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Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Loaves & Fishes to get new 'welcoming center'
by Brandon Darnell, published on February 25, 2011 at 5:41 PM
Storyline: Local Business
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Loaves & Fishes is building a new 15,000-square-foot combination warehouse, reception area and administrative building on the corner of North C and Ahern streets.
“This is really our welcoming center,” said Sister Libby Fernandez, executive director of Loaves & Fishes. “This is the entrance to Loaves and Fishes.”
There were several reasons to build the new structure, which is a warehouse with interior walls to give space for offices in addition to storage, Fernandez said.
The current warehouse and donation center is a rented space near Friendship Park and sees a lot of foot traffic, which poses a safety issue, Fernandez said.
“We have 700 people walking through there every day,” she said. “It’s not safe to have semi trucks coming through and backing up with all those people.
“All food distribution, donations, receiving and delivering (will come) into this warehouse,” she said. “By having it here, it allows better visibility and better access.”
Another reason for the new construction is so that Loaves & FIshes will own the building. It currently rents the nearby warehouse, though Fernandez did not disclose the rental amount.
The new building has a price tag of approximately $1.5 million, she said, adding that $400,000 came from a private, anonymous donor specifically for the warehouse.
“We don’t take any government funding,” Fernandez said.
Most of the warehouse is on an elevated floor half a story above ground level, which is split by an interior wall. Offices on the ground level back up to Ahern Street with a second floor above them, which can be used for storage of paper products, Fernandez said.
Image by: Brandon Darnell
The reception area will be right on the corner of North C and Ahern streets, with a volunteer staffing a desk inside a pair of doors that will become the first point of contact for all Loaves & Fishes visitors and anyone wishing to bring donations.
About 10 people will work in the offices, with another three making up the warehouse crew.
Tom Armstrong, a local homeless man, disagrees with building the warehouse right now.
“It seems like a very improper use of a large sum of money when there’s a crisis,” he said, adding that he’d prefer to see the money spent on other services such as sheltering and feeding the homeless.
Fernandez, however, said Loaves & Fishes asked for additional money for the warehouse from its donors and also sought other funding.
“We’re asking people to go beyond the regular contribution so we can keep it separate from the operations,” she said.
Another benefit of the new building, she said, is that the current administration offices above the dining area will now be free for usage with other programs such as counseling.
Construction on the warehouse began last October, and Fernandez said it is scheduled to be completed in May.
Other services at Loaves & Fishes are continuing as they have previously, without interruption during construction.
The construction is being handled by Rod Read and Sons, and Fernandez said some of the work has been done pro-bono, Fernandez said.
Sister Libby Fernandez, left, discusses construction with Matt Burkhart.
(Image by: Brandon Darnell)
Matt Burkhart, who works for Striplin Walker Construction, one of the subcontractors, said this project is a bit different from others.
“It’s nice to know you’re doing a project for someone who really needs it, and not just a toy box or an open-air market,” he said.
The finished building will have a brick façade in keeping with the area’s warehouse historical feel, Fernandez said.
Brandon Darnell is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.
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In these hard economic times, the gang that runs the joint takes money from others [many of whom are themselves suffering economically but want to aid others they perceive to be suffering more], then the money, a small fortune, is used in large part for administrators to have spiffy new digs. It’s an outrage.
When the public’s city and county coffers are empty; when a thousand homeless people are unsheltered, living on the streets and under bridges,during a severe winter in our metropolis; when one of our food banks suffers a major fire, Loaves & Fishes builds a stately new building for its administrators.
Recently, homeless people seeking a meal at the so-called charity’s soup kitchen were served frozen-meat sandwiches. That’s right; the cold-cuts had just left the freezer and were as hard and icy as the hearts of those on L&F board of directors. Just yesterday morning, the rain was pouring down super heavily, but Loaves & Fishes management wouldn’t open the library in Fiendship Park to let the homeless out of the monsoon rain. They were forced to stay outside and get drenched to the bone until the scheduled opening time of 7:30am, while Libby was in her “inadequate,” soon-to-be-jettisoned office over in the Ivory Tower*.
