Although the pair mentioned they were with Urban Alchemy, Powelson said the men gave the impression they were homeless advocates from San Francisco. 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. Most of Urban Alchemys 1,100 employees have served life sentences in prison, but did serious self-work to get out from under their incarceration, according to its website. Urban Alchemy is moving the needle where nobody else is really able to move the needle, which is because theyre doing the same old, same old, Miller said. He bought her a sandwich, prayed with her, then took her to the citys linkage center. We didnt know who they were.. A female camper spoke about her intimate involvement with Josh, an Urban Alchemy supervisor who worked at the camp until recently. I did a line with an Urban Alchemy guy, Sarah Gossage, a current encampment resident, said. 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. Josh treated me like trash. The number 18 on Joshs left arm refers to Adolph Hitler, with the 1 corresponding to the A and the 8 corresponding to the H. It appears that his left leg has a tattoo of the Iron Cross, which was a symbol used by the Nazis, according to the ADL. When a neighborhood, street or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around. That, however, is a slow process, and the county has a long waiting list. Nothing that we have [achieved] is based on corruption or cheating or something unethical or immoral, or illegal. When we arrived on the scene, the Tenderloin faced an unmanageable problem with littering. Theres a lot of training, she said. Miller says salaries start around $19 an hour, and I fight really hard to try to give good wages to my people.. Urban Alchemys performance the value of the interactions it has on the streets is difficult to measure. They can go to sleep at night, no one's going to touch them, hurt them, creep in their tent, she said. Start your review today. All Rights Reserved Urban Alchemy has helped me to learn to help myself, Paradox said. Fearing retaliation, the campers have remained silent for months about serious allegations against Urban Alchemy employees. Know Your City! In general, the countys coordinated entry system prioritizes people based on a vulnerability index that measures physical and mental health. Once the city increased the contract, we got all these new Urban Alchemy people coming and going, Powelson said. He asked if I want to do a line and I said sure. Urban Alchemy provided a data sheet showing they supply over 12,000 showers per year. But where others in the nonprofit services sector and psychologists see prison trauma as debilitating, Millerwho recently received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of San Franciscobelieves that struggling to survive on the inside requires expertise in an encyclopedias worth of social cues. When a neighborhood, street or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around. A UA employee fucked [a female camper] in the tent next to the tent Im in, Deschamps said. Joseph gave me a quarter ounce of weed. In December 2021, the Sausalito City Council approved a $463,620 contract with Urban Alchemy for around the clock site management services, from January through June 2022, at the Marinship encampment. The situation came to a screeching halt after another Urban Alchemy employee told her Josh was taking time off work because he was getting married that weekend. "They've been great," he said. When we became aware of this situation, we quickly identified the resident and helped connect her with emergency medical care. Camp residents want to move on, hopefully to housing opportunities with the County of Marins assistance. He then clocked out, came back into the camp, and hung out., However, Mike was later moved to another Urban Alchemy location after being caught on cell phone video calling a woman at the Sausalito encampment a bitch and a whore.. Gossage, a current camper, said Josh visited the camp within the last couple of weeks and told her that he is working for Urban Alchemy at a San Francisco location. Ian Clark-Johnson and Loving Lou Hammonds told the campers they came to help and make them more comfortable. Bruce criticized Urban Alchemys hiring model, saying it was a recipe for disaster to have people with troubled backgrounds acting as authority figures over the most vulnerable citizens. Urban Alchemy said issues have surfaced in a small fraction of interactions. Ian came up to me and said, Why did you throw us under the bus with that? Powelson said, referring to Clark-Johnson, Urban Alchemys residential services director. As can be seen below, veterans homelessness spreads across generations. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing was contacted for comment. But another councilmember who plans to open safe camping sites, Joe Buscaino, says enforcement is part of the point. Louie Hammonds, chief of training for Urban Alchemy, instructs new employees on the outreach program. Council is set to vote July 28 on a $4.14 million agreement with Urban Alchemy that would establish the nonprofit as the ARCH's operator for 13 1/2 months. If the conduct is egregious, which has happened, she said, the person is fired. And unlike at the West LA VAs safe camping site, this one doesnt share a campus with various health care facilities, and campers dont have access to a special pool of housing rental vouchers like eligible military veterans do. The best of what to see, hear, eat, do, and more. 636 Eye Street, NW People coming out of prison, Harding said, are motivated to succeed and often equipped to help others with similar experiences. Los Angeles is seeking answers to the homeless crisis. Montrell Dorsey, a former director of workforce development with Urban Alchemy, said that people getting out of long sentences in all-male prisons dont get proper training and that allegations of harassment and assault by workers are not adequately addressed by the organization. Mallory Moench (she/her) and Kevin Fagan (he/him) are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. The agreement calls for Urban Alchemy to provide positive engagements with the campers, de-escalation interventions and custodial services. Thats higher than what a typical one-bedroom apartment rents for in the city, according to the website Rent Cafe. Nobody else