blogs/rabbi-noah-farkas

Dear VBS Community,

On Tuesday, our congregation played a pivotal role in making a historic policy change in Los Angeles County to build more affordable housing for low income Angelenos. The County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to dedicate $300 million over the next five years and $100 million dollars annually thereafter to affordable housing.  This money will keep families housed and get homeless residents off the streets and into permanent supportive housing.

I want to tell you how and why we got involved in this effort. Two years ago, I gave a sermon (CLICK HERE TO VIEW) at Rosh Hashanah about the homeless man named Jack that I'd come to know from my Shabbat morning walk to shul. In meeting Jack, and then seeing him disappear, swept away by a law enforcement approach to homelessness, my heart was broken open. I turned to our community to find our homeless heart and to ask for your support in figuring out what we could do to make a difference in the lives of the homeless in our midst.

The community responded. We gathered together VBS members who also felt compelled to do something about our homeless neighbors and we researched the issue, meeting with elected officials and representatives from nonprofits that work with the homeless and with nonprofit housing developers. We divided ourselves into two groups: one that focused on serving the immediate needs of homeless people - helping them to build their job search and job readiness skills so they could return to the workforce -  and a second group that decided to look at the root causes of homelessness and what we could do at a policy level to change the equation.

This latter group, the Homelessness Task Force Advocacy Team worked for over a year and a half to address one of the causes of homelessness in Los Angeles, the lack of affordable housing. We learned that rents are so high that many working people can't afford rent and many families with subsidized housing vouchers can't find apartments that will accept those vouchers. These people are at high risk of becoming homeless and they are contributing to the increase in homelessness we see in LA County, now estimated to be about 44,000, up 12 % over the last year.

As we studied the problem, we also worked to develop our lay leaders as advocates. We built relationships with other faith groups and non-profit housing advocates. We hosted a candidates' forum here at VBS (CLICK HERE TO VIEW) in our local County Supervisor race last year where we highlighted the homelessness and housing issue. We asked for a specific commitment from the candidates for County dollars for affordable housing. The winner, Sheila Kuehl, told us that she had not seen housing as a priority until she heard our voices and those who attended that forum. She listened to the stories of the people we brought, and saw the size, diversity and the passion of the crowd. VBS, our community, was pivotal in changing her agenda.

After hearing our voices,  she appointed one of our nonprofit partners as her housing deputy. That deputy, Molly Roysman, worked with us to draft the measure that passed yesterday. We continued to work with her and our faith and non-profit partners to lobby the other County Supervisors for their support. Yesterday our coalition brought nearly 300 people to bear witness to the vote.  I testified about the strength of our coalition and the importance of the measure.  I had our coalition members rise to be recognized and the supervisors saw how we packed the house with a diversity of spirit that mirror's our county.  Yesterday's victory was the fruit of that two year effort. I am so very proud of how hard we worked to make this happen.  I want to thank our chairpeople, David Polinsky, Lisa Weinberg, and Sophie Alpert, and I want to thank Brooke Wirtshafter, our Chesed Connection Coordinator, who made all of this happen. Take a moment and thank them with me - Yasher Koach!

There is now ample press coverage of the motion and it's effect.  

You can read some of the press here: 

Daily News: CLICK HERE to READ

LA Times: CLICK HERE to READ

LA Times Editorial: CLICK HERE to READ

It's been a long effort to move what seemed like a mountain, but we did it together - and we can do it again with your help. You can get involved in our service work, feeding the homeless, stocking our food bank, mentoring a formerly homeless individual. You can join our organizing effort, building our relationships with other faith groups, meeting with elected representatives. You can participate in the January Homeless Count with our team, and help educate our community about what we can do.

Yasher Koach to our team, and as we celebrate this milestone and look to the next phase, we know that we are only as strong as our team, but that together we can make real change.

Together, we made this change. Imagine how much more we can do together with your help.

L'Shalom,

Rabbi Noah Zvi Farkas