Hollywood Volunteers Work Toward Permanent Supportive Housing Solutions for the Homeless
On Wednesday, April 28 at 4 o’clock in the morning, a group of 71 volunteers braved the streets of Hollywood on a mission.
Their mission: to create a by-name database of the over 500 homeless people living on the streets of Hollywood, particularly focusing on those individuals who are most at-risk of premature death in an effort to find them permanent and supportive housing.
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky addressing the group of volunteers at 4 a.m., before they were deployed for their first day of interviews
The volunteers who contributed that early Wednesday morning were all participating in the Hollywood Homeless Registry, which took place during the week of April 25-30 and was put on by local organization Hollywood 4WRD.
Among the 71 people involved was Paramount Contractors and Developers’ Director of Leasing, Dirk Degraeve, who was confronted with the problem of homelessness in Hollywood nearly two decades ago and has been actively seeking a solution to the problem since.
“About 20 years ago I was walking down Sunset with a client and suddenly a homeless man came out of nowhere and started screaming at us. That obviously ended our conversation,” recalled Dirk.
“It was scary because he had really startled us, so I talked with the building owners here (Brian and Brad Folb) and thought we should do something about this.
“That started a spark within myself to see if we could organize the community to help deal with the problem of homelessness in our neighborhood.”
In the meantime there was a Business Improvement District [BID] being formed in the Hollywood Entertainment District [HED], just north of the buildings at 6464 and 6565 Sunset, under the leadership of executive director Kerry Morrison, who still holds that title.
Once the HED BID was established, the homeless situation in the district immediately displaced itself. However, it was not a real solution – as the BID expanded it was more secure in the street, because BID’s are about keeping things clean and safe, but it merely displaced the homeless.
After a couple years of closely monitoring the progress of the HED BID, some of the property owners in the Sunset & Vine [S&V] area began organizing their own BID in the hopes of replicating the success Kerry Morrison was experiencing.
Dirk Degraeve went to one of the early meetings for the S&V BID with Brad Folb and they immediately became involved in the effort to solve the homelessness problem in Hollywood.
This lead to an eight-year involvement with PCD leading the BID under the direction of Dirk, who served as President.
“One of the items on the agenda for the S&V BID, obviously in addition to keeping the area clean and safe and maintaining overall neighborhood beautification, was to develop a program that could, with the minimal means that we had, coordinate a movement to start working together with the homeless agencies that were already established here to try and solve the homelessness problem, not just displace them.”
The early efforts of the members of the S&V BID led to the creation of local organization Hollywood 4WRD – which stands for 4 walls, a roof and a door.
Hollywood 4WRD was started in 2008 as a coalition dedicated to ending homelessness on the streets of Hollywood by 2018. They began with the help of New York based organization Common Ground under the leadership of the HED BID’s executive director Kerry Morrison.
The ultimate goal for Hollywood 4WRD and especially for Common Ground is to raise enough funds to be able to get the homeless to transition into permanent housing – apartments or studios where people can be tracked and given the proper care they need in able to succeed in our society.
They aim to help the people who have slept on the streets night after night – some having lived in the area for the last 15 or 20 years.
“When we say we want to end homelessness, it’s not like you just kick all the homeless off the streets and suddenly you’ve resolved your problem,” explains Dirk.
“We mean transitioning them into permanent supportive housing. The key here is PERMANENT, SUPPORTIVE housing.
“One of our goals in the community is to provide a way for people to understand what homelessness is all about and what solutions we can provide. We are creating this model of awareness in our community that I feel most satisfied with because awareness inherently leads to solutions.
“If we can collectively come forward with a feasible solution to solve the homelessness problem then maybe people will be more willing to talk about it and when confronted take action in the appropriate manner – especially under the organizing minds of Hollywood 4WRD and Common Ground because now there is a structure that can last. At the end of the day I see that as a positive note.
The Homeless Registry week organized by Hollywood 4WRD was an active attempt to begin providing a solution for the homeless, but it is only the first step in a long process to help transition the homeless off the streets and into permanent housing.
And as Dirk explains, the key to finding a solution is spreading awareness to get as many people involved as possible.
“We were looking for 40 volunteers, but 71 people came to help us with the registry,” said Dirk.
Dirk Degraeve and Kerry Morrison interview a man in the street
“We went out into the streets of Hollywood at 4 o’clock in the morning armed with a six-page questionnaire to approach homeless people with so we could make an accurate inventory of who these people are, where they sleep, and their contact information – including social security numbers, phone numbers and email addresses if they have one, although no one we approached had an email address.
“That information will then be placed in a database and an effective outreach program can be established.”
The local community is beginning to provide a solution for the hundreds of homeless in the area and they have had loads of help from outside sources – including PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) and the United Way.
But the biggest help has come from the local community – from politicians like LA County’s 3rd District Supervisor Zav Zaroslavsky and LA County’s 3rd District council member Tom LaBonge as well as activists like Lillian Kuo and Sarah Macpherson of the S&V BID, Fabio Conti of the Fabiolus Café and of course Dirk Degraeve of PCD – who could all be seen at 4 o’clock in the morning on the streets of Hollywood during Homeless Registry week.
“When I was walking the streets with my peers the words peaceful, serene, calm came to mind – not danger, not fear; there was not one moment that I actually was worried.
“Throughout the week I saw the caring of my peers – a lot of people gave out of the goodness of their heart. To get 71 people together to do something like this is extraordinary.
“When we finally got together at the end of the week for a debriefing and we saw our peers of the night, it was a nice feeling to walk away from – we felt as if we had accomplished something.
“We were able to go out and get the community to participate. We had almost double the volunteers that we were looking for, and we raised money beyond our wildest expectations. I’d say the event was an incredible success, it was an immense success.”
“This may be a call to awareness because today I truly believe that there is a solution that we can bring to the community, and it’s not that complicated – I felt like before we didn’t have a way to deal homelessness, but now it seems we do.”
If you want to join the effort, please contact Dirk Degraeve at (323) 462-6727