'Urban Alchemy' responds to LA's homeless crisis 5 January 11, 2023, 8:41 PM Los Angeles is seeking answers to the homeless crisis. One organization the city is working with, Urban. All Rights Reserved. The idea is that while police are trained to respond to active threats, life has trained CIRCLE team members. Know Your City! After being hired to guard and provide other services to homeless encampments in the Los Angeles Skid Row neighborhood, workers became associated in the citys progressive media with a decision to evict homeless people from a downtown park. An hour after the interaction with Snider, Hammonds rolled a woman in a wheelchair out of the middle of Market Street, where she was screaming and refusing to move, and into a cafe. If the conduct is egregious, which has happened, she said, the person is fired. When asked about the stories of assault, harassment and misdeeds at various projects, Miller said they paint an inaccurate picture and distract from the good Urban Alchemy has done. Steveo would drop off drugs to a woman at the camp and ask campers to find him drugs, Phil Deschamps, a current encampment resident, said. A UA employee fucked [a female camper] in the tent next to the tent Im in, Deschamps said. A turd. In one case, Urban Alchemy found misconduct an employee called a homeless advocate a whore but the organization and police did not find evidence of assault in the other cases. The stillborn baby was found at a site that was located in a rotunda in front of San Francisco City Hall. "When you can hone in and craft those skills that come from people's life experience into what can be used to work with our homeless sisters and brothers we've seen that it really has an impact.". (The federal government already operates a similar site on the West LA Veterans Affairs campus in Brentwood.) Nothing that we have [achieved] is based on corruption or cheating or something unethical or immoral, or illegal. When youre trying to prevent theft, who do you hire? All Rights Reserved. The woman said she was at a vulnerable place in her life when she began making out with Josh in the bushes near the encampment. The developer, a former city redevelopment official and executive with the homeless services organization PATH named John Molloy, is loaning the parking lot to the city for free in the meantime for its safe camping site. After Clark-Johnson, director of residential services, and Hammonds, chief of training, stopped coming to the camp on a regular basis, two Urban Alchemy employees, Mike and Joseph, whose last names are unknown, took over. Hammonds said employees dont stop peoples addictions and dont force people on sidewalks to move although people usually do when asked. That "super power" is needed to work the streets of LA says Kirkpatrick Tyler, the Chief of Government-Community Affairs for Urban Alchemy. Employees get paid starting at $21 an hour and benefits, according to Urban Alchemys latest city contract. "I haven't had a dissatisfied customer yet," says Briggs. Soon, four workers gathered around Sarah Snider, who said she had been homeless for more than 20 years, and waited until she injected fentanyl and cocaine into her thigh before packing up to leave. Training consists of two days in class, followed by a week in the field. LOS. Plans for continuing education such as computer and financial literacy are also in the works, the organization said. This comes one month after LA officials cleared what was one of the citys largest encampments a makeshift community of nearly 200 tents, an outdoor food pantry and a shower stall that spanned the popular near-mile loop around Echo Park Lake just two miles away. In training, Hammonds taught the new employees to be patiently persuasive when asking people who may be homeless, addicted or traumatized to stop blocking sidewalks or using drugs in public. Miller said Urban Alchemy sends a supervisor to investigate every complaint. Were stunned with the insensitivity of calling our workforce mercenary, especially since our practitioners are primarily Black, Latino and formerly incarcerated or homeless, Miller said. "You don't just pick stuff up and throw it away. The CAOs report did not contain a detailed breakdown of costs, but according to city officials most of the budget goes to 24/7 staffing, and maintaining a one to 12 staff to client ratio at all times. Urban Alchemy also prohibits predatory sexual behavior because of the power dynamics, according to Clinebell. Los Angeles has opened its first government-run homeless encampment on a quiet, commercial block beside the 101 freeway in East Hollywood. And they were also hired to help clear out Echo Park last summer. Starting salaries are less than half those of sworn police officers. In order to combat the housing issue, the city council has committed to at least 140 new units of permanent support housing in all 9 council districts to be built over two years. Campers can bring in their own tents and whatever other belongings fit inside their assigned space. Ive had 20 years of homelessness off and on, and this has given me great purpose.. Miller became a board member last month. The residents of the Sausalito homeless encampment emphatically disagree about the staffs qualifications. Urban Alchemy officials reject that characterization, saying they told Los Angeles