The Giant Potato Will Be On the Move Today in L.A.

(Client: The Original Farmers market)

It’s not the largest item to get hauled around the streets of Los Angeles, but that massive 6-ton, 28-foot-long potato that was hanging out in Pasadena earlier this week (next to a giant fork, of course) will be on the move again today in L.A. as it makes its way to the Original Farmers’ Market for a weekend of fall fun.

Created for the Idaho Potato Commission, the giant potato is due to hit the road in Huntington Beach at 2 p.m. today, according to City News Service. The potato is being transported via a customized truck, but, unlike last Friday’s haul of the space shuttle Endeavour, will not require closed roads or trees to come down.

The potato’s scheduled route is the 405 Freeway north to the 10 Freeway to Fairfax. The spud is due to arrive at around 3 p.m. at the Farmers’ Market at Third and Fairfax, where it will stay put for the weekend for the venue’s 78th Annual Fall Festival.

To view the original article as it appears in http://laist.com click the link below.

http://laist.com/2012/10/19/the_giant_potato_will_be_on_the_mov.php

Giant Potato Invades Orange County!

(Client: The Original Farmers Market)

A 28-foot-long potato rumbled through Orange County on Friday, cruising up the 405 Freeway toward Los Angeles.

Strapped to a flatbed truck, the 6-ton sculpture, which was commissioned by the Idaho Potato Commission, left Huntington Beach around 2 p.m. on its way to the Farmers Market in L.A.’s Fairfax district.

The jumbo tuber is the latest in a series of oversized objects traversing Southern California highways. Earlier this year, a giant rock was transported to the L.A. County Museum of Art. More recently, the Space Shuttle Endeavour  rolled down local streets to its new home in Exposition Park.

The massive potato’s visit is temporary.

It will stay at the Farmers Market for this weekend’s 78th annual Fall Festival. Instead of a pumpkin patch, the 11-foot-tall potato will be surrounded by a potato patch with 2,000 spuds. Visitors will get a bag with a potato in it, and can decorate it if they wish in a festival crafts event.

No word on how many French fries could be produced from a 28-foot potato

To see the original article as it appears on http://losalamitos.patch.com click the link below.

http://losalamitos.patch.com/articles/giant-potato-invades-orange-county

L.A. County to focus funds on chronically homeless

(Client: Home For Good)

Public officials and private donors will spend $105 million on more than a thousand chronic street dwellers. The marshaling of money is the most concrete product yet of an ambitious plan launched two years ago.

Los Angeles County’s most entrenched street dwellers make up just a quarter of its roughly 51,000 homeless people. But studies have found they account for a disproportionate share of public spending, including on hospital emergency rooms and jails.

On Thursday, public officials and private donors will announce that they are spending $105 million to move more than a thousand of the most chronic cases into permanent housing, part of a sweeping change in the way the county deals with homelessness.

“There’s a momentum that has been building in Los Angeles to change the paradigm of how we address homelessness,” said county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “We are spending tens of millions of dollars a year … but I think what is clear is that we haven’t intelligently invested that money in the past. What we want to do is a more intelligent way to invest in the homeless, not to have temporary solutions.”

The shift to target the chronically homeless means more resources will go to people who have lived on the streets for at least a year and suffer from a serious physical, mental or substance abuse problem.

But some emergency housing providers complain that there will be less money to assist families, youths and others who may need only temporary shelter.

“My concern is by focusing all the resources on the few, we are leaving the many out in the cold,” said the Rev. Andy Bales, who heads the Union Rescue Mission on L.A.’s skid row.

Officials have been talking for years about a greater focus on the chronically homeless. But the $105 million — which combines public money already set aside to assist the homeless and low-income people with new donations from philanthropic and business groups — marks a major step in bringing it to fruition.

About $88 million will go toward rental subsidies for 587 people over 15 years. In addition to using existing housing, $8.6 million will be used to develop 218 new units. The rest will be used to provide for counseling, treatment and other services designed to keep people off the streets.

The marshaling of money is the most concrete product yet of an ambitious plan launched by business and philanthropic leaders nearly two years ago with the goal of ending long-term and veteran homelessness in the county by 2016.

