ExclusiveFinding Fulfillment in Helping the Underserved | Katina Holliday

Growing up in a small town, because I'm from Mississippi, I never really saw homelessness like I saw it in LA. And I was like, what is this? My heart dropped. I wanted to help others. I wanted people to see something different. I'm living in my purpose. I get to wake up and I get to transform someone's life every single day. And she said from the moment she walked into our organization, she said she went to walk in and she said, I'm not going to lie to you. I had a pipe in my bra. And she said, I threw it away. And from that day forward, she has not done drugs. She completed our CNA program and now she's working for us. The feeling that you get from that is like none other. Katina, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Well, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here today. You have a very inspiring story. You are a registered nurse and you started a nonprofit to help the homeless and people that are incarcerated, that are getting out and they don't have any place to go. You're housing over 500 people in LA County, right? That is correct. We want to hear all about it. Can you tell us how you got started with this? I always like to talk about, everybody has their aha moments and when they do things. And so for me right now, I'm definitely living in the purpose that I was given for this life. And so as a nurse, you know, nurses love to help people. But my grandmother, when I grew up, all she did was help people. And I love to tell the story because people don't know this. You know, back in the day, my grandmother used to keep her wallet in her bosom. So she would bring her money out her bosom and give it to people. She would pay their rent, their car notes, put the kids through school. It's just something that my grandmother did. But it was one guy in particular, his name was Shine. And she took care of Shine every single day. And I grew up watching her take care of Shine, even myself. Shine, he had a family, so he wasn't homeless. But my grandmother fed him this exact same thing that we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I always laugh because I remember my granddaddy would come home and Shine would be sitting down. He'd be like, Shine, every time I come home, you already sitting down at my table eating. But my grandmother didn't care because she fed him anyway. And you know, so it was just what she did. That's who my grandmother was. And so I remember as a girl, he would go around asking people for a dime because, you know, he had some sort of mental illness. So he would ask people for a dime to buy a cigarette. And even if I found a dime, where I would keep a dime as a little girl, and I would give it to him. And my grandmother would also give him like a dollar. So she'd be like, don't you go out there begging? Because she didn't even want him begging. She's like, don't you go out there begging? So I grew up in my family with my grandmother with a legacy of giving. So fast forward, I'm a nurse practitioner. And so that was my dream to be a doctor. My dream was to be a doctor. I ended up being a nurse practitioner. So I get to write some prescriptions, right? So that's exciting. But of course, we develop Holidays Help Enhance. My first homeless organization was Serenity Recuperative Care. My second one birthed out of me wanting to help single moms because I myself became pregnant when I was in college. And I was a teenage mom at 17 years old. Wow. So I wanted to help others. I wanted people to see something different. I wanted to give them, as we say at Holidays Help Enhance, we give them a hand up and not a hand out. So you became a nurse. And can you tell us when was it that you saw the issue with homelessness? I moved out here at a very young age, right? My favorite number, which was 22 when I entered into LA. And so growing up in a small town, because I'm from Mississippi, and I love to say this, I have to say it. It wouldn't be like me not to say the M-I cricket letter, cricket letter, I, cricket letter, cricket letter, I, humpback, humpback, I, from the great state of Mississippi, where we land last and everything, but first, because I'm here. So anyway, with that being said, I never like really saw homelessness like I saw it in LA. And I remember getting lost for my first time on Skid Row downtown. Remember we have all this, you know, you had the MapQuest before you leave home and print it out to go somewhere. So that's when I moved out here. Exactly, when you didn't have your phone and I had the Thomas guy to learn how to get around in LA. So that's how I learned to get around in LA with the Thomas guy, the big old map book that you had to have in the car. So I remember getting lost downtown and I was like, what is this? My heart dropped. Because remember, I'm from Mississippi, never been in a big city before. And I was like, oh my gosh, I just remember crying. And it was like, what is this? Because it was tent and boxes and tents and boxes and tents. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what is this? So I got that experience. I was in my orientation as a nurse, going to Pasadena for one of my first jobs. And so I got exposed to it my first year working here. And of course, getting lost in the system. But as an ER nurse, they first hand, they come in. And that's one of the reasons why the recuperative care was invented or came about within the homeless sector to reduce the recidivism. Because the homeless use the ER as their place to go if it's raining outside, if it's whatever, the weather's bad, if it's cold. So the hospital incurred an increased cost of $3,000 per night. Whereas we put them in a recoup care bed, it's $250 to $300 per night. So the hospital ultimately saves money because the hospitals are full. They didn't have rooms to put clients in. Because the homeless was coming in and taking up those beds where they weren't necessarily sick. But we can't turn anybody away. So with that being said, that's what happened. So now when you were a nurse during the ER, was it challenging to deal with that? When people are walking, what was it like? Most of the ERs here are oversaturated, right? So for me working in ER as a nurse and the challenges that we face is, you know, the client, they could come in, you know, being loud, abusive, all of those things that happen that sometimes we just experience on the streets. But for me, for some reason, I was the one that the team would call and be like, hey, Katita, come over here because this is going on, you know, this is a homeless guy. But, you know, I would always talk to them. I would give them love, show them love. And because of that, you know, one of the first things that, you know, I didn't know that I was doing back then was just meeting them where they were, offering them something to eat. Because a lot of times they come in hungry and just seeing what their needs are and listening. People, believe it or not, if you just listen to them and ask them what's their story, you get a whole different mood level or change from them just because it shows that you care. Even people that are mentally, they're having a mental episode, they walk in, you just will talk to them. Somebody has to deal with them. Because a lot of times in this society, we just walk away. But when they come to ER, you guys have to deal with them. We have to deal with them. We can't turn them away when they come to the ER, right? And so, of course, we get different trainings and things of that nature. But, you know, offering up empathy, listening to them. Believe it or not, active listening, communicating, and sometimes just asking a person, how are you feeling goes a really long way. So meeting them where they are at, how would you do that? So really, like I said, it's just simply having a conversation asking, how are you doing? How are you feeling? You know, what's going on? Can you tell me? I mean, I can meet someone on the street, literally right now, and you know how people be asking for money? And I say, you know, I'll give you some money, but what is your drug of choice? And guess what? They'll tell you what it is because of the way that I ask. I never had someone that tell me that, you know, that would lie to me. And I said, since you asked, I'm gonna tell you the truth. I wanted to go and buy me some alcohol. So I, you know, I say, you know, God loves you. I want you to know that I love you. And here you go, take care. And thank you for telling me the truth. So people know your authenticity. That is what it is. And that's what makes it different. Your true self and where your heart is. And believe it or not, people know if you truly care, if you truly don't care. And then you started these nonprofits. Can you tell us what are the nonprofits? You started the first one. Can you tell us about the first one? Okay. The first one is Serenity Recuperative Care. I have a co-founder with that, Dr. Candace Benton, with our Serenity Recuperative Care. And we operate a currently six facilities, 180 beds and their recoup care beds. And those are for clients that have been discharged from the hospital directly into our services that need higher medical needs and things of that nature. The key is we're unlicensed facility. It's not a licensed facility. So we monitor meds. We have nurses on site that do patient teaching with the clients, help monitor their meds and get them back stable. If they need to come in and get IVs, wound care, that's what type of facility it is. Either outside providers come in and do it, or our nurses is there to help assist them, teach them how to do it. Or also when it comes to wound care, do it for them, depending on the location of the wound. Now, are these individuals homeless, like that they come to your facility or? Yes, those are homeless individuals that come to our facility. And the word now is unhoused. So the unhoused, they are unhoused that comes to the facility that's being discharged. So all the hospitals in LA County can refer in now. There's a portal. So you remember we were talking about earlier how they were used to dump people onto the streets. So after these people come in, if they have a sickness, disease, they come in, or if they come in and then they want to discharge them, then they would just put them in the streets. Is that how it would work? They can't put them back on the streets. So if a homeless person go into the ER, into the hospital, the hospitals are not allowed. There was a law passed that they're not allowed to what they call patient dumping them on the streets. So if a client refuses to go somewhere, that's different. But they have social workers inside the hospital that help get the clients into facilities like ours. So then they will come there. And then over there, you guys, how would you work with them? So when they come to us, whatever their medical needs are, we help take care of those. We get them connected to services. Let's