officials they didnt want police involved in outreach to the unhoused and didnt coordinate with officers during sweeps. Right now in the City of Los Angeles, it's a free-for-all, said Buscaino, who is a former LAPD officer. To achieve this, Elliott encouraged landscape architects to continue to design for everyone, not specific populations. Each Tuesday, Downtown Streets Team hosts a town hall where people can participate in public life, share in each others successes, and be together. The number 18 on Joshs left arm refers to Adolph Hitler, with the 1 corresponding to the A and the 8 corresponding to the H. It appears that his left leg has a tattoo of the Iron Cross, which was a symbol used by the Nazis, according to the ADL. The San Francisco-based nonprofit Urban Alchemy, which operates three similar campgrounds in the Bay Area, has a contract with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county agency, to run the East Hollywood site. They dont have name tags on, and some were pretty confrontational. A female camper spoke about her intimate involvement with Josh, an Urban Alchemy supervisor who worked at the camp until recently. Founded in 2018, Urban Alchemy is based in San Francisco, CA, and claims to be a workforce development agency that hires former convicts and also aims to rebuild urban areas by supporting those struggling with homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. Inside the fence, the parking lot-turned-campground can accommodate about 120 people at a time in 12-foot by 12-foot spots, marked by white squares painted on the asphalt. Miller grew Urban Alchemy out of her nonprofit Hunters Point Family, which won contracts with San Francisco Public Works to run the citys public toilets starting in 2016. My lane is this part. By the end of this year, however, he needs it back. An increasingly bipartisan chorus is asking where all the money goes for the states homeless crisis. I mean, Ive been to prison, but you cant even make up the stories of what we see.. The organization also reported reversing 123 drug overdoses using Narcan nasal spray. . Heres what we know. On a recent morning, a couple of days before the parking lot in East Hollywood opened to its first campers, a few unhoused men stood on the sidewalk outside its mesh-covered fence. Urban Alchemy started back in 2018. Los Angeles officials, however, have praised Urban Alchemy for providing services to an often difficult-to-help population. However, Clinebell sent another email, stating that Urban Alchemy has investigated the allegations and did not find any of the misconduct allegations to be true.. In terms of getting to the other side of it, that's not my lane. Miller started Urban Alchemy in 2018. A majority of employees are people of color, and some have been homeless. Homeless Population: 8,124. And then well be out of the way of all the looky-looers too, he said. People like Ronda Briggs, who was once homeless, hope to provide non-emergency help, homeless outreach and referrals to supportive services. Shes just mad because I wont let her suck my dick, Josh said to the police, according to two campers. DM B. Crime has gone up in America, the same old solutions are not working, so were going to see more growth in these areas and there are going to be growing pains, said Jorja Leap, an adjunct public policy professor at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, who is the lead researcher for Bidens efforts and was not involved in the Echo Lake Park report. We didnt know who they were.. On top of that, the city is also reeling from the rapid rise of housing costs and government cutbacks on social services. The organization birthed out of Hunters Point Family, an earlier non-profit Miller founded that focused on public housing. Helping with that transformational experience takes extensive preparation, said Lola Whittle, president of the Urban Alchemy board of directors. At the time, Powelson and the other campers had no idea Clark-Johnson and Hammonds were high-level managers in an organization retained by the City of Sausalito. And lets be honest, Galperin said, when people are on our sidewalks, that is already costing us money as a city in terms of public safety, police and fire emergency services, paramedic, sanitation, street services, hospitals, jails. The entitys core philosophythat long stints in prison can equip a person for handling crises in the streetsis a selling point that seems to run counter to mainstream psychology. But their employers, he stressed, must make sure they have stable housing and support including treatment for mental illness or addiction if needed to succeed. ECHO's executive director, Matt Mollica, said Urban Alchemy has been active in training opportunities and expanding on-the-ground outreach. Additionally, UA has a policy that requires practitioners to maintain workplace boundaries, and that includes no fraternization, such as not hanging out at the work site while not on duty., Clinebell said that Urban Alchemy hasnt received any reports of staff using drugs at the Sausalito camp, yet he concedes someone has a memory of a person reporting at a Sausalito City Council meeting that Urban Alchemy staff were smoking weed.. The nonprofit sees its mission as partly spiritual, with a goal of transforming the energy of traumatized urban spaces.. The