Midnight Mission is located at 601 South San Pedro Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014-2415 in between E. 6th Street and E. 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles. This location took 23 million to build. It opened in 2005.
According to my host, Disney spent 1 million dollars to replicate the exact cafeterias that are built for Disney employees in Anaheim and Orlando. I would guess it could hold about 300 people. Though individuals are "in & out", and are not permitted to stay past a certain time after receiving their meal.
Took a photo of myself upon first arriving in the kitchen.
The mission requires 8 million dollars a year to function, however none of this money is spent on food! Most food is donated from local warehouses. There is a small administrative area where employees make arrangements with companies who regularly donate food. The mission pays for paper napkins and for spices.
This is a glimpse of the man doing his community service hours. We loaded up a rejected "tropical" flavor of Sunkist sodas into plastic cups which are placed on large cookie sheets and stacked one on top of the other in a huge industrial sized fridge so they are ready to be served. They also had several room sized freezers. Homeless are not allowed more than one cup. The cookie sheets were quite heavy, I couldn't lift mine after filling up the cups.
Here is some of the spaghetti and squash that I served.
You can't really see but there are two orange bins filled with foods. I was in charge of salad, you actually just use your plastic gloved hands to place salad on the trays. It's weird serving salad with dressing from a clear garbage bag using your hands. Sort of soggy because it was placed in the fridge and used at a previous meal.
Basketball coach Orlando Ward (also Director of Program Services). This gym for residents is right down the hall from Dorm 1. Physical activity is a requirement of the program and extremely important for individuals recovering from physical addiction.
Michael Kelly, a resident, told me that in the 1950's homeless were primarily middle aged white men. Then after 1980 cocaine and crystal meth were introduced to communities, and the average age became 33 for homeless people in LA, and were predominantly African American men and women. Today homelessness of women and children is on the rise.
Dorm 1 is where residents live for the first 3 months. Men must agree to live there for one year, but most men can't make it through the first three months due to their addiction/s. You get the top bunk for the first half of your stay in Dorm 1, and the bottom bunk for the 2nd half.
Dorm 2 is a slight upgrade because you get a desk. You live there after three months. There is a dorm 3, as well, but he didn't have time to show it to me. My guess is that Michael lives in Dorm 3.
Plastic trays with five compartments are used instead of plates. Actual Silverware is used because it is less costly to clean real silverware than to continually purchase disposable plastic forks. Homeless receive a fork wrapped in paper napkin.
There is a statue of Dick Van Dike and his wife in the front lobby. He is known for donating his time and money, particularly during holidays. Anthony Hopkins is also a huge contributor, and was quoted to have said something to the effect of "I used to have an alcohol problem, I could have been homeless".
On Saturday, July 30, 2010 from 1pm – 6pm I volunteered at the Midnight Mission at 601 South San Pedro Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014-2415 in between E. 6th Street and E. 7th Street. Midnight Mission is actually a residence for 160 men with drug and alcohol related addictions, who agree to one year of a free abstinance recovery program. However, there is also a front courtyard filled with 150 homeless people who actually live in the outdoor courtyard year-round. Some have been there for five years. In addition, what Midnight Mission is mainly known for is it’s service of free meals for the homeless in the Skid Row area for those homeless people who are living on the streets in the area. Interestingly enough, since there are several other similar organizations in the area, homeless people have their choice of what time and where to go to collect their free meal. Midnight Mission serves three meals every day except for Sunday lunches, as their turnout was poor and it turns out several local churches pass out hand bagged lunches that day of the week.
A man about 60 years old named Michael Kelly greeted me. I assumed he worked there. Later he told me he actually is an alcoholic who completed the program about five years ago, worked as a cook in the kitchen for three years, left because he thought he stable enough to do so, fell back into alcoholism and returned back to the program this year as a PR person instead of a kitchen worker. He was not allowed back into the kitchen, I'm not sure why. He admitted to abusing prescription drugs in his past, as well, but no street drugs. He gave me a tour of the entire place, though he said “You’re not really supposed to be here”. I said, “I arranged this with Shannon Shumaker”. And he said, I know you made an appointment, but generally we don’t allow women to work here without a friend, however there is a group here today so you are allowed. I said, “I know, Shannon purposefully placed me with a group”. I have to say though, I didn’t see “a group” of volunteers while I was there. Everyone I talked to was either living there or an individual working off their community service hours for selling drugs or some other court ordered sentence. I am writing a group paper on Crystal Meth (wasn’t my choice of topic) in my other class, so I was sort of oddly thrilled to meet up with a man in his 30’s who says he used to be a Crystal Meth dealer and got caught. He claimed he bought it for $800 and sold it for $1700, which was odd to me because one of the first things you’ll learn if you’re researching Crystal Meth is that it is commonly referred to as the “poor man’s cocaine”.