just say, believe it or not, sometimes clients don't have IDs. So what can you do if you don't have an ID? You can't do anything. You can't get any benefits. You can't do anything. So we start with simplest, getting them IDs. We have what we call at Holidays Help Enhance the roadmap to the journey home. So it came from the yellow brick road. So we created a roadmap. And so when that roadmap is, you enter into home because once you enter into Holidays Help Enhance, for us, you're no longer homeless. It's your home, but we work in it. And so we there to serve you. So when they come, so they meet with the case manager and our case manager help provide them with resources they need, increasing their income, getting their IDs. If they want to get a job, help them with resume writing. We teach them life skills. Believe it or not, majority of homeless people are men. And so men are, you guys always get taken care of, right? That's true. When you think about it, men are always getting taken care of. So the majority of homelessness is men. And usually they may end up homeless because now they're white. Believe it or not, them and their wives have separated so they have nowhere to go or they've broken up with their girlfriends so they end up on the street. So we teach them how to wash their clothes, how to cook, how to clean. Those are all the things that we offer within our organization to help them excel in life. So we do all of those and budgeting is a big one, right? So budgeting, all of those things that we teach them within our organization. And so on that roadmap, whatever it is that they want to do, our case managers meet with them, see what their plans are for them. We do team meetings where we talk about what they want to do and how we can help them get to the next level. And sometimes, believe it or not, navigating these systems can be very difficult. So all the different benefits that are out there and you don't know who to call and where to go and- Absolutely, we help them with that. We even provide transportation to take them to and from their appointments for medical to get their IDs. We do all of those things internally for them because if they don't have any money, they can't ride the bus or get an Uber, all these other things that are available out there, right? So we provide transportation as well for them. But we also include three meals a day at our facilities and I believe in providing three hot meals a day. And then also we give them snacks at our facility and we keep fresh fruit out. So that helps stop the hoarding, believe it or not, because you got to think about it. A lot of times our staff have to teach regarding hoarding because they feel like if it gets something, I got to hold on to it. And that's more with your chronic homelessness. Because you may not, you don't think you can have it again. Exactly, or you're not going to get it. But our staff have to do a lot of teaching for some of those who've been chronically homeless around. You don't have to do that because it's always here for you. And how long do they stay with you and do they graduate? Is a lot of them graduate? So, yes. So they stay with us as long as they need to, to be housed. Our recuperative care program, once they are medically stable, they get to step down to stabilization housing, right? But they never have to go back to the street. Sometimes now our clients get jobs, work, and they pay their own way out. A lot of times they wait to get the housing voucher. So it's like a Section 8 voucher to help pay for their rent. So now they're able to go out and our team help them look for apartments and things of that nature, where you know they pay a percentage. And like the vouchers pay depending on their income, a certain percentage of it. So you get those that have to do that. And you know, I would say 90% of our clients have mental illness, but I would go and say 100%, right? Because depression is a mental illness, right? That's what they say. It's something you mentally unstable because you're depressed. But you got to think about it. If you don't have a foundation, a roof over your head, you're going to be depressed. So when I talk about the 85 to 90%, those are your serious mental illness, like your bipolar, your schizophrenia, those things where you may see someone talking to themselves, which means they're responding to internal stimuli. So those are the difference in when I talk about it, because people don't think that, you know, if I say I'm depressed, how many times you heard your friends like I'm depressed, right? That's a mental illness, believe it or not. It's going to be all of us. Yeah. Right. When these patients come to you, you mentioned 90% of them have severe, 80, 90% have severe mental illness and the others have faced depression. Absolutely. How much of that can you guys help them with? How much of it is fixable? See, at Holiday Self Enhance, we provide wraparound services. So we have a therapist on site. So we have a therapist that they get to meet with if they choose to do those services, right? And so they get to meet with a therapist and the therapists meet with them to help them through that. And also we do a referral. So we refer them out for mental health because you just don't want to do it there. You want them to have it. So when they get into their apartment, that they have someone continually that they can work with outside of our organization. Are you guys able to mitigate it or does it? So do people become