operator of the site, the nonprofit Urban Alchemy, has since moved on to open a homeless shelter in Lower Nob Hill and was recently granted a contract by the city to perform homeless outreach. Because a city this offbeat deserves a newsletter with some She envisions eventually helming a nationwide homelessness organization that provides direct services and also acts as a consultant to cities looking to set up similar outfits of their own. Miller noted how the work provides not only an income but also a sense of pride, remarking on an anecdote where one employee called the Governor of California into a bathroom stall he had just cleaned to show him how clean it was. To that end, Urban Alchemy prioritizes hiring ex-convicts who have served decades in prison after being convicted of serious crimes, which can include murder. Urban Alchemy, a workforce development agency, trains and employs former long-term offenders. California is ranked number 1 in homelessness, with nearly 130,000 homeless individuals, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and numbers only continue to rise. Urban Alchemy first came to Los Angeles in 2020 as part of an effort to provide showers, handwashing stations, and cleaning to Skid Row. At about midnight on Jan. 7, 2022, the fire department responded to a report that a stillborn baby was found in the portable bathroom of a tent village referred to as a Safe Sleep Site.. The San Francisco Standard. Urban Alchemy made their first contact with Sausalitos homeless residents on Feb. 13, 2021, about two months after the first tent was pitched, according to Robbie Powelson, a former Sausalito camper and president of the Marin Homeless Union. Thanks to everyone for continuing to meet the moment with persistence, grit, resilience, and compassion, wrote Mayor Eric Garcettis homelessness czar in an April 2020 email chain involving Miller. The Ending Community Homelessness Coalition partnered with Urban Alchemy and the nonprofit We Can Now on a grant-funded pilot for a street outreach team. Drugs arent Cooks only problem, according to the campers who have made other serious allegations against the employee. But where others in the nonprofit services sector and psychologists see prison trauma as debilitating, Millerwho recently received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of San Franciscobelieves that struggling to survive on the inside requires expertise in an encyclopedias worth of social cues. We collaborated with everyone from the homeless to local business owners to unite the community and clean up the area. Each response includes a licensed mental health worker. No arrests have been made in either case. 4 stars. Montrell Dorsey, a former director of workforce development with Urban Alchemy, said that people getting out of long sentences in all-male prisons dont get proper training and that allegations of harassment and assault by workers are not adequately addressed by the organization. Because a city this offbeat deserves a newsletter with some But for decades it was politically unpopular and considered radical. For longtime Bayview resident Yvonne Dillon, the nonprofits Miller has founded have been a blessing for the area because they provided jobs for people who had a hard time finding work. Our people tell the rest. We recognize the humanity in those who are struggling and we treat them how we once wished others had treated us. Urban Alchemys turnover rate from April 2021 to April 2022 was 32.6% higher than the 14% rate in a nonprofit survey conducted by Nonprofit HR, a national human resources firm, in 2020. Los Angeles is seeking answers to the homeless crisis. This expansion, in Millers view, is owed to an innovation that came out of her own study of trauma. The organization holds $62 million in contracts in San Francisco while also providing homeless services in a half-dozen cities. With Urban Alchemys contract ending this month and their denial of the allegations, it appears the trauma the campers say was caused by the employees will not be addressed. Statistics only tell half the story. LA County sheriff's recruits graduate months after Whittier crash, Highways into the San Bernardino Mountains are closed to drivers, LA County passes motion requiring retrofit of some buildings by 2033. And then you can start planning: What do I need to do to start getting into a more permanent, secure situation?. Urban Alchemy saved 85 lives in 2018, through Narcan deployment, which brings back people from drug overdoses, and providing water to dehydrated people. He asked if I want to do a line and I said sure. bitea dose of arts, culture and more. