New Image Shelter

Does not take long to go from hopeful to hopeless. Just the name, "New Image Shelter", filled my head with fairy tale images of a place that would help a homeless lady, duh, create a new image. Was I ever wrong! Already wrote about that adventure in homelessness. Normally honest, I lifted this comment from the LA Blog without permission. Obviously no one comes here, so feel safe to do so. The law is I have to be notified and asked to remove it, before I can be sued and besides "Can not get blood from a stone".

"A stabbing occurred at the New Image Emergency Shelter, south of Downtown L.A.

The victim, a white woman had given a woman a cigarette a few minutes after 6:30 PM during a female smoke break. Upon reentry of the building, Michelle, who may have been a paranoid schizophrenic took out a steak knife from her pants and stabbed the woman in the back.

After the stabbing, the attacker, a tall black woman with gray hair ran from the building back to the smoke area. She was apprehended by a female security guard, named Happiness. The attacker told the guard that "something came out of the body of the other lady and threatened me and my kids. I was defending myself"

The police and ambulance took at least ten minutes to arrive. In fact, the police were the last to arrive.

It turns out the attacker had been put out of the shelter during wake-up that same morning for her threats. She was let back in because the shelter manager forgot to put it in the book.

The knife was said to have been inside your pant leg, an area not checked by the guards when searching clients upon arrival.

This is supposedly the first incident of its kind, and it is being blamed on the high amount of mentally ill coming to the shelter that are not on medicine. It would seem that in an effort to save money that New Image hired former clients to serve as security, therefore few have guard cards. Further, the case management is also served by former clients, so there is little known of the inherent mental issues that plague the majority of the clients they serve.

The other problem is that for the number of years that New Image has been serving this population, they have failed to garner a network of supporters.

They have no licensed counselors or doctors on call to help identify potential problems.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time controversy has hit New Image, which is run by sisters Brenda and Linda Wilson. In Dec. 2006 they made the decision to house residents in a tent without proper heating.

New Image was founded over over 14 years ago in Long Beach, CA. They are considered one of the largest shelters in Los Angeles with nearly 600 clients per night in peak months."

Funny, when I was there I was not allowed to keep my "rat tail" hair brush or metal hair pick with me. Ditto folding scissors I used to cut my nails. The hair brush handle was heavy duty plastic and the pointed edge was somehow blunted through years of use. I did not have a comb (use my pick for that) so had no way to take care of my hair when I got out of the shower.

After searching our bags, we had to stand with arms outstretched, legs apart so that the female guard could run the metal detector over our bodies. Humiliating. Especially when the male guard did it, being sure to touch my whole body as he did so. "Oops," he said, "thought you were a guy." We both knew he was lying. I was in the women's line.

They also would not allow anyone to bring umbrellas inside the shelter and other things that could be used as a weapon. Everything was left at the front desk and you picked the stuff up on the way out in the morning, just before getting on the bus.

I did not read about December's tent incident. The ladies from LA's New Image are much loved by the homeless people. They ran the Winter Shelter in Long Beach 2004/2005.

posted Sunday, May 6, 2007