When most of us think of helping the homeless, images of homeless shelters and food kitchens probably come to mind, not community gardens and running tracks. But Los Angeles thought the latter would be beneficial, so that’s what they developed.
The City of Angels and the Skid Row downtown area, in particular, has a chronic homeless problem. And since other policies and endeavors haven’t worked, the city decided to try something different. So they built the Star Apartment complex.
Not only does the 15,000-square-foot apartment complex offer 102 units, but it also boasts a community garden, library, running track, art room and exercise facility. The purpose of the apartments is to instill a sense of normalcy for the residents — all of whom were previously homeless.
“The community that lives here should have a similar environment to anybody that could afford something more expensive,” Star Apartments designer Michael Maltzan tells the L.A. Times.
Sharing the building is L.A. County’s Department of Health Services Housing for Health Division. Using a variety of services, the Department works to improve the lives and health of the county’s homeless. Over the next 10 years, the Department’s goal is to provide housing for 10,000 people, according to the Huffington Post.
All of this is possible due to the efforts of the Skid Row Housing Trust, which helps find affordable homes for those with disabilities, poor health, mental illness and addiction and the low-income. In order to finance Star Apartments, the Trust received low-income housing tax credit equity from Bank of America and the National Equity Fund.
Any occupant of the Star Apartment complex who earns a salary must allocate 30 percent of it to their rent.
While it may seem that providing housing and amenities for the homeless would be costly to taxpayers and the city, it’s actually saving money. According to the 2014 study by the Central Florida Commission of Homeless, right now it costs about $31,000 a year to provide for one homeless person (due to the high cost of paying for medical and psychiatric hospitalization, jail time and emergency rooms), whereas operating the Star Apartments will only cost about $10,000 per resident for a year.
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Tag: Low-Income Communities
Where Mentoring, Not Donations, Makes a Difference for Immigrant Families
In diverse Stamford, Conn., 40 percent of the residents were born in another country — and as is typical of first-generation immigrants, many work in the service industry or manual labor jobs. But in this area with a very high cost-of-living index — 141.3 compared to the U.S. average of 100, according to City-Data.com — money earned from a low-paying job doesn’t go very far.
But several Latino families that have managed to climb to the top are helping out newcomers any way they can.
Maria Isabel and Oscar Sandoval moved to Stamford 20 years ago and started a restaurant and a landscaping business. After years of hard work, they now employ 60 people. More importantly, they mentor immigrants seeking to start their own businesses. “It wasn’t easy,” Sandoval tells Alexandra Campbell Howe of NBC News. “I started at the bottom and worked my way up. I mentor others who are starting out, and let them know about my experience and help as many people as I can.”
Oscar Sandoval advised Ecuadorian immigrant Alex Pipantasi when he was starting his automotive repair shop. “He gave me valuable advice on how to treat clients and employees,” Pipantasi says.
The Sandovals also donate money to Neighbors Link, a center that helps immigrants adjust to life in America, learn English, educate their children and themselves, find jobs and connect to others.
Catalina Semper Horak, a Colombian immigrant who co-founded the center and serves as its executive director, says that the stark income differences visible in Stamford inspired the organization’s creation. “It’s an issue where there is a very direct connection between the haves and the have nots,” she says. “So supporting this segment of the population, making sure they have a place where they feel comfortable….was an idea that resonated with a lot of people.”
Sarita Hanley, a co-founder of Neighbors Link, emphasizes that while donations help immigrants settle in, the kind of mentoring that the Sandovals provide is invaluable. “Money is always necessary, but rolling up your sleeves is as important, sometimes even more.”
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This Nonprofit Says ‘Welcome Home’ to Low-Income and Immigrant Families
Hailing from Haiti, Ermance Cyriaque has been in the United States for two decades, and her hard work as a shelf stocker at Walmart paid off as she recently moved into a house of her own in New London, Conn.
Hope Inc. (Housing Opportunities for People), a nonprofit that provides affordable housing for working-class people in Connecticut’s southern Middlesex County, purchased and renovated the home, then sold it to Cyriaque at a below-market price. The Hope Inc. program is geared toward low-income people that are well-equipped to stay in their homes, and Cyriaque was chosen because of her excellent credit.
New London’s neighborhood stabilization program contributed $34,000 so that HOPE could purchase the home. The organization has renovated 13 homes on the street where Cyriaque will live, and the houses will remain permanently affordable — even if their original owners sell them.
