Mercy House

Mercy House Executive Director Larry Haynes

Earlier this week, Larry Haynes met with The Laguna Beach Independent reporter Rita Robinson to share some insights on homelessness in general, and what is possible if everyone works together.

Laguna Beach’s two local non profits, the Friendship Center and the Laguna Relief and Resource Center, will be the primary operators of a planned overnight shelter for the homeless, with Mercy House acting as a consultant to assist in getting the program underway.

A nonstop mother lode of refreshingly candid information, Haynes was the original employee of Mercy House, which started with a single rented home in 1990 that provided transitional shelter for 10 men. Mercy House corporation now offers a range of shelters and services for a wide-range of homeless people in Orange, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties. As executive director, Haynes, 45, has established 10 transitional houses serving single men, women, families and HIV AIDS patients. All have the same goal: get people off the streets and back on their feet.

Read the story in The Laguna Beach Independent titled Expert on Transitional Housing Joins the Team.

The holidays are a busy time of year for everyone.  If you want to help the homeless, but just don’t have the time to shop for gifts, please visit the Mercy House Target Wish List to purchase a gift card that will be distributed to the homeless men, women, and children staying in emergency shelters, or to those who visit our Emergency Walk-in Centers.  Gift cards are available in $10, $25 and $50 denominations.  The larger denominations will be used to purchase items for hygiene kits and breakfast bags.

Mercy House Executive Director Larry Haynes spoke with The New York Times’ Peter Goodman about people who have experienced foreclosure, and are now finding themselves homeless and seeking shelter for the first  time.

“These families never needed help before,”  said Larry Haynes, executive director of Mercy House in Santa Ana, Calif. “They haven’t a clue about where to go and they have all sorts of humiliation issues. They don’t even know what to say, what to ask for.”

To read the whole story in today’s New York Times, go to “Foreclosures Force Ex-Homeowners to Turn to Shelters.”

Larry Haynes & Ed Clarke

In today’s Orange County Register, Executive Director of Mercy House Larry Haynes and Ed Clarke, associate professor of sociology and chair, department of anthropology/sociology at Vanguard University, discuss the upcoming Point-in-Time count to be conducted for the City of Costa Mesa with reporter Jim Overly. A Point-in-Time count is a single, unduplicated count of homeless individuals and families in the area.

The survey will be conducted on Wed., Sept. 28, with a followup survey Thursday morning. The survey will be conducted primarily by students of Vanguard University.

The study follows the Costa Mesa City Council’s unanimous vote Tuesday night to accept a $560,237 federal grant that will help struggling families stay in their homes, that will be managed by Mercy House and SPIN.

Read the full story in the The Orange County Register: Locals fanning out to count homeless men and women.

The City of Ontario, Calif. City Council on Tuesday approved a three-year contract with the city Housing Authority and Mercy House that would ensure services for a homeless prevention program.

The Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program would assist more than 210 homeless people in the city.

The contract will provide substantial resources to help the city and Mercy House continue their work with the homeless population, said Brent Schultz, Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Director.

As part of the program, there will be up to $3,000 per household for rental or utility payment assistance, he said. “The real intent of this money is to stop people from getting into homeless and to stopping (homelessness) from occurring,”

Read the story by Liset Marquez, “Ontario council approves help for homeless,” in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.