The Home for Good plan, an initiative of United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, proposed reallocating about $230 million in existing resources each year to pay for permanent supportive housing, which includes counseling and treatment to help keep people off the streets.

They hope additional money and resources will be dedicated to the effort in coming years.

The approach was pioneered locally by the county’s much-talked about Project 50 experiment and similar initiatives around the region, which have been praised not only for ending homelessness for many participants but also for saving municipalities money.

A county study found that Project 50, which began in late 2007 with the goal of housing the 50 most vulnerable, long-term homeless people on skid row, more than paid for itself, yielding a net savings of $238,700 over two years by cutting shelter, medical and jail costs.

Proponents of the approach argue that it is all the more important to spend strategically at a time when the state and federal governments are scaling back spending on affordable housing.

Jerry Newman, who co-chairs the Home for Good initiative, said that by prioritizing the most hard-core homeless for housing, “you take out the most costly portion of the issue, which will free up greater resources in the future.”

More than 100 community leaders and organizations — including the county Board of Supervisors, several cities and housing authorities — endorsed the Home for Good plan in its first year. In that period, more than 3,000 of the region’s long-term homeless and homeless veterans were placed in supportive housing, according to a report released in February.

A collaborative of 24 public and private contributors was formed to make the process more efficient. Members of the business and philanthropic communities, including the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, committed $5 million to the effort, officials said. That money was then used to leverage $100 million in cash and services from the city and county of Los Angeles and from Pasadena.

In all, 30 nonprofits received awards ranging from $50,000 to $2.37 million to house the 1,018 people.

Maria Cabildo, president of East L.A. Community Corp., said her organization was able with a single application to secure a grant of $2.3 million from the Los Angeles Housing Department to help build homes for 32 chronically homeless veterans in Boyle Heights and more than $6 million in subsidies through the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles to help cover their rents in the coming years.

With that support, the organization could break ground as soon as January, shaving at least a year off what can be a complicated and time-consuming process, Cabildo said.

Follow the link to view the original posting on www.latimes.com http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-homeless-money-20120816%2c0%2c7793080.story

‘Home for Good’ initiative pools $105 million in resources to fight homelessness in Los Angeles County

Client: Home For Good

More than 1,000 homeless people will get permanent housing thanks to a partnership between the United Way and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

Their “Home for Good” initiative will announce tomorrow a commitment of more than $105 million in resources that will fund the housing.

The first $5 million comes from businesses like Kaiser Permanente and JP Morgan Chase and foundations like the California Endowment and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. Public agencies like the Housing Authorities of Pasadena, Los Angeles City and County are committing $100 million in resources like Section 8 housing vouchers and health, mental health and substance abuse services.

“Putting a chronically homeless person in a permanent home with the supportive services they need to stay there has been shown to be over 40 percent less expensive than leaving someone on our streets,” says Christine Marge, the director of Housing Stability for the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

“When somebody is living on our streets, they’re cycling through our emergency rooms for their health care, they are in and out of jail and prison,” she said. “When they’re placed in permanent supportive housing, those costs decline dramatically.”

Marge says each public and private sector funder has traditionally distributed their resources separately. As a result, providers have been cobbling together a multitude of funding streams to make their projects run. That’s hard, says Marge, especially when public budgets are tight.

Thirty non-profit organizations are receiving grants through the initiative. They include the Watts Health Care Center, the Skid Row Housing Trust, St. Joseph Center and the East L.A. Community Corporation.

A map of the recipients of grants from the initiative

One of the beneficiaries of the ‘Home for Good’ Collaborative is LA-based People Assisting the Homeless — PATH. They’re getting a grant for $1 million.

Joel Roberts is PATH’s CEO. He says the money, which comes from the private sector, will help his group sharply expand the number of homeless people it helps. PATH will look to identify chronically homeless people who are frequent users of county health and mental services. It will focus on providing those people with housing.

“Not shelter beds or transitional housing,” he said, but “regular apartments.”

Roberts says PATH’s goal is to house 500 chronically homeless people over the course of two years.

Those who get housing through PATH will have to contribute something towards the cost of that housing — if they have income from a job or government benefits.