Note that this “welcoming center” is where donations are to come. It’s not the homeless who are welcomed at diabolical Loaves & Fishes, but anything [“Money’s best!” ] the fat, unethical bureaucrats can snag from the unwitting public.
It was once a charity, decades ago. Today, Loaves & Fishes is a racket, straight from a Dickens novel [Oliver Twist, I have in mind], with top administrators’ thinking themselves viceroys.
If Loaves & Fishes was run by Gandhi and not Gangsters, the entrance to the mall of services would have a sign that read like this [this is LITERALLY what Gandhi said (See http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070425204904AAImDik ), except , to make it more appropriate for today & L&F nomenclature, I’ve substituted “homeless guest” where Gandhi said “customer” and “they” where Gandhi said “he”]:
Homeless Guests are the most important visitors on our premises. They are not dependent on us. We are dependent on them. They are not an interruption of our work. They are the purpose of it. They are not an outsider to our organization. They are part of it. We are not doing them a favor by serving them. They are doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so.
-- Mahatma Gandhi for Loaves & Fishes
Dear citizens of Sacramento. Clutch your purses tight to your side, button the pocket where your wallet is kept. Help the homeless and not those organizations that use us as props for their revenue-greedy enterprize.
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*a name given by lower-echelon employees to the current second-storey offices of the administration.
There is a good reason why L&F doesn't take any government grant money: it's called having to show accountability. Check out their non-profit filings with the Secretary of State if you want to get an approximation--and it is only an approximation because L&F is slick about their fiscal accountability.
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=10626
A part of how a charity gets a higher rating comes from being well capitalized. And having a building [instead of spending money to help homeless people] enlarges the Loaves & Fishes empire.
I say to you that charities SHOULD NOT act as corporations. They should be co-operative with other charities and focus on THEIR MISSION and not AN EMPIRE.
A recent article in Fast Company magazine, "Why Charities Should Have an Expiration Date" [ http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/do-something-why-charities-should-die.html ] makes the case that for-profit companies come and go — they don't live forever … like vampires. Whereas not-for-profit organizations just attach themselves to a new mission when what they are doing turns sour, for one reason or other. Rotted nonprofits, like Loaves & Fishes, forget what they're about and succomb to the "vampire principle": suck blood for the purpose of sucking yet more blood out of people so that it can go on to suck more blood and continue to exist to suck more blood.
It's a bloody business.
The article concludes thus:
The broader principle here is that companies and organizations don't exist simply to exist. A not-for-profit should ideally be not-for-perpetuity. [They] should not be donor-funded jobs programs. People give not because they believe in [charities as places with] employable human beings but because they believe in what nonprofits do. Once [the nonprofit's mission is accomplished, its employees] should wear a termination notice as a badge of honor.
In other words, it's time we all invested in wooden stakes.
Re "Can we afford to keep rousting the homeless?"
Having practiced psychiatry in Sacramento for 40 years, much of the time working with low-income and poverty populations, I have a somewhat unusual perspective on the issue of homelessness. In constructing a program for the disadvantaged, we must be ever aware that a program which is more generous than that of other counties or states shall attract disadvantaged individuals from far, far away. Therefore, the better the program, the deeper the problem becomes for Sacramento County. I realize that this point of view is not "politically correct," but for 40 years I have seen it to be true.
– Dr. Alfred P. French, Roseville
My concurrent observations as well, Dr. French. - L.I.
While, from my experience, talking to the guys, it is true that some guys move around, going to those places where conditions for them are best, most have connections in the one place where they stay.
But I'm not sure why this is always thought to be such a horrible problem. You've been practicing for 40 years, right? That means you're old and probably somewhat stink and aren't so nice to look at. Shouldn't the city and people of Roseville be thinking of ways to sluff you off onto some other community!? If I may speak for Sacramento County, we don't want you. Go die somewhere else.