Tonic.com teams up with EDAR to raise $5,000
December 01, 2010
Over dinner one night, a former television producer and a former mayor debate the issue of homelessness in Los Angeles. Eventually, the producer dares the mayor to spend the night on Skid Row. The mayor then promptly double dares the producer. In the following weeks, the mayor, the producer and the producer's daughter all spend the night sleeping in tents on Skid Row.Now, while that tale has all the makings of a great Hollywood blockbuster, it is in fact, a true story.Peter Samuelson, the aforementioned TV producer, president of Splashlife.com and founder of Everyone Deserves a Roof (EDAR), recently spoke to Tonic about the overnighter on St. Julian Street with Richard Riordan (the former mayor of LA), misconceptions about homelessness and what he's doing to get people off the pavement.Samuelson's mission started during one of his typical weekend bicycle rides from his home near UCLA to the beach and back. "I sort of suddenly started seeing, three years ago, more homeless people. There were twice as many because it was the beginning of the recession," he explains. "I started counting them and then I was like, 'what am I going to do about it?'"Wasting no time, Samuelson headed straight to the source, speaking candidly about the experience. "I was scared of them. Like anything in my life, if slightly intimidated or scared by something, I just do it. I decided to do proper interviews and made notes. I think I did 62 of them." So what did he find exactly?"First of all, there are about 3 million homeless in US. Just in the county of LA, it’s somewhere between 50 to 100,000, we think it’s the higher end. For two-thirds of them, there is no bed. If they showed up at a shelter, there’s no room at the inn." According to Samuelson's estimates, about 60,000 men, women and children sleep on the streets not far from the world's rich and famous."People think that they’re all men, but it’s actually about 60 male, 40 female. The killer statistic is 10 percent are under 18. Unless they're being actively abused, they’re not taken in. The other two stats — people think that they’re all drug addicts or mentally ill. Perhaps a quarter are mentally ill and a quarter are drug abusers. It means three-quarters are not either. People think they don’t want to be sheltered — it’s not true, there’s no room. 'What do we want? A 70-year-old woman sleeping on the street?'"No, but they do.So, when faced with the harsh reality that he lives in a society that does allow its 70-year-old women to sleep on the streets, Samuelson's first instinct was to build shelters. Sounds easy enough, but as he walks through the math and quickly arrives at a total cost of $3 billion to house the city's homeless, it becomes clear that this is not a viable solution. At least not for now.The epiphany came to Samuelson when he met a woman next to the San Diego freeway. "I said, 'where do you go to sleep?' She took me by the arm and walked me the bushes.... It hit me. She goes to bed three-miles from where I do — I got the refrigerator; she got the box."So, he did the budget backwards and asked a team of designers to give him the very best for $500. Samuelson sponsored an EDAR design competition at the Pasadena Art Center College of Design, where he connected with designers Eric Lindeman and Jason Zasa. The pair won the prize and worked closely with Samuelson to produce the final product."We did 9 prototypes," he tells Tonic. "One of the biggest issues was what is too big, what is too small? Too small, coffin; too big, it can’t fit down stairs or sidewalks. Getting it exactly the right size was a process of trial and error." Also working pro bono are wire design and fabrication professionals John Ondrasic and Mike Orozco of Precision Wire Inc.The final EDAR design boasts a 7-foot-long mattress among an interior high enough for residents to sit up. The EDAR units live at shelters, soup kitchens, day centers, churches, mosques or vacant scraps of land throughout the Los Angeles area and are distributed free of charge, as resources allow. "We give the units to shelters and they give them to specific clients," explains Samuelson. "The benefit is that they have an ongoing social services. You can push it wherever you want and you can sleep in it wherever you want, and you have to come back once a week, have a shower, have lunch, meet with your supervisor, etc. there’s ongoing counseling."Day-mode is reminiscent of a shopping cart (but with much better wheels and breaks), allowing men and women to go about their daily routines and to lock up their personal belongings, something they otherwise cannot do. And when the day is done, Night-mode is achieved in a record-breaking 30-seconds. The tent-like shelters made of wood, metal and military-canvas are flame-retardant, waterproof and windproof turn into beds and have translucent windows that provide light and a view. Not too shabby for an immediate, affordable solution — that also looks to the future.The EDAR has many success stories and proves to be a critical stepping stone in returning people to self-supporting situations. "It's a temporary path. Sleep on the sidewalk is stage 1. Sleep in the EDAR is stage 2. Start working with church services to find permanent housing is stage 3," says Samuelson.In the end, the cinematic dare to spend the night in downtown LA proved to be more than an exercise in illumination. Riordan was moved to action. "He’s an honorable and forthright guy," says Samuelson, "and when he realized what was going on down there, he donated what resulted in 20 EDARs, and then a friend donated another 20. So thanks to Mayor Riordan, 40 less people will be sleeping on the streets in LA." We love a Hollywood ending. (Read More)