To view the original posting, follow the link to http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/08/15/33871/home-good-initiative-pools-105-million-resources-f/

Initiative Steers $105 Million to Help Chronically Homeless

(Client: Home For Good)

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Home for Good, an ambitious, business sector-powered plan to eradicate veteran and chronic homelessness in Los Angeles, will announce today that it is dispersing more than $105 million in grants to area permanent supportive housing providers.

The grants include $5 million raised from private donors like the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the United Way and Goldman Sachs. The rest of the money comes from government entities that have agreed to spend more on Home for Good’s target population — veterans and those who have been on the streets for years.

Of the $100 million contributed by various city and county entities, $55 million represent new dollars for programs that focus on the chronically homeless, said Jerry Neuman, co-chair of Home for Good, a partnership between the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

Central City beneficiaries include Skid Row Housing Trust, which is getting $225,000, Lamp Community, which will receive $200,000, and the Downtown Women’s Center, which was awarded $135,000.

Since launching in 2010, Home for Good organizers have lobbied city and county agencies and departments to funnel more of their homeless aid toward permanent supportive housing. The agenda hinges in part on the idea that housing the chronically homeless ultimately saves taxpayers who end up paying for emergency room bills and jail stints incurred by those on the street.

The grants are the first allocation from Home for Good’s Funders Collaborative, which pools and aligns public and private funds for developing permanent supportive housing. It allows housing providers to apply to one entity for funds that could come from an array of sources.

Historically, providers have secured capital to build housing from one source. They had to seek other dollars to pay for the services.

“Instead of service dollars going to one entity and housing dollars going to another, for the first time, we’ve coordinated it so we can make the most of getting permanent supportive housing put together,” Neuman said.

The process benefitted Lamp Community, a Skid Row-based homeless services provider. Organization leaders submitted a single application to the Home for Good program and won $200,000 to pay for supportive services for 40 formerly homeless individuals. Lamp was also awarded Section 8 rent vouchers through the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles that will allow the organization to house 20 additional people in sites around the city, said Donna Gallup, Lamp’s executive director.

“We went through one application process and were able to access both a housing rental subsidy and the services and oftentimes were not able to put that together,” Gallup said. “Instead we’d have to go to five different sources.”

Skid Row Housing Trust, one of the largest permanent supportive housing developers in the region, was awarded $225,000 to pay for in-house services in some of its older apartment buildings. United Way contributed $175,000, and $50,000 came from another private foundation.

While it is a leader in the supportive housing model, SRHT only started incorporating onsite services in 2003, when it revamped the St. George Hotel at Third and Main streets. The Home for Good grant will put more services in some of the entity’s 19 older buildings that now lack in-house support programs. That increases the odds that the formerly homeless will stay housed longer, officials say.

“Typically the grants in the past have been targeted to new people moving into housing,” said SRHT Executive Director Mike Alvidrez. “One of the good things here is we’re able to reach back for people who may have moved into housing with just as many disabilities, but don’t have the services there.”

The Downtown Women’s Center’s $135,000 award will pay for supportive services in its 48-unit permanent supportive housing facility on Los Angeles Street, DWC spokesman Patrick Shandrick said. The facility is undergoing a $4 million renovation paid for chiefly by foundations and private donors, he said.

Business Responsibility

Home for Good is novel in two ways: It has the business community working side-by-side with nonprofit homeless advocates, and it is driving policy. Since 2010, Los Angeles has seen a paradigm shift in homeless services to prioritize permanent supportive housing over other service categories like emergency shelters or transitional housing.

That shift has helped connect previously fragmented funding streams controlled by the city and the county.

“Home for Good, they’re like a conduit,” said Ninth District Councilwoman Jan Perry. “They’re a place to meet somewhere in the middle. That is something that is very different than in the past.”

Still, the campaign has generated skepticism among service providers in Skid Row and beyond that are not engaged in permanent supportive housing.

Herb Smith, president of the Los Angeles Mission, said he cautiously supports Home for Good. The mission, like other shelters in Skid Row, relies on private donors and foundations to fund its array of services. Lately, several foundations have realigned their dollars to support permanent supportive housing, diminishing the pool of funds that cover transitional housing and emergency beds for the newly homeless.

“There are a lot of people who go through the continuum of care that just need housing that’s affordable,” Smith said. “To not provide that, but to provide the permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless person, I think does an injustice to others who have tried to get their life together and need help along the way.”

