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Some campers were offended by several of Joshs numerous tattoos, which include white supremacist symbols. Despite skepticism from some homeless advocates, Urban Alchemy sees its separation from law enforcement as central to its mission. 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.. At the Sausalito tent encampment, Urban Alchemy moved three employees to other locations after altercations with community members, the organization said. For Davis, we are all here to hold each other accountable to be our better selves.. Another concern is that more government-approved campgrounds will mean more police enforcement for those who refuse or arent able to enter the sites similar to how the city recently resumed encampment sweeps near shelters, on the rationale that people in those areas have somewhere else to go. Community Engagement and Outreach: calming neighborhoods and public spaces by forming bonds with residents, promoting positive behavior, and connecting people to services; this work includes placing outreach workers and community engagement specialists in neighborhoods as . Councilmember Ward is the chair of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, an integrated array of stakeholders committed to preventing and alleviating homelessness., Dispelling myths about who the homeless was paramount to all three speakers, but Elliott highlighted that in San Diego, the cause is primarily economic. . That was predatory. Campers can bring in their own tents and whatever other belongings fit inside their assigned space. In Los Angeles, homeless advocates accused Urban Alchemy, which was hired on a six-month, $350,000 contract to offer shelter to people living at Echo Park Lake, of acting as an arm of law. In Sausalito, where city officials paid Urban Alchemy $464,000 to run a tent encampment for six months, a photo shows that a worker wearing shorts had a visible 88 tattoo on his right calf, a well-known code for Heil Hitler. (H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.) The idea is that while police are trained to respond to active threats, life has trained CIRCLE team members. Drugs arent Cooks only problem, according to the campers who have made other serious allegations against the employee. Mitch OFarrell, the city councilmember whose district includes both Echo Park Lake and the new East Hollywood campground, declined an interview. Mara Paradox, a nonbinary exhibition artist hired months ago, was in their second training after they relapsed in drug use and went back into rehab. Some Urban Alchemy staff members did drugs on the job and sexually exploited homeless females, according to more than 10 current and past residents of the Sausalito camp who spoke to the Pacific Sun. | Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, By clicking Subscribe you confirm you have read and agree to our. Low cost affordable housing for individuals and families. 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. Los Angeles officials, however, have praised Urban Alchemy for providing services to an often difficult-to-help population. Very charismatic. One organization the city is working with, Urban Alchemy, was founded to provide career opportunities for the formerly incarcerated. Urban Alchemy also prohibits predatory sexual behavior because of the power dynamics, according to Clinebell. Since 2019, the organization has won $62 million in. The person in question could be Powelson. Give people the opportunity to take a shower, get them off the street, and give them a sense of hope and belonging., Another man, DJ Woods, agreed. Powelson denies that anyone from Urban Alchemy requested more information. One organization the city is working with, Urban. Urban Alchemy is "moving the needle where nobody else is really able to move the needle, which is because they're doing the same old, same old," Miller said. Urban Alchemy made their first contact with Sausalito's 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. 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. Fearing retaliation, the campers have remained silent for months about serious allegations against Urban Alchemy employees. Including them as part of the community helps ensure norms are met. Made in L.A. Streaming music, news & culture from KCRW Santa Monica, Live streaming music, news & culture from KCRW Santa Monica. He later bought her a sandwich, prayed with her, and took her to the Tenderloin Linkage Center. Hassan Halfin, an Urban Alchemy supervisor who served 30 years in prison, said, I was amazed at how people were just lost in drugs, hustling, just walking around looking crazy. She has taken these young men, embraced them, given them a job to do when they get out of jail.. Mara Paradox, who is nonbinary, raises their hand during a training session for new employees of the outreach group. It was along the lines of the right answer dont be confrontational. In our experience, cleaning is one of the . A formerly homeless woman sued Urban Alchemy, saying employees asked her to leave U.N. Plaza while she prayed. Miller became interested in public toilets, specifically their importance in ensuring the dignity of the homeless, but also their potential for jobs. Start your review today. The police eventually arrived at the camp in response to the verbal altercation, although its not clear who called them. In addition, three homeless individuals are suing the organization for civil rights violations by Urban Alchemy employees. Urban Alchemy is a peaceful and supportive presence, inviting communities to rebuild and restore a sense of pride and respect in urban spaces. Temporary housing for individuals, men and women with children. In addition to CIRCLE, Urban Alchemy runs the city's mobile shower and restroom program, has "clean teams" working on streets with encampments, and operates several interim housing facilities. 