Homeboy counting on a comeback

Last May, Homeboy Industries was in serious peril. The recession and a costly expansion had crippled the renowned gang intervention program financially. Three-quarters of its staff had been laid off and Father Gregory Boyle, Homeboy’s Jesuit founder, was relying on volunteers just to keep the doors open.

What a difference a year can make.

With a push for federal funding, a barrage of new initiatives, and—crucially—a key $1.3 million contract from Los Angeles County, “we’re still struggling, but we’re back on our feet,” says Veronica Vargas, Homeboy’s chief operating officer.

Not that they’re unscathed. The organization is accepting only about half the in-house job trainees it used to. Health insurance has been cut for trainees in its Chinatown headquarters. The waiting lists for tattoo removal, mental health care and other services are so long, “we’re doing triage,” says Vargas.

But in the past year, Homeboy, which says it helps 12,000 gang members a year with educational, mental health, legal and job training services, has not only dramatically ramped up its business, but also begun to see the fruits of a county-funded initiative to objectively measure the success of its programs.

“I’ll be blunt—so far, it’s not at all what I expected,” says Jorja Leap, one of two UCLA School of Public Affairs scholars who have been monitoring Homeboy both for a separate longitudinal study and as part of the county’s 9-month contract.

Since September, at the county’s behest, Homeboy has been providing job counseling and development, mental health care, tattoo removal and other services for 665 probationers and other high-risk individuals between the ages of 14 and 30. This week, Leap and her colleague, Todd Franke, submitted the second of three progress reports to the county.

Six months into the contract, Leap says, demand has been strong—and growing, particularly among county probationers and parolees under 30. Early figures show that about 100 county clients per month have volunteered for tattoo removal, and about 300 a month have been taking advantage of Homeboy’s employment counseling services. Another 150 or so each month have attended life skills, GED, 12-step and other classes.

Those numbers—and that word “volunteer”—are important because they reflect the extent to which the county might, over time, reduce duplication between Homeboy and its own gang re-entry programs.

Cal Remington, chief deputy of the county’s Department of Probation, says the reports have been encouraging so far, and Homeboy’s success is well-known, but savings ultimately could be limited.

For example, he says, most Homeboy programs are based on the belief that people don’t change unless they want to, and the organization “wants people to come on their own.” But probation and parole are, by their nature, involuntary. Many probationers and parolees do seek out Homeboy, he says, but unless the entire county caseload volunteered, some would still require county-run re-entry programs.

“I think they provide a real service that benefits the county,” he says, “but we’re interested in finding out how many [probationers] voluntarily take advantage of that, and then how they’re doing in the community.”

Additionally, the report has tracked a smaller cohort of job trainees whose positions are also funded under the county contract.

So far, Leap says, about 50 former gang members, two-third of them male, have cycled through those 30 trainee positions. And though gang populations nationally have a 70% recidivism rate, she says, only three of the county’s Homeboy trainees have been re-arrested and none have gone back to prison so far.

On the other hand, she says, one of the 50 has now entered college, four have gone on to full-time jobs with employers outside Homeboy, about 20 have worked their way up to employment at one of Homeboy’s various businesses and another 22 or so are continuing to progress through the program.

Leap cautioned that the numbers are preliminary. And, she says, the data has not yet come in for a planned comparison with retention and recidivism rates in two county-run gang re-entry programs.

“But,” she says, “you don’t need a Ph.D to tell you that these are phenomenal, phenomenal results.”

“This is why I can’t wait for the county to see how well this program works,” exults Vargas. “Nobody back in prison? That’s huge.”

Although four outside placements and a college enrollment may not sound like much after six months, she says, just sticking with the program is an achievement for many gang members.

One young man profiled in Leap’s report had come to the Homeboy program after an 18-month stint in state prison on an armed robbery conviction. The son of a drug-addicted mother and absentee father, he had grown up in a 3-bedroom apartment shared by 30 people in the Nickerson Gardens Housing Project.

He had thrived as a Homeboy trainee, the report says, and was working with young adults just out of probation camps within three months of his arrival. But his family’s gang ties were a constant source of conflict.

“Some family members would openly mock his efforts, while other relatives would pressure him to get back involved in the streets and the gang life style,” the report says. For a while, the young man slept in his car to escape the pressure, but his struggle has been apparent.

“He continues to be an excellent worker,” according to the report, but “he has not kept all his appointments and seems very conflicted about gang involvement.”

It’s a common pattern, says Vargas. Indeed, one of the county-funded trainees—a 22-year-old who had diligently worked his way up to an office assistant job at Homeboy—was shot and killed last month at a late-night party in Hollywood during what authorities said was a gang-related argument.

According to Leap’s report, the vast majority of Homeboy’s clients are county probationers and parolees who are struggling to regain their footing. Many have spent years in and out of probation camps where, the report notes, they missed out on learning even such basic life skills as how to look employers in the eye and offer a firm handshake.

“Says Vargas: “You can’t rehabilitate someone in six months when they’ve been raised all their lives in violence.”

This, she says, is why she hopes the county will consider renewing its relationship with Homeboy when the current contract expires at the end of next month.

That may not be easy, given the county’s own struggles.

“As you know, we have our own deficit to deal with,” says Sheila Williams, who helps oversee the county’s public safety agencies for the Chief Executive Office. But, she adds, so far, there have been no complaints about Homeboy’s performance and “discussions are continuing.”

Meanwhile, Vargas says, Homeboy has been hustling.

The organization has won a federal grant that will to bring in about $400,000 a year for the next three years. Father Boyle has been on a book tour, promoting his acclaimed memoir, “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion” ; those proceeds all go to Homeboy as well, Vargas says.

Ralph’s markets began offering Homeboy’s signature chips and salsas in its supermarkets nationally this year, and another initiative is promoting Homeboy products at farmers’ markets.

The conviction of KB Home’s former chief executive, Bruce Karatz, on charges that he lied about backdating stock options resulted in an unusual sentence in which Karatz—who in the run-up to his trial had already pledged $1.1 million to the organization—would bring his experience and contacts to bear as an unpaid Homeboy consultant. Vargas says they’ve only received about $200,000 of the pledge so far, but credits Karatz with the nailing the Ralph’s salsa deal in just a few phone calls after years of conversations.

And City Hall will soon be getting a new Homeboy café.

“We’re doing everything we can think of,” Vargas says. “We have to. You should see our waiting list.

“There are hundreds of people coming through our doors every month, asking for employment, and right now, we can’t provide it for them.”

Posted 5/5/11