Cyriaque has been living with her daughter Annesylly and her nine-month-old grandson Zorienn Canuto in a three-bedroom apartment, struggling to make ends meet in a community where prices were outgrowing her retail wages. To qualify for the program, she had to earn no more than half the median annual income in the area for a family of two: $33,850. Annesylly, who also qualifies for the program, will rent the apartment attached to her mother’s house.
When the family saw their new home for the first time, the Ninigret Quilters Guild presented Cyriaque with a hand-pieced quilt to make it cozy. (The Rhode Island quilters frequently donate their handiwork to needy families in the area.) According to Lee Howard of The Day, Kate Lamoureux, one of the quilters, tells Zorienn, “I hope it becomes your favorite blankie.”
Meanwhile, Ermance Cyriaque had a gift of her own to give. She gave Marilyn Graham, the Executive Director of HOPE, a painting with the words Do What You Love. “You went over and beyond to take care of us and help us out,” Annesylly says of Graham.
Of Howard, Graham says, “Theirs is a nice American dream story.”
And it comes wrapped in a warm, new quilt.
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Residents in America’s Poorest City Receive Customized Housing
It sounds strange, but there are still towns in American without paved roads and sewage systems.
This is the reality facing many people living in Texas’s 1,800 colonias — neighborhoods originally developed in the 1950s on unusable land for low-income people, particularly Hispanics.
Brownsville, located in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, is home to many colonias. In addition to being the poorest city in America with 36 percent of residents living in poverty, Brownsville residents also have some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes.
Considering all of these factors, the quality of life in this Texas town seems pretty poor, or at least it was until the nonprofit bcWorkshop (led by Dallas architect Brent Brown) and the Community Development Corporation (CDC) of Brownsville stepped in.
The result of their collaboration? A 56-unit apartment complex called La Hacienda Casitas. Together, the groups have also designed a hiking and biking trail through one of the worst neighborhoods, a disaster relief housing prototype and improved infrastructure plans for seven colonias.
Next, the groups are working on La Hacienda Two. And while apartment complexes can be churned out quickly according to CDC executive director Nick Mitchell-Bennett, these groups are taking their time and adding a personal touch.
Instead of making cookie-cutter houses, bcWorkshop and the CDC asked the individual residents what they want in their residences. While the personalization may add an extra four to six weeks to the building process, the results are worth it.
“Somebody who makes $8.50 an hour, they’re never asked, ‘What do you want?'” Mitchell-Bennett tells City Lab. “By the end of the process … they designed this house.”
And for people who are used to living with very little, the pride in ownership and design is a new and welcome phenomenon.
“There’s a real need for what I would consider design-focused effort to assist other organizing and community-building efforts” in the Rio Grande Valley, Brown explains. “So it made a nice fit.”
MORE: How Brooklyn’s Largest Housing Project is Getting Their Residents Online
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For More Than 100 Years, This House Has Been Welcoming New Americans
Neighborhood House in west St. Paul, Minn. has come a long way since Russian immigrants in the area built a simple wooden structure in 1897. First opened to give newcomers the support and information they needed to make their way in this country, Neighborhood House now has a bigger and fancier home and the immigrants it serves come from different countries than they did 117 years ago. But the nonprofit’s mission remains the same.
Neighborhood House supports immigrants of every kind — from struggling newcomers who rely on its food pantry, family crisis center and refugee resettlement services, to people striving to become educated and advance their careers. It also offers a free preschool for the children of immigrants and an after-school program for teens that teaches them about health, education and careers and encourages them to engage in community service. But that’s not all. The center also provides health programs, gang-prevention activities, English language classes and GED prep courses.
Over the years, people from about 40 countries have benefitted from Neighborhood House’s services.
Nancy Brady, president of Neighborhood House, tells Angela Davis of CBS Minnesota, “Our mission at Neighborhood House is to help people gain the knowledge, the skills and the confidence that they need to overcome whatever the challenges are that they’re facing in their life — and move forward.”
The nonprofit’s three-year-old college access program is already changing lives — providing scholarships to adults of all ages who want to attend college. “Year one, nine people went to college,” Brady says. “Last year, 61 of our participants went to college. That’s how we measure success.”
Neighborhood House is funded through donations from its community, and for more than 100 years, residents in St. Paul have considered it a worthy investment. “We want to help people dream,” Brady says, “and then work to make their dreams come true, and to help all people see a positive future.”