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. Los Angeles is seeking answers to the homeless crisis. 1-888-999-2752 (Toll Free) We also acted immediately to notify the proper support and authorities, he said. Not lead. What are you going to say, Hammonds asked, when someone comes at you like this and calls you a snitch-ass motherfing police?. Employees get paid starting at $21 an hour and benefits, according to Urban Alchemys latest city contract. "For months, Councilmember O'Farrell's office worked with a non-profit outreach partner, Urban Alchemy, as well as the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority (LAHSA) to place more than 180 unhoused individuals (as you noted) who had formerly been living at Echo Park Lake into transitional housing." Copyright 2021 Capital & Main Wounded Warriors opened its first residence for homeless veterans, called Alpha House, at 1361 Fifth Ave. N. in the city of Naples in January 2020. He handed me a rolled up 20-dollar bill with crushed up crystal meth. Thanks for Not Procreating: Making Census of the Moment. The organization also reported reversing 123 drug overdoses using Narcan nasal spray. The nonprofit sees its mission as partly spiritual, with a goal of transforming the energy of traumatized urban spaces.. Most of our team have served life sentences in prison. Urban Alchemy works with long-term offenders, integrating them back into society in order to prevent them from experiencing homelessness. The campsite, he said, offers a safer place to sleep than the streets. For Urban Alchemys Executive Director Lena Miller, the organizations rapid San Francisco expansion is just the beginning. Ive had 20 years of homelessness off and on, and this has given me great purpose.. No arrests have been made in either case. I mean, Ive been to prison, but you cant even make up the stories of what we see.. Sidewalks once crowded with people doing or selling drugs are now more passable, these people say. The second worker was shot in April by an assailant who approached from behind, though the organization and police have not discussed a possible motive. She listed examples as violence, discrimination and disrespect to women. Shes just mad because I wont let her suck my dick, Josh said to the police, according to two campers. Los Angeles has opened its first government-run homeless encampment on a quiet, commercial block beside the 101 freeway in East Hollywood. We prioritize hiring long-term offenders.. The organization represents a test of new models of public safety that San Francisco and other cities across the country are embracing. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Urban Alchemy is a peaceful and supportive presence, inviting communities to rebuild and restore a sense of . 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. 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. The organization later urged employees to call police instead of engaging with dealers. Were a social enterprise that engages with situations where extreme poverty meets homelessness, mental illness and addiction. Miller pointed to their high levels of emotional intelligence, their ability to read people, and their ability to interact with different kinds of people. You can camp, sleep, lie anywhere and everywhere that you so deem., He added, I've connected a lot of people to resources, to housing, and sometimes it was through the booking process.. The organization birthed out of Hunters Point Family, an earlier non-profit Miller founded that focused on public housing. Right now in the City of Los Angeles, it's a free-for-all, said Buscaino, who is a former LAPD officer. Two employees have been shot on the job in San Francisco since February, illustrating that they can be thrown into dangerous situations. Four homeless people told the Pacific Sun about Urban Alchemy employees who have brought methamphetamine into the encampment for their own use or to share with campers. We provide a safe community for people to be in, so they're not out on the streets, said Miller. We can give them the training. 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.. USFs Tavanti said he found Urban Alchemys turnover to be high, attributing it to the stressful situations the workers face and to finding better jobs. Reduce the number of homelessness-related calls to dispatch, in areas where the CART program's community-strengthening interventions have occurred. 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. In Sausalito, where Urban Alchemy was hired to guard a tent encampment occupied by former residents of boats that had been confiscated, media reports described meth use, pot dealing and sexual encounters and assaults involving Urban Alchemy staff. We can help them recruit. Urban Alchemy's 2022 budget shows the nonprofit receiving more than $43 million in total contract and grant revenue from the cityup from just under $36,000 in total revenue during 2018, the year it was founded. 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. We teach that in our training.. The organization conducted a review of its policies in response to the incident, Tyler said. 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. 