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. A third organization, Urban Alchemy, is based in California and is hiring staffers for Austin. It was along the lines of the right answer dont be confrontational. Mitch OFarrell, the city councilmember whose district includes both Echo Park Lake and the new East Hollywood campground, declined an interview. Nobody else fucking wanted to do that, Miller said. Ian Clark-Johnson and Loving Lou Hammonds told the campers they came to help and make them more comfortable. Powelson said he reported drug use by Urban Alchemy staff to Josh, who was a shift supervisor. Hammonds, who trains other formerly incarcerated people to help keep the peace, checks on a person sitting on the sidewalk on Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin. A video shot earlier this year by Deschamps shows Josh yelling at Kennedy. The person in question could be Powelson. That, however, is a slow process, and the county has a long waiting list. While it hires people convicted of violent crimes, it doesnt employ registered sex offenders or people convicted of sexual assault. Hoffman said the nonprofit was first hired in February evaluate the health and safety of Dunphy Park. It represents a new strategy meant to corral the tents and cobbled-together structures that currently stand in parks, on sidewalks and below freeway overpasses, while providing services to the unhoused. The simple action of donning a yellow shirt and cleaning the community restores their dignity as people and members of their community. Were a social enterprise that engages with situations where extreme poverty meets homelessness, mental illness and addiction. For Davis, we are all here to hold each other accountable to be our better selves.. Today, it's a $50 million agency with 1,200 employees . Funding would come from Austin Public. A formerly homeless woman sued Urban Alchemy, saying employees asked her to leave U.N. Plaza while she prayed. Urban Alchemy has been a controversial choice for the program. He just gave it to me. When the pandemic scrambled the city's homelessness strategy, Urban Alchemy parlayed the hygiene and vehicle work into much more. At the July 28 City Council meeting, all but two members voted to hand over operations of the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH) to Urban Alchemy.. That's the California-based . The Nightmare Espionage Act That is Killing Julian Assange and the First Amendment. According to Deschamps, he heard Josh threatening Kennedy for a few minutes before he was able to turn on the video recorder on his phone. When a neighborhood, street or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around. Mallory Moench is a San Francisco City Hall reporter. Sidewalks once crowded with people doing or selling drugs are now more passable, these people say. Guests at the East Hollywood site, who Miller says are being found through outreach in the surrounding area, are likely to have a wide variety of needs and backgrounds. Last week on Tuesday, San Francisco housing project for homeless development is rejected by a majority of the city supervisors with an 8 to 3 vote. Urban Alchemy provided a data sheet showing they supply over 12,000 showers per year. Copyright 2023 Urban Alchemy. One reason the city cited for retaining Urban Alchemy was the amount of time the Sausalito police were spending at the camp. The organization later urged employees to call police instead of engaging with dealers. The organization represents a test of new models of public safety that San Francisco and other cities across the country are embracing. They can go to sleep at night, no one's going to touch them, hurt them, creep in their tent, she said. Yeah my name is David and I have a similar issues the staff in Los Angeles that work in the urban alchemy 3rd Street 2301 West 3rd Street Los Angeles California accuse me of first breaking in the property which I lived on then excuse me of hateful words and they said I was using the n word and I was training staff I dont think I would ever do any of those things they just were caught sleeping and slang word for messing up I guess cuz one was asleep and the other one wasnt at the front gate and I let myself in and they changed it all around lie after lie. Josh responded that he would take care of it. Urban Alchemy a relatively new organization primarily employs people of color coming out of prison and last year topped 1,000 employees. Since 2018, Urban Alchemy has grown to 1,100 employees in five cities, with projected revenue of $55 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, records show. We try to make sure we're not getting into anybody's personal space. 2 stars. COVID mightve come from a lab leak. The organization said it wouldnt seek to renew because it didnt make sense to keep coordinating a small project from San Francisco. The employee responded that the situation would resolve itself, but the man was still arguing with people when Gilmore left the scene shortly afterward, she said. All of these skills help them to establish and maintain social norms in the public places they work. During training, students learn Urban Alchemys seven values respect, integrity, empowerment, empathy, self-discipline, self-control and self-esteem. Based on Cooks Facebook profile, it appears he still works at Urban Alchemy; however, he is no longer on duty in the Sausalito encampment. The citys homeless services department said shelters run by Urban Alchemy have had few issues and that the organization has met the terms of its contracts. Newspapers from San Francisco to Los Angeles have recently reported on issues with Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that manages homeless encampments, including the city-sanctioned camp in Sausalito. Exactly how campers might transition to permanent housing, however, isnt clear. I like them, Ken Kennedy, a camper who is in the process of leaving the Sausalito encampment, said. Some campers were offended by several of Joshs numerous tattoos, which