more stable when they come in after you have them in your facility? So, you know, we have had some difficult clients that have come around, believe it or not. And then for the most part, I think for me, when you think about stability, I think everybody's stable once they have a roof over their head and food to eat and things that you don't have to worry about. The things that, you know, that we may take for granted that, you know, now they have a roof over their head and three meals. So I don't have to worry about that for now. But then the worry comes, when am I going to get my voucher? When am I going to be able to move out of here from this shared housing arrangement, right? But they become very stable within our organization because of all the different things that are there for them. And I think that is the key of us helping them help themselves is by offering all these different things on site for them. Because with our mental health, you know, providers, things like that, sometimes it takes three to six months to get an appointment. To get a mental health appointment. Absolutely. And for somebody that's not mentally stable, how can get that? How can they get that on their own? They probably it's impossible to get that on their own. Correct. So with us having the help within our facilities, right, we're able to help them with that. We already have a team member there that's trained, a social worker, a therapist, that they can meet with prior to getting their appointments or waiting so long to get an appointment. Because that's truly a bottleneck that we see within our organization when it comes to mental health. It's a lack thereof. So you mentioned that sometimes you might get surprised by people that can turn it around. Can you give us an example? Was there cases where you were surprised yourself by somebody being able to change? Absolutely. When we're talking about someone to change, I think you're talking about someone like with a severe mental illness, right? So of course, we take care of clients that have bipolar, schizophrenia. And I just recall within the county, sometimes those clients go from facility to facility for facility, right? Because the team cannot handle them. So our organization is known for taking those ones that they can't turn around to turn them around. So I say this a lot that our team, because our mission, our motto is loving, right? Because we believe love is one of the greatest motivators. So we love them. And so it was this one lady that came into our facility, talking to herself, things of that nature, you know, responding to internal stimuli. But with getting her on her meds, monitoring her and helping her find the right dosage, believe it or not, those medications have a lot of different symptoms that people have. And they just don't like the way it makes them feel. So they won't take it, right? But because we have nurses on site that are able to monitor it, able to ask some questions, you get them on the right medication and the right dose, and they become a whole different person. And you saw the transformation. Absolutely. She was a lady that came to us, she was talking to herself, responding to internal stimuli, like you could talk to her, she wouldn't say anything to you type thing, right? And so, of course, our staff continues to engage, continues to talk to her, continue to ask questions, continue to... And she wouldn't talk to them? She would just talk to herself? Not initially, not initially. But then she came around and she started. How old was she? She had to be in her 50s, late 50s. And she was like coming straight from the street or other facilities, but she had kind of had to live in the streets. Yes, she had came directly. I don't know if she came directly from the streets or from the hospital, but she came to us from another facility. And so, because she wouldn't do anything that they said, you know, she just wasn't following the protocol. Because with them, when you come, you know, we have expectations. Your expectations are, you have to meet with your case manager, certain things that you have to do. Every program requires expectations, right? So there are certain things that you're required to do. And so she just could not get it together to do those things. And, you know, she would cuss at the staff. And so one of the things that we teach our staff is you can't take it personal, right? That is a number one thing that we always preach across the organization. You can't take it personal. It's not you, it's your position, right? So how does that look for you? So they have to remember not to take it personal. You know, if they cuss you out or call you out of your name, doesn't matter, right? Don't take it personal. It's not you, it's their mental illness. So those things, and a lot of times people can't tolerate that, right? And so that's how she ended up with us because she used a lot of vulgar language and all of those type things, you know? So if you see somebody talking to theirself, responding, putting holes in your wall, you know, messing up your facilities, how long are you going to withstand that? But because our team continue to talk to her, continue to love on her, give her clothes like this to look nice on you, those kinds of things, little small gestures that you wouldn't think would make a big difference, right? And those things and monitoring their medications and seeing like, how does that make you feel and listening to them when they say, it does not