The Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition
Having been called into being as volunteers by the City of West Hollywood in 1987, we suffered the awful realization just two years later that West Hollywood, as a political entity, wasn't ready to defend a group that was helping the homeless. We were accused of perpetuating homelessness, encouraging criminal behavior, despoiling the neighborhood, and destroying property values -- all this for serving hungry people something to eat once a day -- and we were effectively run out of town and into Hollywood, suddenly an orphan group of volunteers but with a reputation in the media for having fought city hall and survived. From that point forward we have only gotten braver, because little by little we came to know that there were a lot of people like us in the community who wanted to do something "good" but didn't know where to begin. We have since fought any number of running battles just to keep going -- against neighbors and neighbors' groups, against politicians and other "social service agencies," and, just two years ago against a company which sued us for creating "a public and a private nuisance." When that happened we were defended pro bono for eight months by a partner and four associates of one of the largest law firms in town, and at the end of it the judge in the case threw it out with prejuidice. We are now stronger and more effective than we have ever been, and we continue to grow stronger still. We serve an ever-better meal, to between 150 and 200 people every night. We have two or three new volunteers coming to us every day, and our ability to network in the community at large is nothing short of extraordinary. As far as we know, no other ragtag grass-roots organization formed to help the homeless has lasted as long as we have and attracted so much support. And yet we are still at the takeoff point, in that every new volunteer who means it has a new idea as to how we can reach deeper into the community and how we can avail ourselves of its strength to do more for the weakest among us.
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1 Submitted Idea
- 2013 Grants Challenge
volunteers housing the homeless
For 25 years the all-volunteer GWHFC has helped the homeless of Hollywood and West Hollywood survive life in the street by serving them a fantastic meal every night, seven nights a week, which we make entirely from high-end food donated to us all over town. With the GWHFC/UCLA Mobile Clinic, which we founded in 2001, we help them take care of their myriad medical and legal concerns. Now, we'd like to focus on getting them OFF the street, one by one, into safe, clean, and attractive apartments of their own choosing -- not public housing and not slum housing, but apartments which we wouldn't mind living in ourselves (just as the meals we serve are planned and prepared to our taste, as if we were going to eat them, not they). Over the past 18 months we've "housed" twelve chronically homeless "clients" in that way, and we've come to realize that we are better at it than any of the dozen or so public and private agencies which use up enormous amounts of money in salary and overhead to do the same thing. Why are we better? Because we are volunteers, and we come to know the people we serve organically: we meet them over a really good meal, and little by little they tell us about themselves, and we are able to figure out which of them are ready to join us back in the mainstream. We aren't social scientists, and we aren't bureaucrats -- we are a cross-section of the community much like they are, and it is no wonder that they come to trust us and we come to trust them, because they know we are doing what we do out of love for our fellow man and for no other reason.