A small service makes a big difference on skid row - warehouse with storage bins

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-outthere6-2009feb06,0,5903996.story



Los Angeles warehouse where the homeless can keep their belongings is adjusting as more families -- and even educated professionals -- seek aid. It's getting more bins and may add a dressing area.

By Scott Gold
4:23 PM PST, February 5, 2009


The trappings of the lives of Krystle Marage and her three daughters are not unusual. There are hairbrushes and loofah sponges; Game Boys and skateboards; school books and Bibles; clothes, clothes and more clothes. These days, they have to fit it all inside four trash cans, which sit alongside 500 others in a dank warehouse, around the corner from a frozen fish distributor and a cheap hotel.

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Many are new to homelessness. Some are educated professionals -- a few still carry briefcases -- and one, a few weeks back, was so confident that he was but a temporary visitor that he arrived clutching a pair of unused golf cleats. Long after it became city policy that skid row is no place for children, a jarring number of the newcomers are mothers and their children.

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The other day, Krystle Marage sifted through her family's bins. She and her daughters -- Mishanta, 14; Jay, 19; and Lilly, 21 -- stop in at least twice a day to retrieve clothes, grab a bar of soap, even snag a pack of Ramen noodles if they need a snack. They've all memorized the numbers assigned to their bins: 194, 202, 287, 348.

Marage stuffed plastic bags full of dirty clothes into the containers. Soon, she said, it would be laundry day. She rolled her eyes. "A momma's work," she said, "is never done."

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The bins are popular. As long as clients renew them once a week, they can keep them in perpetuity, and many do. Only a handful of empty containers open up each day, and people routinely wait all night to try to qualify for one. Shortly before dawn each day, workers distribute scraps of paper -- "#1," "#2," "#3" -- identifying the hopefuls who were first in line.


Audio slideshow here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-outthere6-ss,0,5761546.htmlstory

[corpseratemedia]

1. come one repubs, OWN your failure

look at it, look at how more and more Americans have to live, this is from YOUR philosophy put into action

here is your world without rules for corporations: taxpayer money from the working poor for your bank executives, bins for the outsourced and laid-off