Food and Charity : 100 Years on the Street
Homelessness is showing signs of media overkill. Many people are now truly bored with the homeless, even a bit cynical.
Unfortunately, downtown Los Angeles really does have a Skid Row, and you wouldn’t want to live there. Skip loaders roll down its sidewalks early in the morning to sweep up the ragged cardboard shelters homeless people have slept in. Following them come sanitation vehicles spraying the sidewalks with detergent and disinfectant.
Union Rescue Mission (often known simply as the Union) has been dealing with the squalor and misery of Main Street, the traditional heart of Skid Row, for 102 years, 67 of them at the same location. It’s the oldest and largest Skid Row charity, but its building is relatively inconspicuous, solid rather than colorful, with wiring so old that when the copying machine turns on in one part of the building, it might shut down a computer somewhere else. It’s grown over the seven decades, and you can easily get lost in its tangled hive of offices and classrooms and dormitories.
The kitchen, however, is small. Apart from a couple of 30-gallon soup pots, not much about it suggests that it turns out 1,500 meals a day. “I call it the Miracle Kitchen,” says Ruth Manuel, who has cooked here for the last three years.
Manuel radiates maternal warmth. “I came from doing volunteer work for a free school,” she says, beaming. “Somebody told me, ‘They need a good mom.’ They needed home cooking. The Lord brought me here in the fullness of time to cook for the Mission.
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“I came to make collards and corn bread,” she says, with a trace of her native New Orleans in her voice, “because that sticks to you.” She’s made her point about collards. At this year’s Christmas Day dinner, the Mission expects to serve 2,700 people 800 pounds of ham, 500 pounds of candied yams . . . and 400 pounds of collards. With all the other courses, the meal should total about five tons of food.
The daily meals are simpler, of course. “I have to serve balanced meals,” says Manuel. “I cook a lot of different things. Some Mexican food. Jambalaya and gumbo. I do a Chinese dinner. I haven’t cooked matzo ball soup yet, but some day I might.” She beams again.
Although it originated as a Protestant charity called Pacific Gospel Union, the Union Rescue Mission has guests of all faiths. In fact, many years ago a man used to drive up from San Pedro in a horse and buggy to worship at St. Vibiana’s Catholic Church next door, and he’d stay the night at the Union. When he died a few years ago, he left the charity a bequest so large that it will cover one third of the cost of the new building--coincidentally, on San Pedro Street, a few blocks away--to which the Union will have to move next year.
The Union serves breakfast, lunch and dinner daily, but the meal hours take into account the harsh life of Skid Row. Single men, the traditional core of the homeless, are served separately from women and families, a category that has grown from 20 a month four years ago to 700 last month. The women and families get dinner at 4 p.m. plus a bagged meal to take back to the shelters or SRO hotels in Skid Row where they live (the Union’s current building doesn’t have sleeping facilities for women), so they won’t have to be out on the street after dark.
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The food is served from a steam table on plastic trays. Every table has a basket filled with random loaves of bread. “Von’s and a couple of other markets donate day-old bread,” says food service supervisor Sandy Hill. “We encourage people to take loaves with them when they leave, so they’ll have some food when they’re not here.”
Hill, who came to the Union Rescue Mission from the Department of Corrections, inspects all donated food for wholesomeness. When there’s more than the Mission can accept, he passes it on to other Skid Row missions. “The missions have a sort of network,” he says.
Hill is also a culinary arts instructor in the Union’s educational program. “We just had our first class of graduates,” he says proudly. “One of them has a job already.”
The meals served, like the 300 beds available (and 400 chairs in the chapel, where many homeless people spend the night to get away from the cold and the danger of the street), are part of the Union’s emergency services, along with a medical clinic, showers, a barber and free clothing. But education is part of a larger program for those who have decided to make their way out of Skid Row. This includes counseling, detox, 12-step programs, religious activities, an eight-hour work day, literacy and job training and job referrals.
Union Rescue Mission people like to recall the saying that if you give a man a fish, you give him a meal, but if you give him a fishing pole, he can take care of himself. “We don’t want to be enablers,” says president Warren Currie, using the therapeutic term for the addict’s well-meaning friends who make it easy for him to go on being addicted. “Our purpose is rescuing lives. We like to call ourselves a highway out of Skid Row.”
Union Rescue Mission, 226 S. Main St . , Los Angeles, (213) 628-3230. Accepts monetary donations and gifts of canned goods and other non-perishables 24 hours a day. Call to arrange drop-off; a secure parking lot is available but it’s not necessary to park; security personnel at front door will accept donations.
