Who We Will Help
Women and children make up 41% (or 23,000) of Los Angeles County’s homeless population. The reasons are many, and in most cases, beyond their control: lack of affordable housing, domestic violence, underemployment, death of a spouse, lack of marketable skills, and/or mental illness.
Single mothers with 2 or more children head approximately 84% of homeless families. Young people experiencing homelessness are presented with special developmental challenges: they are more likely to be sick, twice as likely as other children to repeat a grade in school, and twice as likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability. As families move from stable home addresses to the streets, education and access to familiar resources are compromised.
Union Rescue Mission’s Hope Gardens Family Center is dedicated to this population. As families with children of all ages come to Hope Gardens from all over Los Angeles, Hope Gardens seeks to remove them from the cycle of homelessness for good and empower them with the tools toward self-sufficiency.