At the mission, I think I felt a little scared to tell too much about myself technically, like exactly where I live because I live in such a specific and small area, and also the entire time I was completely overwhelmed with the concept that life as I know it has no meaning to anyone in these homes or on the streets. I felt really snobby, like, I respect that programs like these exist, but I feel like I have had little contact with drug addicts and homelessness, and while I tried to be positive to the people I talked to, I could hear a voice in the back of my head saying, “Thank god I don’t have to live in a place like this”, or “I can’t believe these people work in this kitchen every day for years at a time”. It was really eye opening for me because, in good traffic, this place is like 25 minutes away from me! I had no idea it existed! I mean, I had heard of Skid Row, but I never go to downtown LA. I sort of imagine downtown LA is further from me than it really is. Even though I didn’t want to go into depth about my personal life, I also found myself opening up to this person because he had told this long story about how his wife kicked him out earlier that week and this was his first week being homeless and he had never imagined his life would be like this. He said last year he was making $120,000 a year as a respiratory therapist and now he’s stuck working off community service hours on his days off so he doesn’t have to go to jail. He said he has a 2 and a 3 year old with his ex-wife but that he intends to divorce her and has agreed to pay $800 a month in child support. He’s mandated to tell every future employer about his record, and worries he’ll end up working at a 7 Eleven and his entire monthly paycheck will go towards his child support. At first, he told me he had a DUI and was only 0.1 above the legal limit and didn’t understand why he was punished so severely. Later, he admitted to selling drugs. I kept saying things like “you’re doing the right thing” and “this isn’t an easy job” because he was clearly sick of the place and wanted to move on with his life. Again, examining my thought patterns while listening I would say I was “skeptical”. Like, I wanted to believe everything the guy was saying but I wasn’t quite sure what I was dealing with. I know anyone that has had an addiction to drugs becomes a liar in order to get their addiction met. I worried about his two kids, having this man as a father, and I know he’s more than just these few mistakes, so I don’t mean to sound so judgmental, but having kids is something I take so seriously. He said his wife continues to sell Crystal Meth and doesn’t think she’ll get caught. What kind of a family is that? These poor children. This kind of reconfirms my belief that if I decide to have a family I will likely adopt because there are so many children in need of a better home. So I guess my listening is passive, but with a few thoughts of anticipating what he might say next, and wondering how much of his story was really true. When I told him I liked to watch cooking shows, which I had done just prior to my visit, I think my motivation was to simply strike up a conversation about something positive, and to try to make myself feel a little more positive about my surroundings. I wanted to feel like maybe there was something more to be gained from my experience in the kitchen than simply handing out food to homeless people and cleaning. And I think on some level I wanted him to know that my life isn’t a bed a roses (though it sort of has been), without wanting to actually go into detail. Stating “I watch a lot of cooking shows” was sort of the only way I could think of to relate to him on the spur of the moment...
If I were to try to shift my judgement of this man into a self-reflection, I think it could easily be stated that I am jealous of anyone with the brain to become a scientist or doctor for a living. I assist doctors for a living and do not wish to do this much longer. I wish I had the brain to become a respiratory therapist and make that kind of money, and I can't imagine throwing away a career like that. Honestly, like Anthony Hopkins, as much as a want to remove myself from such a horrifying situation, I know this type of horror can happen to anyone. We are shaped by choices we make, but sociology and our surroundings play such a huge role. Drugs can make people do horrible things, and no one is immune to this.
I expected it to be dirty, it was. I expected the food to be average and sort of “leftover” items like you might find in a dollar store, it was. I hadn’t expected it to be mainly African Americans at midnight mission, but it was. Both the men living there and the men from the streets were primarily black. I felt kind of proud of myself for spending 5 hours straight working hard, I never exercise and I felt I was getting a slight workout from the sweeping and mopping. I left there with a lot of questions. Like, sure it’s great that a free program exists for people who really struggle, but is it perpetuating people to stay in Skid Row? Don't they need an environment away from so many homeless drug dealers? Michael told me if I were to walk outside I would be accosted by 4-6 dealers trying to sell drugs to me. Are people who have been homeless the best people to help out other homeless individuals? With the 8 million dollars a year that is not spent on food because food is donated by local warehouses, why can’t they provide better living quarters? Their TV rooms were horrific, uncomfortable plastic chairs with old small boxy TV’s attached to the ceiling so everyone has to sit in uncomfortable chairs squinting with their heads tilted up in order to watch a movie. I mean, even the entertainment has to be painful for these people? So they get to eat mediocre meals, and they follow rules and work their tails off in pretty dirty living conditions, but they don’t have to pay rent…I just feel so sorry for young men whose families couldn’t afford to stick them in an Arizona Spa for 2 months like every other celebrity or wealthy anorexic. I feel very strongly that you need to be around people whom you wish to be like in order to grow. It’s hard to move forward if you’re surrounded by people who may not be able to move forward. But then, I am a true outsider. I almost have no right to have an opinion on the matter because these problems every individual was facing are problems beyond my wildest nightmares, quite literally.
