- If someone goes out with us one time,
they see the issue differently for the rest of their lives.
If they have one conversation with one unhoused person,
they will never again say the same misconceptions,
the same myths, the same false things
about, "Oh, homeless people are all lazy."
You know, all that sort of thing that you hear,
they realize, "Oh no,
"these are people who we're all failing."
And I think that's incredibly powerful.
And it's one of the things I love the most about SELAH.
- The more you meet and talk to people,
the more you find that they're absolutely no different
than any of your friends, your parents.
They're our neighbors.
They're just our neighbors who, for a variety of reasons,
find themselves with no place to live.
And once you see them
not as people on the street with grocery carts
but as your neighbors who have fallen on hard times,
I don't know how you could not wanna
help them in some way.
(relaxed electronic music)
(birds chirping)
SELAH is an all-volunteer organization,
building community with our unhoused neighbors,
through engagement, through food, through case management,
which we usually offer onsite back in pre-COVID days.
- Once again, if you can,
when you're handing out the bags, if you can,
to your best of your ability,
just try to keep that distance.
If you feel comfortable setting it down
and letting someone pick it up,
just be open with them and explain to them,
you know, "We're doing this
"out of just safety precautions during this time."
Make sure you're wearing gloves.
Make sure you're wearing a mask.
Adam and Lauren are going to Los Feliz.
- So we'll start at Myra as usual
and do the normal thing.
- Yeah. - Okay, great.
We're at an engagement.
I'm Adam, this is Lauren up here.
On engagement, we just bring food, water, hygiene kits
to folks who are unhoused, and we check in on them.
We say, "How are you doing today?"
We ask if they're feeling well,
to see if maybe they're suffering from any COVID symptoms.
We ask if we can help them get ID or anything like that,
because we provide those services back at the church.
We just really try to create community and say hello,
and try to learn folk's names,
and build relationships that, you know,
that's the long game part of it.
But it's kinda the most important part.
How's it going, Robert?
(Robert speaks faintly)
Yeah, it's too hot out.
Are you feeling okay today?
- [Robert] Oh, I'm great.
- Yeah? Taking it easy.
You're not feeling sick or anything, right?
(Robert speaks faintly)
Okay, that's good.
You want a hygiene kit as well, sir?
- [Robert] I do.
- Okay, great. We'll get you one.
If you go to the Silverlake Community Church today,
we've got showers, we have someone
who can help you get your stimulus check,
and we got free clothes and stuff like that.
(indistinct speaking)
- It's so much more helpful when a caseworker
knows that they're gonna be here every Saturday
or they're gonna be here every Wednesday.
- SELAH came here to the church
looking for a space to help host the 2019 Homeless Count.
And it was right at that time
that I was becoming the pastor of the church here
and was learning about what our church was gonna be about.
And we both got excited about the potential
for using the church's campus,
not just for hosting the upcoming Homeless Count,
but potentially also for hosting some of the events
that SELAH was doing.
- I'm glad that we were able to pivot so fast,
and now we've become a food distribution program,
as you can see.
We started off with 25 boxes every week,
going out to encampments along the river.
And now we're up to a hundred,
and people are asking for more.
And I hope someday we don't have to do this,
and we can go back to normal.
But what is normal?
You know, as much as I hate
everything that has happened this year,
it's really starting a lot of discussions
as for why the system wasn't working
for a good number of people
and why we can't go back to normal.
- Well, as you know, we were givin' out food and stuff,
and there was a woman sitting
on that little concrete wall there.
And she was not obviously homeless.
And so we said, "Okay, hey, do you want some food?"
And she said, "Yes, I've been homeless five days."
She had been evicted from her home
and had been on the street five days,
was not sleeping in a tent,
had none of the equipment that like, you know,
folks who have been out for awhile sort of get.
She was just, like, sleeping in the clothes
that she had been evicted with, with no possessions,
just like in the park or on this thing.
And she was 67 years old.
And it was really heartbreaking.
And luckily the folks from SELAH I was with
knew who to call.
She literally slept right there overnight.
And then 9:00 a.m. the next day,
we picked her up and brought her there.
And you know, now she has a case manager
at The People Concern.
And it makes me think of how many people there are
around this city who nobody just goes up and talks to
and finds that out about.
Instead, we're spending all of our money on police,
who are not equipped or trained to handle that situation.
Imagine if we spent all that money on social workers,
who just walked around and said,
"Oh, this person seems to be in some distress.
"Do you need anything?"
And could find those people, you know?
(soft electronic music)
- And regardless of what you believe,
as far as morality and God and all that kind of stuff,
we can at least probably both agree
that a lot of these people need help.
And as much as we would like to think
that they're getting a lot of help in other places,
what I've experienced since I've come to this area
is they really aren't.
