Category Archives: PPTFH Newsletter

Christmas Miracle BYLINE: Sharon Kilbride On December 21, 2022, around 8 in the morning, two of our volunteers, Carmen and Cindi, found a new unhoused individual sitting in the parking lot of Gladstone’s restaurant. He was covered with blankets and holding a small bunny rabbit, which he had found on the beach. Carmen and Cindi […]

A Look Inside the PPTFH Wednesday Beach Meetup BYLINE: Loren Levine, Psy.D. PPTFH Volunteer Response Team Member It’s a regular Wednesday morning meetup for PPTFH and I am standing with Mother Theresa, or as she is otherwise known, Glanda, from The People Concern. Her partner is Jessi, whose knowledge and effectiveness make them quite the […]

Enhanced LAPD Beach Detail: Keeping the Palisades Beaches and Hillsides Safe for Everyone BYLINE: Sharon Kilbride Chair, Volunteer Response Team Budget cuts to the West LA division of LAPD threatened to undermine the two extra Beach detail officers normally deployed to our beaches and hillsides in the summer during prime fire season. However, Captain Tom, […]

A Successful Partnership: Volunteer Response Team, Outreach Team and LAPD BYLINE BY: Sharon Kilbride Chair, Volunteer Response Team This success story about Brenda is one of many about how our volunteers, Outreach Team, LAPD, and unsheltered contacts work together to create happy endings! On March 16, 2022, while I was engaging some unsheltered individuals along […]

A Gift of Compassion from the Brown Bag Brigade BYLINE BY: Glanda Sherman, Outreach Team, The People Concern The year was 2017. The Pacific Palisades Ministerial Association accepted an invitation to meet and discuss how they could support the efforts of the Outreach Team. The group agreed to provide 20 lunches twice a week to […]

First Glance through Eyes of New Volunteer Response Team Member BYLINE Loren Levine, PsyD, Volunteer Response Team Homelessness is a complicated situation that usually involves mental illness or drug abuse and often both. The days of homelessness being confined to downtown’s skid row are long gone. Out of college, I worked with homeless teens in […]

Volunteers Making a Difference BYLINE: Kim Clary, Chair, Volunteer Committee and Rikki Smoot, Member, Volunteer, and Fundraising Committees PPTFH has been very fortunate to have so many new volunteers join our group. This large increase in our volunteer base is so timely given the greater number of unhoused persons coming into the area. We are […]

State of Emergency Powers and Los Angeles’ Homelessness In 2015 Mayor Garcetti and Los Angeles City Council members introduced a motion to declare a state of emergency on homelessness but no action was taken on the motion. After 2015 the City went on to declare a shelter crisis emergency under the state code. While some […]

Local Agencies Partner with PPTFH on Hillside Fire Prevention Task force BYLINE:Sharon Kilbride, Chair, First Responder Committee On June 1, 2021, a taskforce operation led by WLA LAPD commanding officer Jonathan Tom was prompted by recent fires. Captain Tom enlisted the help of PPTFH First Responder volunteers (Bruce Schwartz, Helga Jessen, Dede Vlietstra, Sharon Kilbride), […]

Generous Donations to Engage Homeless Individuals BYLINE: Kim Clary, Chair, Volunteer Committee Several months ago, Chase Hill, a Palisades High School student, his mother Kathy Cavaiola and Gerhard Pichel, a Lutheran parishioner, were featured in a PPTFH Newsletter for their generous donation of hygiene kits, masks, gently-used clothing and blankets. With help from the local […]

First Responder Committee Update: 2020 Data and Car Dwelling during COVID BYLINE: Sharon Kilbride, Communications Committee PPTFH First Responder volunteers had a busy year in 2020. Our team engaged 672 new individuals coming through the Palisades. Volunteers assisted by LAPD and Beaches and Harbors cleaned up remnants of 280 abandoned homeless campsites, all of which […]

A Christmas Miracle BYLINE: Sharon Kilbride, Communications Committee On December 25, 2020, we were surprised by a double-masked Santa in my front yard with a bag of gifts for the children at my house. It turns out that this Santa was one of our success stories. Scott Davis, formerly homeless in Pacific Palisades for over […]

First Responder Committee Welcomes Gregg Seltzer BYLINE: Sharon Kilbride, Chair, First Responder Engagement Committee The first responder committee welcomes new volunteer Gregg Seltzer. Gregg has been a resident of Rustic Canyon for 27 years, his wife Julie is a native Palisadian, and they raised their four children in the Palisades community. Gregg stated that he […]

First Responder Engagement Committee News BYLINE: Sharon Kilbride, Chair, First Responder Engagement Committee In 2019, PPTFH received a request from our beach patrol officers Rusty Redican and Jimmy Soliman for an off-road, all-access vehicle (known as the Mule) to patrol brushy hillsides and beaches of Pacific Palisades. PPTFH contacted Kevyn Wynn who graciously donated most […]

Project Roomkey BYLINE: Pam McGranahan, Chair, Communications Committee Amid state and local focus on developing, building, and finding housing for individuals experiencing homelessness, along came COVID-19. Los Angeles officials reacted initially by setting up shelters in neighborhood recreation centers. However, as the pandemic spread, concerns about group-living environments arose. Enter Project Roomkey (PRK), a state […]

Enforcement Committee Takes Preventive Actions During COVID-19 Crisis BYLINE: Sharon Kilbride, Chair, Law Enforcement Coordination Committee On March 11, 2020, Carol Newark, a prevention advocate from Venice Family Clinic’s Common Ground, gave a presentation about many issues, ranging from needle safety to Coronavirus. In attendance were PPTFH volunteers, LAPD beach patrol, Lifeguard Captain Eric Howell, […]