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Children Can’t Learn When There Are Problems At Home. That’s Where Community Schools Come In
Walking down a hallway of Chicago’s South Loop Elementary School, Melissa Mitchell heard a first grader unleash a string of profanities inside a classroom.
“I hear this little voice screaming every curse word I’ve ever heard,” Mitchell says. She looked inside and saw “teeny, teeny” Brianne, standing on top of a desk.
“I’m not going to do this — every word you can think of — spelling test!” the little girl screamed, Mitchell recalls.
At most schools, Brianne would’ve ended up in the principal’s office for discipline. But South Loop is a community school that includes a variety of social services for kids and parents — from medical care and counseling to food pantries and adult GED classes. These facilities, which are gaining in popularity, are based on the idea that no matter how great a teacher is or how many high-tech gadgets a classroom has, kids can’t learn if they’re struggling with challenges at home (think: unemployed parents, a lack of food, the threat of eviction).
Instead of being sent to the principal, Brianne ended up in Mitchell’s office. At the time, Mitchell served as the school’s resource coordinator and was in charge of determining what social supports the South Loop community needs and finding ways to meet them.
Mitchell learned that Brianne wasn’t simply being a brat. The little girl’s parents were going through an acrimonious separation, creating an unstable environment at home. At six years of age, Brianne didn’t understand everything that was happening; nevertheless, it was upsetting her and spilling over into the school day.
After identifying the source of the behavior problem, Mitchell worked with Brianne’s family to address some of the trouble at home. She helped the mother find stable housing and childcare subsidies and connected Brianne and her family to a counselor.
While the community school model that helped Brianne and her family has been around for years — maybe over a century — it’s recently been gathering steam as more and more educators and elected officials see the value of a holistic approach to education reform.
Advocates currently estimate that as many as 5,000 community schools exist in the U.S., with more on the way.
Last year, Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder expanded a program placing social workers in schools — a step toward community schools. In June, Democratic Mayor Bill De Blasio announced plans to spend $52 million to open 40 community schools in New York City. And in July, Maryland U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer and Illinois U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock introduced a bipartisan bill that would establish a grant program to create more community schools nationwide.
A strategy, not a program
Each of the community schools created by these efforts will look different. That’s because their underlying philosophy holds that each one should grow and develop in response to the needs of the community it’s in, not according to some pre-ordained plan.
“It’s a strategy, not a program,” says Jane Quinn, Director of the National Center for Community Schools, part of the Children’s Aid Society.
Community schools each do a comprehensive needs assessment to determine what supports are most needed and often end up with school-based health clinics to address student’s physical, mental and dental health needs, including vision-correction to make sure kids that can see the lessons on the chalkboard.
There’s a lot of evidence that wealthy kids succeed partly because they can take advantage of “out of school enrichment,” Quinn says. Community schools can level the playing field with an extended school day and more academic and extra-curricular offerings outside of the traditional school day.
At Earle STEM Academy in Chicago’s impoverished Englewood neighborhood, program supervisor Quintella Rodgers says that after-school activities include a job club that teaches financial literacy, a power group that focuses on social and emotional health and individual academic help, plus photography, karate, Pilates, volleyball, basketball and DJing classes.
For the whole family
In community schools, “the primary allegiance is to the kids in the schools,” said Sarah Zeller-Berkman, who works for Youth Development Institute, which runs Beacon Community Schools in New York City. “But they still need and want to serve the broader community.” One way they accomplish this is by offering programs for parents and finding ways to integrate them into the school.
Community schools offer extra programming by creating partnerships with existing organizations, like colleges offering classes or not-for-profits running mentoring programs. The social services offered in community schools don’t usually duplicate ongoing efforts, but seek to bring them together under one roof.
At Salomé Ureña de Henríquez, a Children’s Aid Society community school in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, for example, the additional services offered include a variety of classes and programs for parents.
On a recent tour of the building, Director Migdalia Cortes-Torres pointed out photographs depicting some recent grads, resplendent in caps and gowns, on a bulletin board outside the school’s health clinic. But they weren’t pictures of students who had finished high school or junior high; they were pictures of students’ parents who had received their GEDs through a program at the school.
In addition to the GED program, Cortes-Torres said the school, which serves a largely Dominican population, offers classes for parents in nutrition and cooking, child development, English language and computer skills. They can learn art history, go on poetry retreats and even travel internationally with other parents.
