Mary Lind Recovery Centers: Residential Substance Abuse Recovery to the Homeless

Since 1949, the Mary Lind Recovery Centers have given residential treatment to homeless people suffering from substance abuse and addiction in Southern California. Focusing on central Los Angeles and Skid Row who have the highest poverty rate at 33%. The Mary Lind Center serves over 300 people at a time – most of them are homeless.

The Mary Lind Recover Center wants to work to make men and women dependent on welfare and alcohol to become parts of society and self sufficient. Through recovery, education and job training, lives can be reshaped and sobriety can be maintained.

Addiction Among the Homeless

Fifty to sixty percent of all homeless people report having relied on substances or abusing substances at some point in their life when compared to ten percent of the non-homeless population depending on substances.

A lot of this is to blame on the mistreatment or ignoring of treatment for homeless individuals that are addicted to drugs and alcohol. People who have substance abuse problems are more likely to stay homeless than homeless people who do not, and they are two times as likely to be arrested. Common substances abused by homeless people are alcohol, meth amphetamines, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana.

Give Back to the Mary Lind Recovery Centers

Donating is an easy way to support the Mary Lind Recovery Centers. You can make your checks payable to:

Mary Lind Recovery Centers
2500 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90057

For more information contact Ed Woodhull (Executive Director) at 213-382-4241 or check out the Mary Lind Recovery Center website.

 

Ocean Park Community Center (OPCC): Empowering People to Rebuild Their Lives

The Ocean Park Community Center is dedicated to helping people who have faced house foreclosures, job loss, medical bills, and other factors that are forcing people into homelessness. They focus on making up for the under-funded homeless population in this time of unexpected economic crisis.

The OPCC Facilities

The OPCC works at empowering people to rebuild their lives by helping them overcome mental illness, poverty, homelessness, and domestic violence. They provide the tools to help the needy gain trust in a community as a support system and regain dignity. The OPCC provides a common ground for the community and a push to end human suffering through public policy and creating a higher level of response to human services.

The OPCC is a non-profit organization. The City of Santa Monica, the County of Los Angeles, the State of California, the Federal Government, and private donations fund the company. But with the economic recession, their funds have been hit hard and they have been having to make a bigger impact with less resources.

Statistics Show Success

• 350 teens, children, and adults have received counseling through school outreach and victims of crime programs.
• 3,000 phone calls have been made on the domestic violence hotline.
• There is a 90% success rate for the graduates of the transitional housing program – they have lived in permanent housing for over a year.

The OPCC serves 8,000 individuals of which: 98% live below poverty level, 85% are homeless, 50% are mentally ill, 44% are minorities, 45% are female, and 20% are under the age of 21 (opcc.org).

A Grandmother’s Testimonial

Jane, an 81-year-old homeless woman with congestive heart failure, had been living off and on in local area motels since 2005. OPCC staff discovered that at the end of each month when she ran out of SSI income she went to the local hospitals for medical care and a place to stay. OPCC’s Access Center staff worked intensively with Jane and successfully secured permanent housing and transportation through the City of Santa Monica’s Project Homecoming. The day before Mother’s Day, Jane was reunified with her adult son and family living in another state and has been living in her own apartment and caring for herself. She has not been hospitalized in over a year.

The OPCC Access Center

Give Back to the OPCC

There are many ways to give to the OPCC. You can donate, volunteer, or give in-kind donations.

Donating is easy. You can donate to the OPCC with cash gifts, stocks and bonds, or real estate to expand their property when you’re not using it. You can even choose to which property you would like to donate. To donate now, click here.

There are plenty of volunteer opportunities. If you are interested, email dmiller@opcc.net or give a call to 310-264-6646. You can look at a list of group volunteer opportunities here.

You can give initiatives in the form of donations of gift cards and goods, becoming a trained volunteer on their 24 hour hotline, or donate to their wish list.

The Weingart Center Association: Where Transformations Happen

Keeping up with the Homeless Assistance theme this week, today we are focusing on the Weingart Center Association who works to better the homeless population through residential programs, non-residential programs, and permanent housing. The main goal: to break the cycle of homelessness and to help these individuals and families lead fulfilling, self-sufficient lives.

The Skills to Break the Homelessness Cycle

Skills that the Weingart center offers to the homeless include job assistance, permanent housing, sobriety assistance, increased education, mental and physical healthcare, pulling them out of debt, reuniting families, and setting attainable goals for the future.

They offer specific services that include:

• Legal Aid
• Work attire
• Transitional and Permanent Housing
• Education
• Substance Abuse Support
• Healthcare (mental health, medical health, family planning)
• Life and workforce skills
• Nutrition

Their individualized and compassionate support that adapts to the changing community has made a huge impact on the large homeless community in Los Angeles.

Making an Impact

From Operation Welcome Home, a program helping to assimilate veterans back into society, to their Open Door Program, helping locate jobs for parolees, the Weingart Center alleviates the homeless struggles of many.

The Weingart Center Association helped me to get my life back.

They have housed 600 people every day in an 11-story building, served 225,000 healthy meals annually, created a medical clinic to control TB and HIV in the early stages, and miraculously uses 82% of funds to give back to the community.

Interested in lending a hand to the Weingart center? There are many ways for you to give back.

1. Donate: The money or goods that you donate will be used to directly help out the 48,000 homeless people in Los Angeles.
2. Volunteer: By volunteering with the Weingart Center you can directly affect a life. The Weingart Center suggests organizing a clothing drive, sponsoring an event, giving a participant a make over, volunteering at one of their many volunteer events, or becoming a Weingart Center partner.
3. Wish List: Give back by ordering the Weingart Center one of the items on their wish list.

For upcoming events, visit their event page and their blog. You can even call the Weingart Center Association at 213-627-9000 and email them at center@weingart.org. Their address is 566 South San Pedro Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

Los Angeles Mission: Ameliorating the Homeless on Skid Row

For over 70 years, the Los Angeles Mission has worked serving the homeless population living on the streets of Skid Row. They pride themselves on providing “compassionate, humanitarian services to those in desperate need.”

Skid Row is in Downtown Los Angeles, specifically Central City East with one of the largest stable homeless populations in the country. Between seven and eight thousand people live on Skid Row. The Los Angeles Mission works to help Skid Row resident women, men and children in need.

What makes the Los Angeles Mission so different is that they build their core values on hope, love, compassion, and healthy relationships. They focus on helping the homeless battle alcoholism, drug addiction, physical and emotional abuse and a lack of education, healthcare, and employment.

Celebrities are known to frequent the Los Angeles Mission events offering food and shelter to many homeless people on Skid Row. 3,000 Christmas dinners were passed out by celebrities on Christmas Eve, hosted by Jennifer Love Hewitt who said:

“Anyone would be moved by the kids on Skid Row meeting Santa and receiving gifts on Christmas Eve.”

Young Disney stars serve Thanksgiving at Los Angeles Mission

Are you interested in volunteering with the Los Angeles Mission?

Orientations are scheduled regularly and they welcome both individual and group volunteers. You can call (213) 639-1227 for more information of visit the Los Angeles Mission website.  You can also make an online donation if you do not have time to go down and help out firsthand.

Want to know more? Follow them on twitter at @ilovelamission.