make me feel good. Or knowing that they just laying in a bed and it has zombied them out where they can't do anything, right? To find that even medium where the medicine works perfectly for them. So our team was able to do that with this particular client. So essentially, you guys treat people really well when they come to you, even though they might be cussing. Absolutely. That's what we supposed to do. And how did you learn to do that? I was raised in the South. It's the hospitality state, right? And my grandmother raised us on, you know, Mr. and Miss. So within our organization, that's what we train our staff is Mr. and Miss, right? Let's remain professional. We can be friendly, but not friends. You know, we're to love on them. And our organization just stands for love. And that's one of the things. We love them. We give them hope. Because again, one of the things, we let them know that this is their home. We work in it to serve them. So I let our staff know, you ain't got to do it, but you get to come to work and transform people's lives every day. How amazing is that? You can't get it. No, it's no better thing than to do that. Know that you could change somebody's life and trajectory. And then not only that, you create a legacy of that. Because when we help one, they're going to help someone else. So that's the legacy that we create around our organization. And that's amazing. And do you guys have a spiritual component? Because it must be very hard, you know, if you're dealing with people that are unstable all the time and you have to keep, you know, consistently love them. Absolutely. And you're absolutely correct. And so that's what drove me to open up my own organization because I felt like that sense of hope and that God peace was missing. It doesn't matter what walk of life you come from. If you don't believe in God, that's OK. We're going to pray for you. And believe it or not, our organization has baptized and brought people to Christ. Just this past year alone with my church, because I go to church with my clients, they attend my church. My pastor has baptized over 30 people within the last six months. Brought their life to Christ and has changed their whole life trajectory. And so that's what we've been doing. So you said you then you started your own organization because you wanted to bring a spiritual component. Can you tell us when did you start your own organization? In 2018, Holidays Helping Hands got started to help families, particularly pregnant women, pregnant women that were incarcerated, that were given a second chance at life. So they were in jail. They were pregnant. And because they were pregnant, they got to get out, get reunited with their families through our organization and go to work and do whatever it is that they need to do to be with their families. And so our organization helped with that, still helps with that. And so that's how we initially started Holidays Helping Hands. And why did you do that? I did it because for me, I wanted to help families. I was a teenage mom, 17 years old in the state of Mississippi, where I remember navigating the system. And it was very difficult navigating the system, being a teenage mom, not having the resources that I need. And I was in school. I was in school to be an RN. And I just wanted to, because I was a teenage mom, I wanted, you know, the statistics show that if you're a teenage mom, that you're going to have all these kids, like most teenage moms end up with five kids or more, right? And that you're going to be unsuccessful. And I wanted to be that person that they get to see on a daily basis and be like, you know what? If she can do it, I can do it too, right? And so that, therefore, Holidays Help With Hands was birthed out of me being a single mom and wanting to help mothers be the best version of themselves and to show them that you can do it too, because she did it. And she did it from a small town out of Mississippi where nothing leads to nothing, but something came out of it. And now how is the difference, you know, so these people are incarcerated. So there's a different types of people, you know. So how is it working with them when they come in? What's the challenges you face? One of the challenges that we face is people don't realize that it's just rules in life. And a lot of times people are incarcerated because they don't want to follow the rules. So one of the biggest challenges that we face when they get out is we give you our good neighbor approach. You can't laughter outside the front of our facilities. You know, if you go to the back, we have playground play areas for the kids. You have to keep your facility clean. We're not going to live in anything dirty because at our facilities, I can go there tonight and sleep there because that is the standards that we represent in our organization. It's not going to smell. We're going to eat good. I can eat the food that they cook there. And if I can't do those things and I tell my staff, if you can't do those things, then it's not the holidays helping hands way. You mentioned following the rules. How do you ensure that people that just came from incarceration follow those rules? You don't have this strict. Do you have the strict standards? It's not strict. So we call them guidelines now, right? Because people feel like rules are made to be broken. So we call them guidelines, right? So, you know, your curfew is for you to be here by 8 o'clock at night. But if you give us a phone call and