The mid to late 1980’s in Los Angeles saw a rise in homeless encampments. City officials held hearings regularly; trying to ascertain why homeless men and women were so resistant to utilizing the services the city was spending so much money to keep open, particularly on Skid Row.

Mike Neely, who at the time, was residing in one of the city’s many homeless encampments; attended every meeting and hearing on the city’s homeless issues he could. He had been termed the unofficial representative by the homeless community because of his ability to capture the attention of local officials through his active participation in city council hearings with his eloquent oratories on homeless issues. History began. The Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) sponsored a six-month pilot program with a simple goal, to link homeless men and women living in the Downtown area with the services they needed, but found difficult to access.

The Special Service for Groups - HOP/ICS program began servicing the community in September 1988. Lead by Mike Neely, a team of formerly homeless men and women were assembled, trained and sent to the streets. After a successful pilot the program was granted a full funding for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1989.

It was immediately evident that the HOP/ICS’s staff had made a niche in the service providing community as more and more downtown businesses began hiring the staff for outreach services in an effort to deal with the growing homeless population and its affect on their business.

Over the years, the HOP/ICS’s staff began to see things differently, they saw that the problems caused by homelessness was larger than just people not being able to get services from difficult to access programs, the homeless community wasn’t just men and women but children, adolescents and whole families and their issues weren’t just poverty. There were drug, family dysfunction and mental illness issues.

The HOP/ICS’s staff had evolved from those days of a street outreach team into a social service organization dealing with a multitude of issues at multiple sites. There are still no agencies on Skid Row capable of addressing the root needs of the community, but HOP/ICS’s staff is determined to do something about it. HOP/ICS’s opened the first Cocaine Anonymous meeting place in the Skid Row area. Soon after that, The Los Angeles Center for Alcohol and Drug Abuse teamed up with the HOP staff to do outreach in the area and not much longer after that, LACADA opened up a satellite site in the HOP Office. HOP had just successfully expanded it services.

Today, HOP/SSG has a staff of 45, three sites, several satellite sites and its own plethora of services. The only thing about HOP that hasn’t changed...is it’s commitment to the community. Below are some of the services that HOP/ICS currently provides:

• Supportive Housing services for the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority. Through this program we provide outreach and referrals to homeless men and women in need of substance abuse detox services.
  
• Prison Parolee Program/ADPA a residential and outpatient case-management program for prison parolees.
  
• The Community Assessment Service Center for South Central area residents. The Community Assessment Service Center or CASC is an intake center for CalWORKS and GR clients, that provides non-residential substance abuse counseling and services, referrals for residential recovery treatment, and mental health referrals and assessments for treatment.
  
• Teen Aids Prevention Program provides HIV/AIDS outreach and prevention services to African American, Chinese and Latino youth with linkages to substance abuse services.
  
• South Central Community Resources Center a partner of the Watts Health Foundation, this program assists persons needing drug and alcohol treatment services with assessments, screenings and referrals.
  
• Corcoran State Prison a partner of Phoenix House of California is a program that provides community substance abuse treatment, aftercare and re-entry services for parolees released from Phoenix House Substance Abuse Program at Corcoran State Prison.
  
• California Department of Corrections/Substance Abuse Services Coordination Agency a partner of Walden House is a community substance abuse treatment, aftercare and re-entry services for parolees released from Walden House State Prison Substance Abuse Program.

If someone you know needs homeless services, housing referrals substance abuse treatment or counseling, youth and family services, HIV/AIDS information and referrals please call our offices at (323) 948-0407 or call our the South Central Community Assessment Service Center at (323) 948-0444.

Herb Hatanaka, Executive Director SSG
Cheryl Branch, Program Director, ICS
Katherine Harvey, Program Director, CASC