If Home for Good’s goal to end chronic homelessness by 2016 sounds ambitious, its organizers believe they are on target.

According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which conducts a biannual homeless count, there were 51,340 people sleeping on the streets in L.A. County on any given night in 2011. Of that figure, 10,901 people were chronically homeless, meaning they had been on the streets for more than one year, or had experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in three years. The count found 8,131 homeless veterans.

A Home for Good analysis issued in February reported that 2,273 chronically homeless individuals were moved into supportive housing last year, and 864 homeless vets were placed in permanent shelter.

The real measure of success may come in January, when LAHSA conducts its next homeless count, said Neuman, the Home for Good co-chair.

“In January, I think it will be proven,” he said.

To view the origin of the posting click the link to http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/homeless-service-providers-to-announce-million-in-grants/article_9238f57a-e72c-11e1-b5bc-0019bb2963f4.html

Groups File Lawsuit to Stop MHS Field Lights

(Client: Malibu Community Preservation Alliance)

The Malibu Community Preservation Alliance and the Malibu Township Council say the 70-foot lights will change the characteristics of western Malibu.

Two Malibu groups have filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the installation of 70-foot lights at Malibu High School‘s athletic field.

The Malibu Community Preservation Alliance and the Malibu Township Council filed the lawsuit on Wednesday, July 25.

In response to the filing, Malibu City Attorney Christi Hogin said the city stands by its decision to approve the lights.

“We’re disappointed that this has come to litigation, but we are prepared to defend the city’s decision,” Hogin said.

On June 26, the Malibu City Council granted a coastal development permit and a temporary use permit for the construction of the lights, which will only be allowed for a maximum of 61 nights. The council also required the school district to take down 12-foot cross bars on the lights from June 1 through August 31.

The lawsuit alleges that the Malibu City Council abandoned a compromise reached between residents and the school district in 2010 to allow temporary lighting for 16 nights out of the year.

“This will light up all of west Malibu like a professional stadium,” said Steve Uhring, a member of the Malibu Township Council. “It is an egregious violation of the compromise that the community worked so hard to achieve with the district.”

According to Hogin, the council only put in place the maximum number of nights the lights can be used.

“The city is setting the limit. If there is a compromise to be had, nothing would stand in the way of those parties reaching that agreement,” Hogin said.

The groups also claim the Malibu City Council violated the city’s Local Coastal Program and Municipal Code when it took the proposed lights under consideration in June without a public hearing before the Malibu Planning Commission. The council voted on the project because of conflicts by three Malibu planning commissioners.

Commissioner Mikke Pierson and Roohi Stack donated to The Shark Fund, which was set up by a group of parents to benefit projects at Malibu High School, including the lights project. Commissioner Jeffrey Jennings lives within 500 feet of the campus.

The lawsuit claims that even though there were not enough commissioners to create a quorum, California law allows under the rule of necessity to select one of the members to proceed.

In addition, the groups allege that the City of Malibu did not adequately take into account the full impact of the 70-foot lights.

“Due to the rural nature of the surrounding community and the absence of streetlights, lighting levels in the vicinity of the school campus are substantially less than are typical in residential areas. As a result, the introduction of high intensity stadium lighting on the school campus will directly and uniquely impact the surrounding community,” the lawsuit states.

Hogin said the city took special care to lessen the impact of the lights.

“The council imposed some pretty strict conditions in order to mitigate the impact. The requirement that the light standards come off the pole during the months that the field should not be in use at night is an important condition. That really does create a relatively unobstructed view during the summer months,” Hogin said.

To view the original article click on the link below

http://malibu.patch.com/articles/groups-file-lawsuit-to-stop-malibu-high-school-field-lights

Residents File Lawsuit Against Malibu High Lights

(Client: Malibu Community Preservation Alliance)
“Three of the five had an evident predisposition,” Hogin said. “The city holds itself to the highest ethical standards, and they were recused. We kicked it to the City Council which could put together a majority without any of those conflicts.”

As far as the environmental allegations go, the California Environmental Quality Act asks only that City Hall understand the environmental impact, which it did, Hogin said.

Under the compromise approved by the City Council, the lights may stay on until 7:30 p.m. between the first Sunday in November and the second Sunday in March for 45 days.