fucking wanted to do that, Miller said. Urban Alchemy notified the city on May 9 that they wouldnt be entering a new agreement, according to Urban Alchemys media representative. Miller says this is the kind of fresh approach public officials have been drawn to when deciding to hire Urban Alchemy to provide security services for public toilets, street corners, BART elevators and homeless facilities, in addition to picking up trash. Founded in 2018 with 30 staff, Urban Alchemy started out by providing one program that monitored public bathrooms in a San Francisco neighborhood. Thats when the lot is scheduled to become a construction site. Many team members spent time in prison and surviving that was possible, in part, because of an ability to deescalate a situation. Know Your City! Urban Alchemys turnover rate from April 2021 to April 2022 was 32.6% higher than the 14% rate in a nonprofit survey conducted by Nonprofit HR, a national human resources firm, in 2020. The three organizations are the inaugural members of the Austin Street Outreach Collaborative. And Ive been here for 87 damn years in this community, she said. The city formally announced its relationship with Urban Alchemy in a Feb. 16, 2021 online statement. The . Employees dont always succeed in deterring violence. They allege he is a bully. When asked about the stories of assault, harassment and misdeeds at various projects, Miller said they paint an inaccurate picture and distract from the good Urban Alchemy has done. 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. Alejandro Sanchez, who is on the clean team explains their approach. Not lead. Instead of an hourly wage, they offer a non-cash basic-needs stipend, case management, employment services, and a support network within their community. Hammonds said employees dont stop peoples addictions and dont force people on sidewalks to move although people usually do when asked. Crime has gone up in America, the same old solutions are not working, so were going to see more growth in these areas and there are going to be growing pains, said Jorja Leap, an adjunct public policy professor at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, who is the lead researcher for Bidens efforts and was not involved in the Echo Lake Park report. Hammonds, who trains other formerly incarcerated people to help keep the peace, checks on a person sitting on the sidewalk on Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin. California is ranked number 1 in homelessness, with nearly 130,000 homeless individuals, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and numbers only continue to rise. Homeless Population: 8,124. Last year, more than 450 employees filed a potential class action suit alleging labor violations. 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. Urban Alchemy has helped me to learn to help myself, Paradox said. The Lee County Homeless Coalition reports 394 people were homeless on the night of Jan. 26, 2021 when volunteers fanned the community to conduct the annual "point in time" surveys, according . 5/3/2022. I looked on their website and it was hella vague. 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. Basically like a franchise model, Miller said in a radio interview last year. Within seconds, he blocked all further communication. The program offers people who have been out of work for a few years a platform to build their resume and eventually re-enter the workforce. 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.. She has acknowledged relationships that go back years with city power brokers, including Breed and former Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, now charged with corruption. In training, Hammonds taught the new employees to be patiently persuasive when asking people who may be homeless, addicted or traumatized to stop blocking sidewalks or using drugs in public. When the pandemic scrambled the city's homelessness strategy, Urban Alchemy parlayed the hygiene and vehicle work into much more. My lane is this part. Downtown Streets Team employs local homeless populations to clean community spaces in San Jose and San Francisco. The organization holds $62 million in contracts in San Francisco while also providing homeless services in a half-dozen cities. He noted that a hospital bill they could not pay, a utility bill they could not pay, balanced with housing, especially in a high-cost market with low vacancy rates, leads to homelessness., The City of San Diego unanimously passed the Community Action Plan on Homelessness, a body of policy focused on helping the existing homeless population, preventing future homelessness, and ensuring that homelessness is an experience that is brief and non-recurring. of SF politics and culture. The organization said it wouldnt seek to renew because it didnt make sense to keep coordinating a small project from San Francisco. But their employers, he stressed, must make sure they have stable housing and support including treatment for mental illness or addiction if needed to succeed. Organizers believe those successes are possible because many were once homeless themselves and use that experience to make connections. We recognize the humanity in those who are struggling and we treat them how we once wished others had treated us. If necessary, employees call paramedics, homeless outreach teams or if confronted with violence or the threat of violence police. The Nightmare Espionage Act That is Killing Julian Assange and the First Amendment. Urban Alchemys contract to run the Sausalito site expires at the end of June. Josh, too, is frequently mentioned by the campers. Some campers were offended by several of Joshs numerous tattoos, which include white supremacist symbols. Some critics accuse the workers who are not state-licensed as private security guards of improperly policing public spaces. Entry level positions for Urban Alchemy, like the Clean Teams, have become a familiar site in downtown Los Angeles, Venice and Hollywood. At the time, Powelson and the other campers had no idea Clark-Johnson and Hammonds were high-level managers in an organization retained by the City of Sausalito. Plan to fight education inequity in LA: Whats it achieved in 2 years? While it hires people convicted of violent crimes, it doesnt employ registered sex offenders or people convicted of sexual assault. In this case, unfortunately, our staff was not informed of the pregnancy by the resident or her partner during intake nor were there any noticeably apparent signs that the resident was pregnant, Tyler said. The woman said she was at a vulnerable place in her life when she began making out with Josh in the bushes near the encampment. Since 2019, the organization has won $62 million in. Urban Alchemy is a peaceful and supportive presence, inviting communities to rebuild and restore a sense of pride . Hammonds sweeps up trash along Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin. That was predatory. 