say, hey, I'm not going to make it in till 11. That's OK. You know, creating structure because sometimes, a lot of times, you know, some of our moms that were, you know, incarcerated have been in and out of jail for years. And sometimes that structure that you give them, they end up appreciating it and loving it in the end. But we when they come into our facilities, when they meet with the case manager and the nurse, we have the expectations list that they have to sign off on. Our rules are around the facility in every single room. We have the main rules like that stick out, you know, your curfew time, what time you're going to get your meals. We have created a pathway and we have a system in place that they know everything that's going to happen. They have groups, those groups that we talked about, like the life skill groups. We have support groups. We have groups at our facility every day at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Our team is going to huddle at 9, 3 and 11. Like we have systems in place around the organization. Your meals are at 8, 12 and 5. Your snack is at 7. During COVID, we threw in an extra snack, but we always have fresh fruit out for you. If you need to grab a bite to eat in between meals, you get hungry, there's something there. We created a snack box for them. So we have a whole program that's set up to help them be successful. And what kind of skills do you teach them and how do they graduate? So I know you keep asking me about this graduate program. So they graduate, not particularly like graduate, like graduate. So we have two. We have an internal program that our clients can graduate from. And that's our Shine Ambassador Workforce Program. So that's a different one. They actually graduate from that program. But let's just say you don't enter into that program within our facility. That is our work source program that we do internally within our organization, where we teach them culinary. They get to cook. They get food handlers license. We have our landscaping and maintenance team. We have our thrift store at PICS. So y'all could come out and visit for those of you that live in California. It's in Torrance. It's an upscale thrift store and we take donations always. And so our clients get to learn customer service skills there. We're in the register, screen printing, things of that nature. If you need screen printing, you can come to PICS too. You see, I got to advertise while I do that. And then the one that I'm most proud of is I started my HHH School of Nursing. So right now we teach them they can become certified nursing assistants and we give this program to them for free. That program is $2,000. If you have to pay for it out of your pocket, that's the minimum cost for the program. They cost way more than that. But that's the minimum cost because if I have someone off the streets that want to come in and do the program, they have to pay $2,000 for the program. So the donations and stuff that we receive, we're able to give our clients these classes for free. We're on our third cohort and currently in this class, I think we have six clients that are doing it in our facilities and they're becoming certified nursing assistants. So this program is a 12-week long program, all together, our SALS cohort. And they get to graduate from this program and we do do a graduation. But they still may still be housed with us until they get their voucher or until they're able to save up enough money to move into their own housing. So essentially in your system, you bring in people, you actually help them learn discipline, you know, following the rules. And then you also help them get the life skills, the career. And then they can move out afterwards if they can. But it's all government-based. So they're still waiting on like their voucher if they need to get that voucher. But remember, also, like, let's say that I get a job. I work and I save up my money because, you know, I don't have to pay rent here. I get my meals here. Everything is taken care of for me. So sometimes we have those individuals who, like I said, they only mental illness would be depression because they don't have their own place to stay, right? That they get to save their money and then they move out on their own. So it's not a graduation per se because they don't graduate. But we do have what our road map to home and that's their journey to home. So they will graduate into their own home, but it's not per se a graduation. Now, in terms of the drugs, is drugs a big factor for you guys and how do you deal with it? Sometimes it is. And so our approach and the county's approach is harm reduction approach. So you may say, what does that look like for us? So let's just say we know marijuana is legal here in California. So we have lock boxes on our facility that they can lock their marijuana up in or they give it to our nurses. Our nurses put it out lock box and keep it for them. Medical marijuana for those that need it. And then let's just say they use some hardcore drugs. They need to shoot up. You know, our nurses will give them clean needles, but they can't do it on our facility. They have to leave off our facility and do their drugs. But, you know, that is the harm reduction approach we give you clean needles. Reason why we give clean needles so we don't, we prevent Hep C, HIV, one of the biggest ones, right? If we give them clean needles so we have a needle exchange program internally. One of the ones that we like to train and