Or better said, there are so many folks on the street now
that even though they're getting help in other places,
they're not, in our area, getting the help that they need.
And I think you would probably agree with me
that we can't just continue to push those people
to some other part of the city,
because now there's 45,000 of them,
and they just are getting shuffled around
to all of our neighborhoods.
- This spot right here is a construction site.
There's been an encampment here
for about the last year or so, consistently,
which had at least a little bit stability.
We'd see the same folks there every time.
This is the first week they haven't been there,
'cause now there's a huge scaffolding here.
That's sort of the situation when we do engagement
is that we're trying to make relationships
as people are still forced to move around
by construction, or by the police, or often by harassment.
And so, you know, you realize
that these encampments are the most temporary structures.
And one of the things that unhoused folks have
is that they don't have
even the most basic level of stability.
And so a lot of times we find ourselves
trying to defend encampments.
Like, I try to explain to my friends,
"No, we need encampments
"or at least some amount of stability that people have."
As opposed to being, you know,
this daily hell of just trying to find a stoop to sleep in,
like they're unsightly and they're dangerous.
We'd rather not have people that have to stay in them,
but you know, the amount of precarity
that people have to face on a daily basis
is really, really rough.
You want some food, sir? - Yes, sir.
- What was your name again? - Brent.
- Brent. Good to meet you again.
- You've got something in the corner of your eye.
I'm 61 years old, and I work as a law clerk.
10 years, a law clerk for judge.
Since then, I've had probably about six interviews,
but when they see that I'm 61,
they asked me how long I'm gonna work.
And I tell 'em nine years.
I can give them nine years, 'til I'm 70,
but it doesn't work.
It's hard to compete at 61.
So therefore I lost my apartment.
Then I came out on the streets.
I did not plan for this.
I recycle during the day.
And I do have a couple of clients
that I provide document assistance for.
It's a struggle to get back out of this position
because most of us were a paycheck away from here.
And then it's tough too, when you're out here,
to put together the money for a deposit
and all those other things.
When the COVID-19 went out, all the restaurants closed.
So it took all of our ability to wash our hands,
the things they ask us to do.
And dignity, to go to the bathroom.
It's really difficult.
- Yeah, I just showed up on that day,
went out, and I was nervous about it.
Nervous about the prospect of going and talking
to folks in the street and what might happen,
but it was really kinda straightforward.
And it wasn't as hard as you expected, you know?
You just go up and say, "Hi, hey, how ya doing?
"You want a bottle of water?"
People say, "Yes."
You say, "Hey, how are you today?"
"I'm having a rough day."
Or they say, "Ah, things are all right."
And you talk to them for a little bit.
And then you go onto the next spot.
And you do that a couple of times in a row,
you get to know folks' names, you get to know 'em.
And then, you know, they're a part of your community,
and you actually know them now.
- Everyone has a purpose.
And the best thing to do is get to know
what local organizations are in your area
so you can volunteer with them.
If volunteering is not your thing,
there are so many other ways
you can help our unhoused community,
either by advocating through policy,
or by donating, or to volunteer
to make the community a better place for everyone.
(light electronic music)
- I'm doing this because I couldn't stand
to not be doing anything anymore, you know?
I would walk down the street,
and I would see, you know, the same person
at the same bus stop every single day.
It's very clear how much people are suffering.
And I felt like that barrier,
where I felt like I couldn't speak to those folks.
I didn't know what to do.
And I was unhappy about that.
Just on social media, I saw SELAH,
and they say, "Hey, we go out in the community.
"We hand out bottled water, and we say hi.
"And we talk to the folks in our community."
And I thought, "I wanna do that,"
just 'cause I'm sick of that barrier being there.
And you know, this is the humanitarian crisis
that's right in front of us.
You can read about malaria in Africa all you want,
and that's a big crisis too,
but this is the one that I saw
on my commute to work every day.
And I was not comfortable with allowing it
to continue without me doing anything about it.
And SELAH gives me a way to do that.
- We know our neighbors.
We go to 7-Eleven. We know the dude in front of 7-Eleven.
We get to talk to him, we get to know him.
Who better to help neighbors but other neighbors?
- Everyone should have a roof over their heads.
And we take for granted the luxuries that we have,
like having a bathroom, having a shower.
And to think that there are people
that don't have these simple needs is just crazy to me.
No one should be hungry, no one should be unhoused.
And so this is why I'm so passionate
about helping and advocating our folks out on the streets,
because we need more housing.
We need more protection for our people.
'Cause you can't be a part of a community
without helping everyone.
So this is why I do what I do.
- [Person] Wait.
(gentle orchestral music)
(light electronic music)
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