Many of you know that as a church we have supported the work of Home Again Los Angeles (Formerly Family Promise of the Verdugos) for several years.  HALA is a 501(c) 3 nonprofit homeless service agency located here in the city of Burbank that works at providing permanent housing for parents with children. Our session has recently approved a request from HALA to rent temporary space from our church to continue their work with families. Below are answers to some of the questions you might have about this short-term rental relationship.

Question? Why did Home Again LA change their model?
Answer: HALA has had to change their shelter model from a rotating host congregation program to a static site due to the loss of the number of congregation partners that had return since the pandemic. HALA was in need of 13 host congregations to effectively operate this program, each partner hosting quarterly. However, since restarting the program in October 2022 only 8 host congregations returned thus making it challenging to host the unhoused families. HALA has to pay for motel nights during weeks that they had no host congregation. This static site will remove any need to rotate to various churches or even to pay for motel nights for the families.

Question? When does the rental relationship begin?
Answer: HALA and their staff will begin setting up three classrooms that will be rented from our church as of April 1st. They will have use of the dinette and our kitchen. The kitchen will only be used to prepare and warm evening meals and to serve to-go meals in the morning to their clients.

Question? How long is the lease with HALA?
Answer: The lease is a six month lease that begins April 1st with a month to month lease after the six months.

Question? What is the difference between what we are used to when HALA was only using our church four times a year and now?
Answer: Families will no longer rotate to different congregations each week; the families will stay at First Presbyterian until the end of their time at HALA; 90 days or less. Area congregations will provide meals or have their parishioners serve as overnight chaperones. HALA will have paid staff onsite at all times when families are on the premises thus putting the responsibility on HALA staff to make certain the program is running effectively, removing any responsibilities from members from our church.

Question? Are we responsible for providing meals and volunteers for HALA?
Answer: We are not responsible. HALA has already hired a full-time coordinator to facilitate the work of finding overnight chaperones and meals. However, HALA welcomes members from our church to volunteer anytime throughout the year to provide meals or volunteer as overnight chaperones.

HALA has created a link for members of our church to sign up to serve this ministry. That link may be accessible for your volunteer interests by visiting our volunteer  sign up page here.

Question? What are the hours that HALA will be using the church? 
Answer: The hours are form 6:00 pm - 7:00 am daily.

Question? Does this mean we're still doing the Adult Day Care Program project?
Answer: No. The Session has decided that at this time not to move forward with the project.