NEIGHBORS HELPING NEIGHBORS

Helping startup nonprofit organizations create change in the community

“Changing the Way Business Was Done in Southern California”

Nonprofit start-ups/ Los Angeles, California

Shelter Partnership/Arnold Stalk Ph.D

During the 1980s I worked with a woman named Ruth Schwartz (now deceased) who was the Chief Executive Officer/President of Shelter Partnership in Los Angeles, California. (www.shelterpartnership.org)

For over 30 years Shelter Partnership has provided new donated goods to an established network of over 273 non-profit agencies serving the homeless in Los Angeles County. This experience enables Shelter Partnership to accept donations of new products and get them to where they are needed most. Shelter Partnership is responding to the current crisis by providing essential supplies like emergency blankets, diapers and socks to its network of agencies.

By this time, I had garnered certain expertise and knowledge of how to organize people, professionals, consultants, labor union members, building material suppliers, building contractors and many trades that were necessary to renovate buildings.

This was a super niche for me at that point because nobody else was doing this, in Southern California at least.

Valley Shelter for the Homeless, North Hollywood, California

Valley Shelter for the Homeless was an “Ultra grass roots” project that came from my involvement with the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council. (http://www.vic-la.org ) This was a group of wellmeaning people of all faiths that came together to start housing homeless individuals and mainly families into a broken-down slum dwelling/motel in the San Fernando Valley. None of us really knew what we were doing but the organization had soul. We patched together donations from the community and from local churches and I convinced the city of Los Angeles to help fund the acquisition of the motel.

One day right after we started to renovate the facility, Valerie Harper and Jon Voight walked into the old motel lobby and offered to help. They heard about us in news reports as the internet was not yet invented.

It was at that moment that I realized the world can change when a small band of citizens from ALL walks of life can, in fact, be a part of the change. Ms. Harper and Mr. Voight not only gave financially to develop our shelter, they also gave support to our team through inspiration and positive energy. While I mourn her loss, I know that Valerie Harper is in a peaceful place in heaven.

House of Ruth Shelter, East Los Angeles, California (www.houseofruth.org)

The House of Ruth Shelter was one of the first very small neighborhood infill family homeless shelters in Los Angeles, California. It was one of a handful of projects that I was asked to help start in terms of rehabilitating older buildings. I worked in conjunction with the shelter partnership of Los Angeles to rehabilitate an old home that was located in East Los Angeles, California. We always worked with licensed and experienced professionals i.e., general building contractors and other project professionals. I was the owner’s representative in many instances, and I was feeling my way through this process. It was here that I learned the first steps on how to work with the bureaucracy in the State of California, HUD (www.hud.gov) and other governmental agencies. Through the redevelopment agency in the city of Los Angeles I helped create places of respect and dignity, as opposed to people living in the streets.

PATH (People Assisting The Homeless)

(www.epath.org)

Step Up delivers compassionate support to people experiencing serious mental health issues and persons who are experiencing chronic homelessness, to help them recover, stabilize, and integrate into the community.

Through dynamic partnerships, we provide positive social and learning environments, vocational training, permanent supportive housing opportunities and recovery services to empower individuals to cultivate lives of hope and dignity. We exercise innovative leadership and advocacy to increase public understanding, support and acceptance of all people living with serious mental health issues.

Habitat for Humanity of The San Fernando Valley (https://locator.lacounty.gov/lac/Location/3176055/ habitat-for-humanity san-fernando-and-santaclarita-valleys)

It was from Habitat for Humanity that I learned how to organize volunteers, procure donations from building material suppliers, work with a community to renovate community buildings, apartment complexes and single-family residences. The program provides housing services for veterans, families of veterans and honorably discharged veterans in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valley areas.

I had the honor of meeting President Jimmy Carter at a groundbreaking for one of our Habitat for Humanity projects in California in the 1990s.

It was President Carter and people like Mother Theresa and others through the years that have inspired me to help those in need, and those who have no voice to help leave the planet a little better place in which to live. He will always have a special place in my life for caring so much about people.