Lidia Aguasanta, the school’s parent coordinator, says that she’s been helping parents to not only get their high-school diplomas, but to go for college degrees as well. “I do trips with them” to local universities because, she says, “they’re scared to leave the community” and are intimated by the complicated process of enrolling in college since many don’t speak English.
In community schools, support for parents help students achieve success, too. Aguasanta recalls a struggling mom that she convinced to enroll at Boricua College in New York City. The woman is now thriving and the simple fact that she’s now pursuing higher ed makes it more likely that her daughter, a 7th grader at the school, will too, Aguasanta says.
Studies indicate success
Beyond anecdotes like this one, research studies are pointing to hard evidence that community schools can reduce absenteeism and dropout levels and improve grades and test scores.
Not everybody is sold on community schools, however. Jason Bedrick, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, tells the Wall Street Journal that the model needs more study before people invest in it on a large scale. And the New York Times reported last year that while the creation of community schools in Cincinnati has led to some improvements, many of the schools “are still in dire academic straits.”
Nevertheless, staunch opposition to the model is rare. “Community schools have no natural enemies,” says Quinn, quoting Martin Blank, head of the Coalition for Community Schools. Instructors, including those that belong to the American Federation of Teachers, like community schools because they can focus on teaching, not on whether their students are hungry or in trouble at home.
There are, however, “rival hypotheses” about where school resources should go, Quinn says. Some people believe, for instance, that the key to improving education is high-quality teaching and that anything else is just a distraction.
Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach For America, has dedicated decades to putting new young teachers in schools, based partly on the idea that better teaching is central to better education. But, she also voices support for the principals of community schools.
“All the successful schools … are taking a community approach,” she said at a recent NationSwell event. It’s important that schools are responsive to people on the ground, not to theorists with big fix-all theories. “You need to empower people at the local level.”
At South Loop Elementary, where locals can address education holistically, Melissa Mitchell’s response to Brianne’s profanity-laced tantrum worked.
“It wasn’t a perfect rainbows and butterflies outcome,” says Mitchell, who’s now the head of Illinois’ Federation For Community Schools. But Brianne did settle down and “the father and mother came to a reasonable custody agreement.”
Leaving Brianne with a little less on her mind and giving her the ability to focus on what she was really in school for: Learning.
The Mobile Health Clinic That’s Been Helping the Poor for 40 Years
In 1976, Dr. Augusto Ortiz and his wife Martha looked to a donated school bus as a means to achieve their dream of providing free medical care to the poor of Tucson, Ariz.
Today, The University of Arizona Mobile Health Program (MHP) visits communities in a big, shiny trailer stocked with all the amenities of a regular health clinic — including an EKG — but the spirit behind it remains the same 40 years later.
The MHP makes regular rounds of communities in southern Arizona, serving about 2,400 uninsured and under-insured people, plus those that don’t have regular access to health facilities. Additionally, since 2003, the MHP has run group prenatal care appointments for expectant mothers, serving many who would never have received the important care otherwise and resulting in the delivery of more than 200 healthy babies.
Still, for all the poor that have been helped by the MHP, the impact on doctors-in-training may even be greater. The clinic is staffed with medical residents and students in public health, pre-med and pre-dental programs at the University of Arizona. Tammie Bassford, head of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University, tells Linda Valdez of AZ Central, “It has a profound impact on students.”
Bassford recalls one time when MHP staffers asked a patient if she needed any help with anything besides her health. She told them that she lacked a pot big enough to cook beans for everyone in her family. The MHP was happy to provide her with one.
Dr. Ortiz died at age 90 in 2007, but his wife Martha, now 90, is still involved in fundraising for the mobile health clinic that they founded. She believes in helping the poor for purposes of altruism, but also for the practical reason of preventing the spread of disease. “If somebody is standing next to you in the grocery line and coughing, it’s possible they have tuberculosis, and don’t know because they can’t get to a doctor,” she tells Valdez.
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This Nonprofit Makes Sure Transportation Troubles Don’t Stand in Between Low-Income People and Employment
One of the main barriers to consistent employment for low-income people: Unreliable transportation. If the bus is late or doesn’t serve the area where people live or work, say, or a child’s school or daycare is at a distance from a parent’s workplace, it can lead to missed shifts and a lost job — leaving the family worse off than ever.
