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Los Angeles Group Fights Homelessness and Hunger

The Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness (LACEH&H) works "to eliminate hunger and homelessness through public education, technical assistance, public policy analysis, advocacy, organizing and community action."

The group formed in the mid 1980s in response to increased homelessness in the Los Angeles area. It initially began as a coalition of social service providers and advocates who met once a month to share information relating to homelessness issues and available services. When a handful of advocates decided that more was needed than simply information sharing. they spun off a coalition dedicated to eradicating homelessness. Name changes along the way, from the LA County-wide Coalition on Homelessness, to County-wide Coalition for the Homeless, to LA Coalition to End Homelessness, illustrate the group's changing focus and increasing emphasis on action by the homeless themselves to make changes in current policies that contribute to homelessness. The group later merged with an anti-hunger organization, incorporating as part of its mission the elimination of hunger and becoming the LACEH&H. LACEH&H is a representative to the California Homeless and Housing Coalition, Housing California, and the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Having started off with only one quarter-time staff person, the group has grown to have a $400,000 yearly budget with five full-time staff, one part-time staff member and nearly 525 organizational and individual members and supporters. Many members are homeless or formerly homeless people, and many homeless individuals, while not officially members, are active in the group's work. One third of LACEH&H's governing board are homeless or formerly homeless people as is the organizer for the Welfare Reform Advocacy Project (which is described more fully below). LACEH&H plans to begin a 6-month internship program in which two low-income or homeless interns will receive training in advocacy and organizing. New interns will be brought in every six months while former interns will be assisted in finding jobs in the advocacy community.

Among the group's current projects is the Welfare Reform Advocacy Project (WRAP) which has four components. One is an organizing component in which homeless and low income people receiving TANF, Food Stamps or other assistance organize to speak out on welfare cuts and welfare reform. A second is the Welfare Reform Monitoring Project in which LACEH&H has signed up eighteen shelters with the goal of interviewing thousands of recipients. They plan to publish a report on the findings and demand Congressional hearings on the impact of welfare reform in LA County. Another project under WRAP is "Walk a Mile in My Sister's Shoes" which teams up welfare mothers with middle-class women in an effort to educate and inform. The fourth component of WRAP is the Human Rights Monitoring Project, being done in conjunction with the Universalist Unitarian Service Committee in which LACEH&H members document human rights violations against the homeless. The Human Rights Monitoring Project aims to present the final report to the United Nations.

LACEH&H also has a Hunger and Homelessness Organizing team which supports the organizing efforts of homeless and formerly homeless people around civil rights issues in the Homeless Action Network, and of food stamp recipients and emergency food pantries responding to welfare reform in the Hunger Action Network. It has developed a "Self Advocacy-Know Your Rights" pocket size card in English and Spanish for homeless people on the streets. Other areas of the group's work include community education, coalition building, public policy advocacy and empowerment of homeless and formerly homeless people.

In addition, the group publishes "How to Get Food and Money: The People's Guide to Welfare, Health and Other Services in Los Angeles County" in both English and Spanish and distributes 250,000 copies a year. They plan to publish a similar statewide guide in English, Spanish, Russian, Korean, Chinese, Armenian, Vietnamese, Thai, and Farsi as well as a guide to emergency food pantries. The group runs a 24-hour public policy hotline, publishes a quarterly newsletter, "The Bottom Line," and serves as sponsor for "Making Change", a homeless written, produced and distributed newspaper.

 

Prepared by Center legal intern Maryanne Joyce.

-- from the November 2nd 1997 issue of Welfare News