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. For Urban Alchemys Executive Director Lena Miller, the organizations rapid San Francisco expansion is just the beginning. One of the worlds richest regions has some of its starkest divides, with its top 10% of households holding two-thirds of its wealth. 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. Urban Alchemy secured the bulk of its work during the pandemic. The city's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Services corroborated the claim. One organization the city is working with, Urban Alchemy, was founded to provide career opportunities for the formerly incarcerated. It was along the lines of the right answer dont be confrontational. Shes just mad because I wont let her suck my dick, Josh said to the police, according to two campers. It offers emergency shelter, basic services and connections to housing for 130 men. One reason the city cited for retaining Urban Alchemy was the amount of time the Sausalito police were spending at the camp. After being hired to guard and provide other services to homeless encampments in the Los Angeles Skid Row neighborhood, workers became associated in the citys progressive media with a decision to evict homeless people from a downtown park. Very charismatic. Today, it's a $50 million agency with 1,200 employees . Steveo. That goal was the focus of a recent training for new employees that The Chronicle attended. Each call handled by CIRCLE, is a call LAPD doesn't need to answer, freeing officers up for other calls. The CIRCLE dispatch center can respond to 911 calls to LAPD that aren't criminal in nature. All of these skills help them to establish and maintain social norms in the public places they work. Heres what we know. Urban Alchemy Practitioners have been turning the San Francisco Clean program since 2015. An increasingly bipartisan chorus is asking where all the money goes for the states homeless crisis. The American Society of Landscape Architects In terms of getting to the other side of it, that's not my lane. 5 stars. An hour after the interaction with Snider, Hammonds rolled a woman in a wheelchair out of the middle of Market Street, where she was screaming and refusing to move, and into a cafe. Employers arent bending over backwards to hire returning citizens. We also acted immediately to notify the proper support and authorities, he said. 2 stars. Fax: 1-202-898-1185, Copyright 2008 2019 Miller said the organization doesnt condone employees pushing extreme political views on the job, and her staff said it was aware of the tattoo and had received no complaints from residents. She envisions eventually helming a nationwide homelessness organization that provides direct services and also acts as a consultant to cities looking to set up similar outfits of their own. The Ending Community Homelessness Coalition partnered with Urban Alchemy and the nonprofit We Can Now on a grant-funded pilot for a street outreach team. You have some people who are very inappropriate.. All Rights Reserved. The American Society of Landscape Architects Were a social enterprise that engages with situations where extreme poverty meets homelessness, mental illness and addiction. Transforming the energy in traumatized urban spaces. 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. He just gave it to me. We dont have a badge. Made in L.A. Streaming music, news & culture from KCRW Santa Monica, Live streaming music, news & culture from KCRW Santa Monica. The lawsuit, which also names the city as a defendant, is ongoing. Get the latest from KCRW in your inbox 3x a week. (The federal government already operates a similar site on the West LA Veterans Affairs campus in Brentwood.) Jeff Kositsky, center, now works with the nonprofit Urban Alchemy after heading up the S.F. They were salesmen, you know, Powelson said. City Controller Ron Galperin said that while the East Hollywood safe camping pilot is expensive, the costs support a professional staff skilled in case management, as well as necessary sanitation and security services. As the Bayview Vehicle Triage Center reaches is first anniversary, questions remain over its success in meeting SFs shelter needs. 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. All rights reserved. But for decades it was politically unpopular and considered radical. Urban Alchemy said the nonprofit is supporting employees by paying a living wage and offering mental health insurance and therapy. Now, faced with a ballooning homelessness crisis and a federal judge demanding emergency action, LA officials are embracing the concept. Ill say, Have a good day, sir, the trainee responded. A parking lot has been turned into a homeless encampment that offers 24-hour security and free meals. Since 2018, Urban Alchemy has grown to 1,100 employees in five cities, with projected revenue of $55 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, records show. DM B. She has taken these young men, embraced them, given them a job to do when they get out of jail.. An Urban Alchemy "practitioner" monitors a mobile pit stop located at the intersection of W. 38th St. and Grand Ave. in Los Angeles. 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. Bayron Wilson, Urban Alchemys director of operations, says the Sausalito allegations were false, and that the organization did a successful job helping the campers, who had just been kicked out of floating homes anchored in Richardson Bay. 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. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 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. Most of our team have served life sentences in prison.
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