include white supremacist symbols. As the Bayview Vehicle Triage Center reaches is first anniversary, questions remain over its success in meeting SFs shelter needs. She previously covered immigration and local news for the Albany Times Union and the Alabama state legislature for the Associated Press. He wanted information about whats going on at the camp, Kelly said. We dont have anything that says Security. We call ourselves practitioners.. Not even base metal. They were salesmen, you know, Powelson said. The class laughed. Bruce criticized Urban Alchemys hiring model, saying it was a recipe for disaster to have people with troubled backgrounds acting as authority figures over the most vulnerable citizens. Urban Alchemy said issues have surfaced in a small fraction of interactions. The site also provides showers, three meals a day and 24-hour security. The city's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Services corroborated the claim. The group sells its service as partly spiritual, with a goal of transforming the energy of traumatized urban spaces. Employees are known inside the organization as practitioners. Urban Alchemy works with long-term offenders, integrating them back into society in order to prevent them from experiencing homelessness. Downtown Streets Team employs local homeless populations to clean community spaces in San Jose and San Francisco. Each call handled by CIRCLE, is a call LAPD doesn't need to answer, freeing officers up for other calls. The plan looked at three short-term goals to be achieved in three years: end youth homelessness; end veterans homelessness; and decrease unsheltered homelessness by 50 percent. 5 stars. A fucking turd., Matt Smith can be reached at [emailprotected]. Urban Alchemy provided services to homeless residents in Sausalito for almost a year. If you can paint lines on a sidewalk for the same cost that you can give someone the rent for an apartment, said Myers of the Legal Aid Foundation, I'm concerned that our city is making the choice to paint the lines rather than actually get people into housing.. Our agenda is humane treatment for people, and at Echo Park it meant offering them shelter as a safe place to go, which they took voluntarily simply by it being offered., Marco Tavanti, an expert on nonprofits at the University of San Francisco, said the five lawsuits against Urban Alchemy represented an elevated number compared to other nonprofits, except for some in the health sector. The idea of providing designated areas for unhoused people to camp, with bathrooms and access to social services, isnt new. Dawn Staley thinks so, Girls basketball: Webutuck grabs momentum, tops Manor for Class D title. Miller became interested in public toilets, specifically their importance in ensuring the dignity of the homeless, but also their potential for jobs. Mayor London Breed awarded the non-profit Urban Alchemy an $8.8 million grant to blanket the downtown area in August 2021. Robert Milton, a supervisor at the Department of Public Works, the agency that funds much of Urban Alchemys work, said seeing people who served long sentences holding on to a steady job sends a message. Now, faced with a ballooning homelessness crisis and a federal judge demanding emergency action, LA officials are embracing the concept. The city has also signed $53 million in contracts with Urban Alchemy to run eight homeless shelters and help staff the citys new Tenderloin Linkage Center near City Hall, where people can connect to services. One organization the city is working with, Urban Alchemy, was founded to provide career opportunities for the formerly incarcerated. Many . "It's impossible to serve people that you're afraid of and we have connected with folks on our teams who aren't afraid to be in what we would consider hairy areas or hairy situations oftentimes because they came from those places," says Tyler. With the rapid deindustrialization, many people lost their jobs. And, its always a firing offense., Theres no such thing as consent here, Clinebell wrote. This academic faction has a narrative that is made up. Urban Alchemy said it settled a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment by a co-worker and was working to settle two suits accusing the organization of not accurately calculating and paying for overtime and breaks. Theyre not just getting out of prison and putting them out there.. At the end of the day everybody has to have respect you know? Made in L.A. Streaming music, news & culture from KCRW Santa Monica, Live streaming music, news & culture from KCRW Santa Monica. He put his face within a foot of one of the 16 new hires. Email: [email protected], [email protected] Twitter: @mallorymoench, @kevinchron. From February through December 2021, the City of Sausalito entered into several contracts with Uban Alchemy. After I was done, he let me keep the 20 dollars., Gossage gave the employees name off the record because she said hes the only Alchemy person I could trust.. Davis made clear that homelessness is an experience, not an identity.. Some residents ask whether the workers can be effective in the most volatile situations without putting themselves in danger. Miller said her organizations rise doesnt owe to her relationships with Nuru and Breed, though, but rather what it offered to cities overwhelmed by street problems.