The Los Angeles LGBT Center (www.lalgbtcenter.org) has cared for, championed and celebrated LGBT individuals and families in Los Angeles and beyond since our founders first began providing services in 1969. When I was an owner's representative for this organization in the 1980s, it was known as The Gay and Lesbian Community Service Center. Today, the center serves more LGBT people than any other organization in the world. We are an unstoppable force in the fight against bigotry and the struggle to build a better world; a world in which LGBT people are healthy, equal and complete members of society. We are also a lean, efficient organization earning GuideStar’s Silver Seal of Transparency and have been awarded Charity Navigator’s highest rating for more than ten consecutive years (a status achieved by only three percent of the nation’s charities). I was again at the ground floor helping organizations grow through facility renovations and buildings to carry out mission statements, goals and objectives.

The Filipino American Service Center in Los Angeles, California, was a one-stop center located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. This was my first experience with the one-stop center concept where people could get services under one roof. Let me assure you it was very grassroots, but we mobilized United Way, the Red Cross, the city of Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California based General Hospital. It was very difficult to get this started but my main point in citing all of these examples is to carry the message to never give up on what you believe in. No matter how much opposition you get. Never stop believing.

Immanuel Church of Christ was in south central Los Angeles, California. The pastor was a woman whose mission was to go into the trenches and help people directly regardless of where they came from, who they were, what they were, and above all what color they were. I helped this amazingly small but mighty organization procure basic building materials to construct a pantry closet which was called in those days a food collection center and clothing collection as well.

This pastor inspired me and showed me at a very early part of my career to help people in need no matter what.

Gentry Village is in North Hollywood, California. It is a six plex meaning that it is six apartments located on a scattered vacant infill site within an immature neighborhood. The purpose of this project was twofold. First was to construct an affordable housing apartment in 90 days or less. The second was to provide badly needed affordable housing. We worked with the city of Los Angeles, the county of Los Angeles, the state of California, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and a myriad of other bureaucratic agencies to prove this theory. My model of course in those days, was Habitat for Humanity. I copied their playbook! As always, we had a very thin budget, and I was able to rally and organize general contractors to take this project on. I always center the opening of these projects around holidays for PR and organizational promotion purposes. This project opened on Christmas Eve in the late 1980s and received an enormous amount of positive press coverage. It is yet another example that through organizational skills, determination and a drive from within to get things done you can accomplish anything.

Triangle House is in East Los Angeles, California. It is located next door to what was known as the Cesar Chavez Family Shelter. Transitional housing was an unknown concept in the mid to late 1980s. The idea was to take a family from an emergency shelter and homeless situation. Our nonprofit organization at the time had received the first of what was known as McKinney funds from the federal government. The funding/legislation included the ability to house families coming out of an emergency shelter and place them into affordable housing and then essentially get financially independent and move out on their own into housing.

This idea really appealed to me because it’s not enough to just provide basic shelter. A master plan must be developed within each organization to help people get off the streets permanently. Without this type of transition, in my opinion, all the rest of this temporary shelter business is a total waste of time. We will never solve this problem of homelessness through a band-aid approach.

Low-Cost Building Opens for Homeless

BY JILL STEWART, SEPT. 12, 1989, 12 AM PT TIMES STAFF WRITER

“Housing advocates, saying it is time for Los Angeles corporations and prominent citizens to tackle the city’s rental housing crisis, on Monday opened Triangle House, a low-rent apartment built for 40% less than what it would cost the city to construct.

The high-tech, eight-unit complex in Boyle Heights, looking more like a designer building in Marina del Rey than a refuge for eight previously homeless families, was privately financed and built with lowcost techniques by the LA Family Housing Corp., a nonprofit group specializing in family-oriented housing for the poor.”

The Pediatric Aids Clinic, Los Angeles, California

The Pediatric Aids Clinic in Los Angeles, is a project to treat children that have contracted HIV or have developed AIDS. In 1986, there was very little known about AIDS or how to treat it. I was always brought into projects that had no money, no location, but had one key ingredient which was a great idea and people who believed in it. This later became a specialized unit at General Hospital in Los Angeles.

With my Dad, Seymour Stalk, United States Navy Veteran, 1988 at our grand opening of Triangle House transitional housing for homeless families in East Los Angeles, California. So proud of this photo. YES Transitional housing for homeless families in 1988.

