Elton wanted to leave Riverside County and come to Los Angeles because he’d heard things in general were better here. Elton arrived in L.A. one morning and was beaten up severely and robbed of his wallet, money, personal effects, and his medications.   He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and with a physical disability. He had just lost his SSI benefits. The PATH Regional Homeless Center referred Elton to Travelers Aid Society of Los Angeles-Adult Services Case Manager Emily Kelly, who met with him and counseled him regarding his unfortunate predicament. He was weak and confused, hearing voices and very afraid, but Emily arranged for a taxi to pick him up and take him to Hollywood Mental Health Center, as he would be needing emergency medications and ongoing case management. He was given shelter, food, advocacy for return of his SSI benefits, and further counseling.

Oftentimes people in crisis are cut off from their benefits due to lack of follow thorough on their part, that is, their not following up with required medical or psychiatric care, or lacking documentation. The goal at Hollywood Mental Health would be to stabilize him in some form of transitional housing for about 90 days, and then, eventually, to get him to stay off the streets and to return to some form of independent living condition.

b II. a

Dwayne came to Los Angeles 18 months ago, from Chesapeake, Virginia, some 20 miles west of the Atlantic coast. He was looking to change his life. He was a substance abuser when he arrived, and was hoping to get away from drugs and the friends with whom he associated. He wanted to come clean. Dwayne entered a treatment program at the Midnight Mission for a year. Upon graduation, he found it very difficult to find housing because of a disability: he had a heart condition. Shelters told him that he was too big of a health risk to reside with them. This made him at high risk for a relapse.

With no where else to turn, Dwayne’s mother pleaded with him to return to the East, to live with her, but she had no money to pay for his bus or train fare. He came to Emily instead to see about getting back to Virginia. Emily contacted Midnight Mission’s President, Larry Adamson, who offered to pay 75% of a Greyhound ticket for Dwayne to help him get back home. After all, Larry thought, both he and Dwayne had invested a year in a life to make things work for Dwayne. Three months later, Emily received a Christmas card from Dwayne, thanking her for her help.

b III. a

Molly had a history of chronic homelessness; she was also developmentally disabled. How did she end up in Los Angeles? How did she find herself stranded and without money or people to turn to? There were no answers; none were needed. All we knew is that Molly wanted to go home.

For several days she waited patiently for money to be wired from a friend, but nothing came. She was broke, hungry, and no one understood her. She was probably used to that. Her desperation led her to the doors of a Downtown L.A. law office, asking them to help her get home. Acting promptly, they contacted Emily Kelly. While on the telephone, Emily calmed the distraught Molly and got her permission to call her friend who was sending the money. Perhaps she [Emily] could figure out what was wrong, Molly pleaded with her. Emily spoke to this long-distance friend and discovered that he had merely spelled Molly’s last name wrong on the wire transfer slip. Emily helped him to correct the situation over the phone, and the money arrived in 30 minutes. Molly was on her way home.

b IV. a

Morning in December falls harshly enough on the streets of Hollywood, what with rush-hour traffic careening off the Hollywood Freeway and helicopters crossing the hills between the Valley and LAX, so that a mother doesn’t need to wake up and find herself in a cage. Her cage was a small hallway inside an unused apartment building on Gower Street. The space was enclosed by a sturdy black gate that locked tight when it was shut. One of her daughters had accidentally closed it tightly, locking them inside.

This mother and her children had been living in the hallway for two weeks. Prior to that, she and her three daughters and one son, ages 6, 7, 11, and 12, were coping with exposure in churchyards, school grounds, courthouse parking lots, and freeway overpasses. She was stuck in a space four feet by four feet square: 16 square feet for her and her four children. In order to sleep, they sat up against the walls, with legs hunched up to their chests; a small bucket had been placed in the corner for urine. Their hair was matted, they needed baths, and they had no blankets to keep them warm during the 40-degree night.

A Teen Canteen client, on her way to the drop-in center for breakfast, heard the mother’s cries for help. She was crying, she couldn’t get out, the client had told Ebony Tolliber, Peer Educator at Teen Canteen; and the mother couldn’t call the cops, of course, because she was afraid of losing her kids to the Dept of Children and Family Services.

(Ebony Tolliver)

Ebony and the client rushed up the street to the front office of the church on the corner, whose property it was, and alerted the custodian. He then rushed across the street (with Ebony and the client in tow), entered the building, and unlocked the gate.

(Michael Cheng)

No one asked why her children were not in school. No one asked how they kept from freezing or when they last ate or bathed. Ebony simply took the family down the street to Teen Canteen, and fed them cereal and juice, and had them use the bathroom and the shower. While she gave them clothes from the donations closet, Michael Cheng, no stranger to the homeless human condition in Hollywood, accepted responsibility as their Case Manager and contacted the Glendale Family Shelter. He secured a place for them that morning, and there they would stay for a few months until transitional housing could be obtained. Michael also gave them tokens for the bus ride to Glendale and blankets to keep them warm, and Ebony made them sack lunches, in case they got hungry on the way. That’s what we do at Teen Canteen.

---Emily Kelly & Mark Zipoli