say, you know, if we have an alcoholic, you know, will our case managers, therapists meet with them and everybody's on the same page? You know, we say if you drink 12 pack today instead of drinking 12, try drinking 11 today. And, you know, the client may come back and be like, oh, I drunk 11 today. We celebrate that win because that's a win for them because they used to drink in 12. Now they get to 11. But what if the next day they get to 10? We celebrate that win, right? So we talk to them. We walk them through that. But guess what? If tomorrow I decide that, you know what? He decides to do 12 today. We'll say that's OK. We accept that. It is OK that you did 12 today. Let's start back over, right? You give them chance after chance and that's meeting them where they are. And so, like you said, drugs plays a major factor, but our team is trained to work with them with that. Are you guys able to walk them out of that, out of the addiction? Or is that a harder? So we have just recently one of the guys entered into our SALS program and he was like it's because he know he couldn't drink like that because, you know, in alcoholism, you just can't stop, you know, alcoholism, you have to wean down, you have to get on medication, you have to detox off. Alcohol, believe it or not, is one of the hardest drugs to detox off of besides heroin. And so with that being said, he was saying, you know, please make sure that I'm able to go to work. Even after the program ended, he wanted to work because he said it helped me stop drinking so much. He was able to cut down on the drinking that he did. And so that's another harm reduction for us. So our team made sure that we were able, even though our program ended because it was the holidays, they made sure that we gave him work to do a couple of days a week to keep him from not drinking so much those days. And he talked about how it was life changing for him to enter that program because he had been drinking for so many years. Some people are critical of harm reduction and they say if we continue letting people do drugs, then they will never get off it. But a lot of the funding, the counties and the state is harm reduction. I think it's even the federal funding is coming. If you don't do harm reduction, you won't get funding, right? It's true. It is true. And it's a part of when they when you apply and they actually what are your, you know, what what does your organization do in reference to harm reduction? So you're absolutely correct. And so, you know, people always have their own beliefs, you know, about what's right, what's not right. Opinions is just what they are. And we all have one. And so at the end of the day, sometimes it works for some and sometimes it doesn't. But at the end of the day, it's just what we do and we meeting them where they are. And and sometimes the clients do get off drugs, truly. Right. And it's multiple factors that go in. It is not a just one thing that just like, oh, like this works. Right. But, you know, back in the day, I think why harm reduction. Well, I know why harm reduction came into play is because back in the day, they was like, oh, you can't get in here unless you clean. So that leaves them out on the street homeless because you're not clean. So they tried to remove that and they have done a great job at removing that guideline or restriction from allowing people just because I'm on drugs doesn't mean that I don't need to be housed. Right. So I think that we should look at housing should be a human right. We in America. So why do because I do drugs that I don't deserve to have housing? A lot of times people are on drugs because of things that have happened to them. You know, childhood things is so many reasons why people do drugs. And if you give them the right platform or the right things or say the right things to them and help them. And remember, there's no one way approach. Those things sometimes change their lives. And we have had a lot of clients that have gotten off of drugs. Your facility, it's is it funded by the by the government or is it self-funded? So majority of our facilities are funded by the county here in Los Angeles. The Measure H money that was passed, the tax dollars that was passed. So if you guys want to stop by and come see our facilities and see what you're paying for, you'll be very pleased. So that's where our funding comes from. Measure H dollars. And but you raise some funding on your own too, right? We do because it takes more than that. Believe it or not, some of our budgets were written back in 2016 when minimum wage was $12. Minimum wage is now $17 in 2017. So you have to raise the rest of it yourself? Absolutely. Not only that, at our organization, we do a lot of things with our clients. We don't just do that. We do outings, like our kids are now going to Big Bear to go skiing. And the next week, we furnish our clients' homes. When we say we furnish their homes, our clients that may enter our SOLS program and have great stories, you know, our team be like, can we furnish their home? Can we surprise them? So if you look it up, Holidays Helping Hands, you'll see our surprise stories where we have decorated the entire home, where we leave them with a refrigerator full of food, computers for the kids. This is when they leave your organization. When they leave our organization and they get their own housing. So all of those different programs that we have within our organization that are not funded, like our Shine Ambassador