GIMME SHELTER - LA WEEKLY DIGITAL - GENDY ALIMURUNG full article linked.
EXCERPTS: PATH operates five Southern California shelters, where a person can live for up to six months and tap into veterans programs, job training, personal finance workshops and more. There’s even a hair salon at the “groundbreaking” PATH mall at the Madison Avenue shelter, as well as a legal assistance center, pharmacy and health clinic.
Big money flows through this empire. PATH’s real estate development pipeline — in partnership with private developers — is valued at $90 million. In 2011, PATH’s revenue was $8.3 million, most of it from taxpayers. ...
Finally, last July, Susie Shannon, executive director of the homeless advocacy group Poverty Matters, brought her concerns about PATH to the city of West Hollywood. Her clients occasionally wind up at PATH, and at least 10 complained to her about conditions there. Lack of food came up repeatedly.
Sometimes people would donate baskets of fruit and vegetables. Staffers told the shelter residents, “That’s for breakfast tomorrow,” Shannon tells the Weekly. But when “tomorrow” arrived, the fruit and vegetables were missing.
She was told that staffers were “berating” homeless clients during mandatory Monday house meetings, conducting invasive locker searches and ignoring sexual harassment among the closely housed residents. And then there was the “day pass” controversy over passes PATH rewards to residents who save money. Day passes let them stay out past PATH’s curfew to, say, visit family without losing their bed. “The case managers would hold on to the money for you. In order to get a day pass, you had to give them your money,” Shannon says.“ As an advocate this is outrageous. I was horrified.”
Some of her former clients told her they were pressured to serve as “informants.” “Though you’ll never see it on the beautiful brochures PATH prints out to ask for money,” Shannon says. “On the one hand, they do a lot of good. On the other hand, there’s a public trust that’s been violated. You give them money, thinking that people are being treated the way the brochure tells you. But that is so far from reality.”
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OUR RESPONSE: PATH IS NOT THE ONLY SHELTER THAT TAKES IN HUGE AMOUNTS OF FUNDING where "CLIENTS" are BERATED or SUBJECT TO OTHER B.S. BY CASE WORKERS AND MANAGEMENT. Check out our PAGES.
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