The Demedicalization of Mental Illness BYLINE: Pam McGranahan, Co-Communications Chair At the PPTFH January 27 community meeting, we learned about how the changing definition of mental illness has resulted in thousands of mentally ill individuals living in homelessness on our streets. Dr. Joel Braslow (UCLA Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences) shared his historical […]

From Street to Home: A Success Story BYLINE: Sharon Browning, Communications Committee Scott arrived on his bicycle 25 minutes early for the community meeting. He greeted me with a warm smile saying “Hi, I’m Scott Davis, I didn’t want to be late.” (Scott is a client who had agreed to share his success story at […]

LA’s Homelessness Action Plans How do you solve homelessness? At the September 23 PPTFH community meeting, Mike Bonin, LA City Councilmember for District 11, answered simply, “Housing. It’s housing.” Also speaking that evening was another leader at the forefront of homelessness policy and action: Heidi Marston, Chief Program Officer at the Los Angeles Homeless Services […]

Gov. Newsom Appoints a Homelessness Task Force BYLINE: Heather Keller, Communications Committee Every year, US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) conducts a count of the homeless population, county by county. This year’s numbers in California underscore a rapidly escalating crisis across the entire state. Nearly 130,000 people in California are homeless, 90,000 of whom are […]

Beach Patrol Officers Added BYLINE: Sharon Kilbride, Chair, Law Enforcement Coordination Committee PTFH Law Enforcement Coordination Committee requested two additional full-time Beach Patrol officers to help our committee patrol our beaches and bluffs. Captain Victor Davalos, Commanding Officer at WLA police station, has accommodated us with one additional officer. Also, rotating training officers have been […]

Helping the “Gravely Disabled”: A Status Report Over the past year, advocates for the homeless watched the progress of California Assembly Bill 1971 with anticipation. The bill was created by the Steinberg Institute to help California’s mentally ill homeless population get the medical care they need. The Institute’s solution was to expand the legal definition […]

Fitting One Piece of the Housing Puzzle BYLINE: Sharon Browning, PPTFH Vice-President Last year’s official homeless count reported about 52,765 homeless individuals in the city and county of Los Angeles; about 15,700 of them lived in vehicles. Since 2016, 37% of all homeless individuals served by PPTFH’s outreach team who were “voucher-ready” waited one month […]

The Palisades News’ recent article – Teens Clear Pacific Palisades Homeless Encampments – provides excellent coverage of the April Cleanup event and includes a brief interview with PPTFH Enforcement Coordination Committee Chair Sharon Kilbride discussing the importance of cleaning up abandoned encampments.

Mentally Ill Homeless People Who Refuse Help: What to Do? BYLINE: Nina Kidd, Communications Committee In our third year, PPTFH faces the hard fact that six of the homeless individuals on our Palisades streets have remained here for over a year. Our outreach professionals and volunteers worry that they are in failing health. Yet they […]

Keys to Finding a Home for Good Three Formerly Homeless People Share Their Experience Last November, 41 Palisadians gathered in the library’s community room to meet Bobby, Janet, and Marina, formerly homeless in Pacific Palisades. As the three told their stories, Glanda and Maureen, our PPTFH outreach workers, sat smiling nearby. Bobby, over 60, spoke […]

The CLEANup Club: Lessons from Temescal Canyon BYLINE: Nina Kidd, PPTFH Communications Committee PPTFH’s third CLEANup Day, October 14, was the most productive yet, with debris from 20 abandoned encampments cleared from lower Temescal Canyon. Last May, when our enforcement team, partnering with our outreach workers and LAPD, moved the last long-term homeless people from […]

Moving in After Being on the Streets Imagine yourself having to live on the streets for almost five years. By then you might even have given up hope. And then imagine having outreach workers like our Glanda and Maureen offer you help to become sober and find permanent supportive housing. But the housing doesn’t include […]

Helping Our Local Homeless People with Jobs BYLINE: Barbara Marinacci, PPTFH Communications Committee Not all homeless people are panhandlers seeking cash that quickly goes for liquor or drugs. Some want paying work and hold up signs saying so. Others—famished, exhausted, discouraged—don’t carry them. A certain look in someone’s eyes or face may spark a passerby’s […]

Homeless Count 2017 Toward the end of January, the Palisades conducted a third annual Count to estimate how many homeless people currently were living on its streets, in parklands and other open areas, or else sleeping in vehicles. This effort is the basis on which the federal government (HUD) will provide funding for housing the […]

Outreach Success Story: A Thanksgiving to Celebrate Last Thanksgiving, Yaya—who’s 23 years old—for the first time in her life had a traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings. She’s settled down now in a warm place: a Sober Living home that shelters women whose hellish earlier lives turned them into addicts. By then she’ll have […]

Enforcement and Encampment Update On Oct 6th & 7th members of PPTFH, LAPD, HPPOA (Huntington Palisades Property Owners Association), and Caltrans joined forces to remove abandoned encampments & trash from the Corona Del Mar bluffs. HPPOA hired Brian Walsh Brush Clearance to clear the upper bluffs area, which is mostly private property, and Caltrans cleared […]

LAPD Beach Patrol, Summer 2016 Officers Rusty Redican and Quentin Blanton have begun our Summer Beach Patrol and have successfully been keeping our beaches and bluffs safe. If you see them out on the beach or bluffs, please thank them for their service. If you have any concerns, please let them know and they will […]