WorkSource program. So you have to raise money. We have to raise money for all of those different things that we do. In terms of the funding, there seems to be a lot of funding going into homelessness, but it seems like your facility, you're not getting a lot. Is it normal for these facilities like yours not to get a lot of funding? What are your thoughts on all the funding? Where does it go? So our organization, just like other organizations, we create our own budgets. They approve the budgets, but the budgets are not increased yearly, you know, because of the increase in living, you know, yearly increases, we don't get those. And so when you do your budget, you know, now I know when I do my budget, you put that cushion in there for wages for your employees, right? You put the cushion in there for food because as some of my, some of our budgets are set for $5 per day per client for food. Right now it's $20 per day per client to feed them. So definitely donations are definitely greatly appreciated. And if anyone ever wants to take a tour of our facilities and see how it is, I invite you to come out because you'll be shocked at what you'll see. You are very excited about your organization. You're very passionate and it's not easy. I assume that you have 500 patients, different backgrounds, different challenges. And how do you keep going? How do you sit here very excited? You know, I wake up and I always talk about I'm living in my purpose. And when you live in your purpose, you hear people say it all the time that are really affluent. Like it doesn't feel like work, right? I get to wake up and I get to transform someone's life every single day. I get our mission and vision is carried out through the organization, through our employees. And when you go up to people and they just look at you and they start crying and hugging you, the feeling that you get from that is like none other, you know? It's a feeling. It's just like I was able to help them and they'd be so thankful for it. They'd be, you know, sometimes, believe it or not, sometimes they don't have family or their family has died off. Something tragic happens. And with that being said, that I get to walk in and people just love on me just for creating the organization and having the staff to do it because it takes a team to make the dream. We all know that. And that that vision is carried out, that the love is shown, that they get to see something and feel something different. Words for me cannot describe the feeling that I feel and the feeling that I'm feeling right now, just thinking about what we do at our organization and what others do at their organization because it is hard work. For some of us that may not know what does these transformations look like. Can you give us an example? You know what? I have one bright spirit that is still within our organization right now. She is amazing. And she told her story at our first ribbon cutting at Holidays Helping Hands. We've been in business forever. We just did one of our first ribbon cuttings for a JCOT site. So she got to tell her story. She talked about how she was up there because her drug of choice was meth. And she said she has five daughters. Up there in prison or in the streets? In the streets. She was on the streets. She didn't come from prison. This is a person that's on the street. This just literally happened in August of 2024. And she talked about how her and her five daughters slept in the car. Five daughters? Five daughters in a car. She slept in the front seat. The oldest daughter slept in the front seat and the four girls packed. She said we was packed in the car like sardines. She said but her drug of choice was meth. She said she had left her daughters in the car. She went up to shower in one of her friend's houses because she wanted to shower. She said while she was in the shower she heard the lights, the police, and they said to her, they called her name to come out because they had got her kids in the car. And she said she just knew that they were going to take her kids. But she said because of that day her whole life changed. The polices took her and the kids to the police station and they introduced her to our organization. She said she never would have thought that that would happen to her in a thousand years because she knew that they were going to take her kids. She said but instead they were able to help her and place her into our organization. And she said from the moment she walked into our organization she said she went to walk in and she said I'm not going to lie to you I had a pipe in my bra and she said I threw it away. And from that day forward she has not done drugs. She completed our CNA program and now she's working for us right now. And she's still in our program saving her money with her five kids. And it's six months in and her story for me is like none other because she's living proof and she's right there that harm reduction does work and because of the love that she received she said when I feel like I want to go out she said all I have to do is go to a staff and they help me. She said every single person here has helped me and so I think with that being said I know that the mission and vision that has been set forth and brought to Holiday's Helping Hands is truly into play. Dr. Katina Holiday CEO of the Holiday Helping Hands it was great to have you on California Insider. It was great being here. Thank you so much. And you have to remember that every day is a holiday. Excellent.