phasing Out Backing of Homeless Project

By ADAM BEAM,  McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.thestate.com/

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Columbia is phasing out its support for Housing First, the program that places the chronically homeless into permanent housing scattered throughout the city.

The program, which began in 2007, is operated by the University of South Carolina School of Medicine and the Columbia Housing Authority. Its contract expired in June but was renewed for another year.

But with a shrinking budget, council members have asked Housing First officials to begin looking elsewhere for the $247,166 it takes to run the program.

Housing First was a shift in the city’s homeless strategy, focusing on placing the homeless in private, permanent housing around the city instead of concentrating all of its homeless services on one comprehensive shelter.

But Housing First targets the chronically homeless, defined by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development as people who have been continuously homeless for a year or more or who have had four instances of homelessness in the past three years. It does not serve the larger temporary homeless population – folks who find themselves suddenly homeless after a job loss or an accident.

For that reason, the city has begun shifting its money back to a homeless shelter-based approach.

It continues to operate a $500,000 winter homeless shelter and has agreed to contribute $250,000 to the Midlands Housing Alliance, which is building an $11.7 million homeless center. Council members say they can no longer afford the money it takes to place Housing First’s clients into permanent housing.

“We’d love to, but you can’t serve as many people with Housing First,” Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine said. “We still have an obligation to provide the winter shelter.”

While Housing First is expensive, it avoids one of the major pitfalls of homeless services by not having a homeless shelter. Instead, clients are placed in apartments evenly divided among the city’s four council districts. That’s a big selling point for local residents, who often oppose homeless shelters near their neighborhoods.

Most homeless services operate by first providing homeless people with job training, health care and mental health counseling before the ultimate goal of transferring them to permanent housing. But Housing First is the opposite, providing the permanent housing first, followed by the other services.

“We actually find that by providing housing first, you end up with people being clean and sober and people with employment and people with income and people with health care,” said David Parker, University of South Carolina’s director of research and assistant professor at the Department of Medicine who runs the Housing First program.

Since its inception, Housing First has placed 54 people into permanent housing. Of the 54, the average time they were homeless is eight years, Parker said.

The Columbia Housing Authority works to place the clients into permanent housing and train them on how to live in a house.

“The first person we moved in was 15 years on the streets. He doesn’t know how to clean an oven,” said Nancy Stoudenmire with the Columbia Housing Authority.  Currently, the program has 20 people in apartments throughout the city. Thirteen of them are paying a portion of the rent, Stoudenmire said.

Eight clients have successfully transitioned out of the program into independent housing, Parker said. They include a woman whose Housing First apartment was originally furnished by another local nonprofit organization.

“She was so grateful to that nonprofit for (buying the furniture) – she basically made a donation that would cover furniture for somebody else’s apartment,” Parker said. “We get to see a completely different side of homeless people than is often publicized.”

As for the future of the program, Parker and Stoudenmire say they are trying to find grant money to keep it going, including pursuing funding from the Tenant Based Rental Assistance Program.

If it is able to survive, Parker said Housing First also would help out other homeless service providers in the area.

Read more here.

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I recently saw an opportunity for HOME funds to come down from the Federal Government to LA County, and in the description of the funding it mandated that these funds can only be used for Permanent Housing Opportunities.

At a time when we are facing the biggest need ever, and I mean the biggest need in the history of Union Rescue Mission’s 119 years, even bigger than the Great Depression, this restrictive description of the funding was difficult to hear.  Let me first describe the need. In 1933, there were 1.2 million people residing in L.A., and URM fed 133,000 meals.  Last year, there were 3.6 million people in the City of Angels, and we fed 1.25 million meals!  That is a 3 fold proportionate increase in need and services, and we are just 1 of many missions/shelters today, rather than being one of the only ones as we were in 1933!

We ourselves are struggling with how to divide our resources.  Do we move all of our resources to our Hope Gardens Family Center or keep all of the resources at our downtown URM emergency response?  Do we let public officials cry out Housing First only, move all resources to provide permanent supportive housing for the 20% of people experiencing homelessness who are the most chronically homeless and away from the 80% who are episodically experiencing homelessness or who are experiencing homelessness for the first time?

It may be an easy public policy decision to move all of the resources to Housing First only, but when you are on the ground, facing a tsunami of families with children, including one little 4 year old guy named Dorian, who is struggling with a terminal illness, it is a bit more difficult to make the decision to close the shelters/emergency responses down and move the resources to building only a few permanent housing units compared to the vast need. It is like picking a few drowning victims out of an ocean full of need.

If the full truth be known, in that 80% of people experiencing homelessness, there are many who, if their needs go unmet and they are denied emergency services, will in fact end up as the chronic homeless people of tomorrow.  Studies show that the adults experiencing chronic homelessness today were the children who experienced homelessness and poverty a generation ago.  They were sick twice as often, their self-esteem was hurt, they fell behind in school, they were in and out of foster care, and they became our chronically homeless people. That means that our children today experiencing homelessness will be our chronic homeless adults of the future, unless we quit the either/or approach and take a common sense, aggressive Both And approach like Union Rescue Mission’s own You Are The Mission 10 Step Initiative to end homelessness.

As Columbia, South Carolina realized, you can’t turn your back on the multitudes to help a few, but I believe that unlike Columbia, our decision needs to be to step up and provide the much needed help of permanent supportive housing for the few, while still doing everything we can to address the needs of many, and not let one precious human being experience the brutality of life on the streets.

To read more about this subject, check out this article by Ralph Da Costa Nunez, “One Size Does Not Fit All”

As always, I welcome and appreciate your feedback.

Blessings,

Humanitarian Service Award Goes to Andy Bales!

 The OWIN Foundation, a non-profit charitable foundation dedicated to providing aid to orphans and widows throughout the continent of Africa, hosted its 4th Annual Fundraising Gala last Saturday, March 20th.  The theme for the event was, “Development, Africa & You: Erasing Poverty Through Education.”  A.C. Green, formerly of the Los Angeles Lakers and known as the NBA’s Iron Man, was the Key Note Speaker.

Andy Receiving OWIN Award 

Andy Bales was honored as the Humanitarian Service Award Recipient for his 20 years of experience in community outreach and service to “his homeless friends”, as he puts it.  The OWIN Foundation selected Andy because of his work in bringing a new era of unique and innovative services for Los Angeles’ Skid Row community.

Rick Rozman & Andy Bales  

Mr. Rick Rozman, VP of Merrilly Lynch and OWIN Foundation Board Member, presented the award to Andy.

 

 

Wasabi Dare Brings in $50 Donation!

On Thursday, CEO Andy Bales was out to lunch for sushi and decided to challenge a friend to eat a heaping spoonful of wasabi for $20.  Well, the challenge came back at him for $50, and he accepted.  The video below was taken of him successfully completing the dare – and he was kind enough to donate the money to URM!