This is where Wheels to Work steps in. The nonprofit, which serves a variety of locations throughout the U.S., including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, California and South Dakota, accepts donated vehicles, fixes them up and provides them to struggling families — either for free or for a low price.
Before receiving the keys to a dependable car, participants in the Wheels to Work program sponsored by the Wisconsin Automotive & Truck Education Association (WATEA) must take a course called Money Smart, which teaches them about money management, vehicle maintenance and budgeting. Meanwhile, WATEA enlists the help of students overseen by mechanic mentors to repair the vehicles, teaching them automotive skills that might lead to a career.
Participants in the WATEA program must earn no more than twice the salary of the federal poverty level, possess a driver’s license and a good driving record and either have a job or be actively looking for work.
The program has shown such promise that more communities are introducing it every year. The city of Charlottesville and the Monticello Area Community Action Agency hope to introduce Wheels to Work in Virginia early next year, but first, according to WVIR, they’re seeking help from the community to launch it by looking for partners who will help them repair donated cars.
One recipient of a Wheels to Work vehicle named Charles from Virginia, used to be a drug addict but has turned his life around. He now works as a limousine driver and relishes the freedom that the Wheels to Work car has brought him. “I am able to give people rides now,” he tells Jennifer M. Drummond of CARITAS. “I can visit my grandchildren and it gives me an opportunity to enjoy life more.”
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Meet the Sanitation Worker Who Founded a Nonprofit That Helps the Homeless
Garbage collectors take care of a lot of stuff many of us prefer not to think about. And for the past seven years, one especially thoughtful sanitation driver in Silver Spring, Md., not only collects his community’s trash, he also keeps an eye out for people who need help.
In 2007, Harvey was driving his route for Waste Management when he noticed a lot of people sleeping out on the streets — despite the fact that there were shelters nearby. “Sometimes I guess when the shelters get full they have no other place to go,” Harvey tells Good Morning America. “So they’ve got to turn to the streets even if it’s for a night or two they’re out there.”
Harvey couldn’t get the homeless people out of his mind. He and his wife Theresa began to make sandwiches and collect blankets, which he then distributed. But Harvey wanted to help even more. According to People Magazine, his brother helped him make a video of the homeless people along his route, which he showed his manager and then asked, “Is there anything we can do as a company?”
Harvey began to collect donations at work, and he and his wife soon founded God’s Connection Transition, a nonprofit that helps 5,000 homeless and low-income people a month. The Harveys convinced companies including Safeway, Pepperidge Farm and Costco to donate food, which they stock in a rented Gaithersburg warehouse. Hundreds of needy families stop in once a week to shop for what they need.
“As long as I know there’s somebody out here … It’s hard to go home sit at a table eat a meal,” Harvey, who still delivers care packages to homeless people in the early morning hours, tells Good Morning America.
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For Those Most in Need of Low Utility Bills, There’s Free Solar Energy
Normally, the families that can afford solar panels are the ones who are least in need of the energy savings that accompany the green technology. But now, a new program in Denver is giving some low-income households free access to solar energy.
The charter elementary school Academy 360 (80 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced lunch) in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood focuses on health and wellness in its curriculum and provides wholesome breakfasts and lunches to all its students and encourages plenty of exercise. And now, the new solar program, which was announced by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock last month, should bring more overall wellness (not to mention budget savings) to the families of each of the 125 students enrolled in the school.
Last year, Colorado became the first state to give people the option of accessing solar energy by subscribing to a solar garden connected to their houses via an energy grid, rather than purchasing and installing their own solar panels. This type of thing isn’t legal in every state, but four years ago Colorado legislators passed the Community Solar Act, allowing for partnerships between solar and electrical companies.
The first two solar gardens were located in Colorado Springs, and now a company called SunShare is bringing this option to Denver. The first subscribers will receive six-tenths of a kilowatt of solar energy and should see their home energy bills reduced by twenty percent, according to Anthony Cotton of the Denver Post.
“When I was your age, I used to see these magical solar panels on houses, and I wondered what they did,” Mayor Hancock said as he spoke to the Academy 360 community. “They were very expensive to have then, and they still are. But because of this project, we’ll all be able to share in affordable energy.”
SunShare CEO David Amster-Olszewski tells the Post that he thinks the program will bring a variety of benefits for the Academy 360 families: “It means they’ll be able to put healthier foods on the table or buy more sports equipment for their kids’ health.”
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