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. As the Bayview Vehicle Triage Center reaches is first anniversary, questions remain over its success in meeting SFs shelter needs. A comprehensive rundown 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. That goal was the focus of a recent training for new employees that The Chronicle attended. The residents of the Sausalito homeless encampment emphatically disagree about the staffs qualifications. 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. 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And then you can start planning: What do I need to do to start getting into a more permanent, secure situation?. Helping with that transformational experience takes extensive preparation, said Lola Whittle, president of the Urban Alchemy board of directors. Kirkpatrick Tyler, who is in charge of government and community affairs for the organization, describes the past prison experience of Urban Alchemy workers as parallel to the story of every single superhero in every comic book that youve ever readthat they have a traumatic experience, [and] they have to make sure that traumatic experience has a sustainable transformational impact on who they are to their core.. A turd. Urban Alchemy saved 85 lives in 2018, through Narcan deployment, which brings back people from drug overdoses, and providing water to dehydrated people. Then, after 90 days of close supervision and further training, the organization decides whether to keep the employee. In 2021, San Francisco hired Urban Alchemy to take on a slightly different task: patrolling areas of the city with high concentrations of homeless camps and offering resources to those living outside. Organizers believe those successes are possible because many were once homeless themselves and use that experience to make connections. These types of skills, she says, equip Urban Alchemy workers for interacting with people who are having a traumatic time on the street. But for decades it was politically unpopular and considered radical. 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. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com, kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench, @kevinchron. Urban Alchemys performance the value of the interactions it has on the streets is difficult to measure. 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. So we don't want to pick up anything that's theirs," says Sanchez. A female camper spoke about her intimate involvement with Josh, an Urban Alchemy supervisor who worked at the camp until recently. "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.". I did a line with an Urban Alchemy guy, Sarah Gossage, a current encampment resident, said. 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. During the public comment period of a Dec. 7 city council meeting, he alleged that Urban Alchemy staff used drugs on the job. 1. Some unhoused people and their advocates, including Tracey Mixon, a formerly homeless Tenderloin resident who works with the Coalition on Homelessness, complain that some employees have gotten verbally or physically aggressive to make people move or stop problematic behavior. Im going to fuck you up, Josh can be heard shouting in the first second of the video. Cook was going to take her to the liquor store until Kennedy intervened and brought the woman back into 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. The site closed in June 2022 after operating for a little over two years. An increasingly bipartisan chorus is asking where all the money goes for the states homeless crisis. Los Angeles, CA. And, its always a firing offense., Theres no such thing as consent here, Clinebell wrote. I looked on their website and it was hella vague. 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. When a neighborhood, street or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around. Each Tuesday, Downtown Streets Team hosts a town hall where people can participate in public life, share in each others successes, and be together. While an LA Homeless Services Authority spokesperson says that Urban Alchemys contract includes housing-focused case management, Miller says thats not her organizations speciality, and Urban Alchemy typically partners with other nonprofits for housing navigation. Cities have hired Urban Alchemy because they see unique potential in its strategy, simultaneously employing people who typically struggle to get hired while reducing the role of armed officers amid a movement for police reform. To date, Downtown Streets Team has secured over 1,900 jobs and homes for people. The organization holds $62 million in contracts in San Francisco while also providing homeless services in a half-dozen cities. Austin Resource Center for the Homeless. 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. David Sjostedt can be reached at [emailprotected]. From February through December 2021, the City of Sausalito entered into several contracts with Uban Alchemy. No one wants to touch that kind of liability.. One organization the city is working with, Urban Alchemy, was founded to provide career opportunities for the formerly incarcerated. 5/3/2022. As can be seen below, veterans homelessness spreads across generations. 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. Curating the best of The Standards top-notch reporting, every Saturday. 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. Throughout much of that period, Mike and Joseph oversaw the camp and helped move the encampment from downtown Sausalito to Marinship Park last June.