Golden Passages Transitional Housing

Golden Passages transitional housing was a residence for released offenders. Once again, in the late 1980s, this was unheard of. I worked with the Los Angeles County Sheriff‘s office in a nonprofit organization to lease a house which planted the seed for people who had served their time and had been released from incarceration to live in transitional housing with basic supportive services.

We Had To Change The Way Business Was Done In Nevada

Nonprofit start-ups Southern Nevada

SHARE

(Supportive Housing and Resources for the Elderly)

This nonprofit organization was started by me, Karin Rogers, and Mayor Jan Laverty Jones. This organization was formed to build housing for the elderly, but nothing really happened with it for quite a few years. When I decided to start housing veterans, we kept the name the same thereby avoiding a lengthy wait time period to start our nonprofit housing corporation. We had about $200 in the bank, no employees, no projects, only a dream. In this book, I have no greater message to than when you have a dream, pursue it. Go for it. Never give up. Always pursue your mission and keep a clear vision and a laser focus on moving forward.

In its early years, SHARE maintained a very low profile in the community, but the notion of a startup nonprofit family-based organization always was appealing to me.

Having been through several great boards of directors' memberships in my history at that point and having had a few not-so-great experiences, I promised myself I would never pursue a large board of directors. Let me be clear though, if you have the right combination on the board, you can move mountains. At the time of printing this book, I can honestly say that throughout all the battles, the great times, the bumpy roads, SHARE has been responsible for helping house thousands of homeless people in Southern Nevada. We are the innkeeper, we are the catalyst, we are the essence of grassroots organization and service to our community. www.sharelasvegas.org

Salvation Army Family Service Building, downtown Las Vegas. This was originally the M*A*S*H Crisis Intervention Center that we opened in 1994. Crisis intervention is a streamlined and proven operation to prevent homelessness before homelessness occurs. It worked when I opened my first center in 1990 and it works today.

Circa 1995 in downtown Las Vegas at The Shade Tree Shelter (original building) with my former boss, Former City of Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, Montel Williams, Brother Brown and, in the background humanitarian extraordinaire, Linda Lera Randle EL. This was honoring National Homeless Persons Memorial Day.

Not pictured here are Terrie D'Antonio, Elizabeth Quillin, Marjorie Polly, Brad Jerbic, and others who were on the ground and went through all the battles to help homeless people here in downtown Las Vegas.

Starting nonprofit Organizations in Southern Nevada

The year was 1994. I was Housing Division Chief for the city of Las Vegas. I had moved to Las Vegas from California having spent the first 37 years of my life there and moved on to replicating my projects from California to Nevada. This entailed starting up several nonprofit organizations and being part of them.

Circa 1995 with Earvin "Magic" Johnson in West Las Vegas. Magic was supporting our homeless projects doing a PSA when I was Housing Division Chief with The City of Las Vegas advocating for funds from the private sector and in Washington, D.C.

What was true in 1995 is true more than ever today. Build housing of all types for people in need with intensive supportive services.

Habitat for Humanity of Southern Nevada This chapter was incorporated and running as a new start up in southern Nevada when I first went to work for the ccity of Las Vegas. I worked closely with their board of directors as the city donated 10 vacant lots to Habitat for Humanity in Southern Nevada. I still, to this day, keep in touch with many of these board members, in one way or another in my business travels. I later joined that board of directors and served on that board for approximately five years.

Christmas in April of Southern Nevada. While working as Housing Division Chief of The City of Las Vegas, I was approached by the President of Southwest Gas, Mr. Keith Stewart, and Miss Beth Gaylor. They introduced me to a project called Christmas in April which was at that time based out of a local chapter in Arizona. This organization was an ultra-grassroots nonprofit which was organized to help seniors and people with disabilities rehabilitate their houses. It was an amazing story, and I was hooked immediately. In the first year, we proceeded to rehab two single family houses. We received help from NV Energy and Southwest Gas employees. We had a very rough time because we were staffed 100% volunteer with no paid employees. Today it is extremely fashionable and popular for corporations to ask their employees for help on community projects. In the mid-1990s it was unheard of. This grassroots effort developed over the years into a dynamic and thriving nonprofit organization. I went on to be president of this organization for two years and we became a very impactful and helpful group. Today the organization is known as Rebuilding Together. www.rebuildingtogether.org