They may be lit until 10:30 p.m. up to 16 times, but not on two consecutive nights and not more than twice per week between Sept. 1 and May 31.

The goal was to allow the field to be lit for Friday night football games and other sporting events, but it ran afoul of residents who cherished the dark skies of Malibu, Hogin said.

“There’s the long American tradition of Friday night football games as a community event and the desire to have a world class high school with a competitive football program on the one hand, and on the other hand you have a rural residential community that values dark skies and the wildlife habitat and is very careful in its development standards to make sure that development is not too intrusive,” Hogin said.

It’s unclear at this point if the lawsuit will stop progress on the lights.

District officials were served with the suit on Monday, and have sent it to their attorneys for review.

In the meantime, the Malibu Community Preservation Alliance is hoping for a compromise, Winikoff said.

“I think it’s unfortunate that we had to do what we had to do to show that we were serious,” Winikoff said. “We’re totally open to (settlement).”

Click the link below to view the original article

http://www.smdp.com/Articles-local-news-c-2012-07-31-74495.113116-Residents-file-lawsuit-against-Malibu-High-lights.html

A New Farmers Market at the Farmers Market

(Client: Original Farmers Market)

Farmers have sold and traded produce for thousands of years. But the modern farmers market, as we know it nowadays? It has a few significant forebearers, most notably, around these parts, the Original Farmers Market at Third & Fairfax, which perfected the early art of the back-of-the-truck fruit sell back in the mid-1930s.

Over the years, the locals-and-tourists favorite evolved, gaining several stands and more businesses beyond fruit-and-vegetable sellers. And while good produce is indeed still sold at the market, it no longer has that traditional farmers market feel, save a clutch of excellent organic stands that can occasionally be found near the clocktower.

That’s set to change on Tuesday, July 24 when “a host of local and regional farmers” take over the parking lot space near where Du-par’s and Short Order meet. All sorts of fresh-from-the-vine or tree veges and fruits will be on the tables, as well as market hallmarks like organic honeys and nuts and such.

Original site on NBC Los Angeles

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/the-scene/food-drink/A-New-Farmers-Market-at-the-Farmers-Market-163479956.html

Home For Good, New York Times Editorial

(Client: Home for Good)

Los Angeles County is often called the national capital of homelessness, with more than 51,000 people lacking shelter on any given night. Homelessness there has proved to be a very tough problem to solve, especially with governments so short of revenue. But Home for Good, a collaboration by governments, businesses and charitable groups announced last month that it was making progress toward the goal of ending chronic and veteran homelessness in the county by 2016.

The program was begun in December 2010 by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Over the last year it has found permanent supportive housing for 2,273 chronically homeless people and placed 874 veterans in permanent housing.

What makes those numbers so impressive is that Home for Good focuses on the hard-core homeless. Those troubled individuals are only about a quarter of the homeless population, but are a disproportionately heavy drain on public resources as they cycle through emergency rooms and jail cells.

Home for Good’s initial success seems to be another validation of the “housing first” strategy, in which people battling addiction and mental illness are not required to sober up before being given shelter and services. It has been shown to be more effective — and far cheaper — to stabilize lives first, and then treat their many problems.

The group has fallen short of its own goals in some areas. It hasn’t been able to build or convert as many units of permanent housing as it had hoped. While many politicians and others speak approvingly of Home for Good, of the 88 cities in Los Angeles County only seven, including Los Angeles, have so far joined in.

The co-chairman of Home for Good, Jerry Neuman, said he is often asked about how it will ever scale up to match the magnitude of the problem. He says the answer is “scaling down,” having each community take responsibility for the chronically homeless in its own neighborhoods. The homeless population, he said, is far less transient than many people believe. Reaching out to them, he said, thinking small, is the way to make a large dent in a huge problem.

To view the full article on the New York Times website click the link.

Original Farmers Market At Third And Fairfax Celebrates 78th Birthday

(Client: Original Farmers Market)

The original Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax is celebrating its 78th birthday Tuesday.

Found on Yahoo News

http://news.yahoo.com/video/losangelescbs2-15750780/original-farmers-market-at-third-and-fairfax-celebrates-78th-birthday-30011180.html