By Ruby Muñoz, Editorial Intern
The City of Carson has been successful with serving its community with several housing and food resources that they have available for the public.
In response to inquiries in an email, Carson City Manager Sharon Landers and director of Community Services, Parks and Recreation Robert Lennox sent several programs that the City of Carson provides such as food programs through partnerships with local businesses and nonprofits.
The COVID-19 pandemic, the city council launched the COVID-19 Task Force to offer relief to Carson residents most impacted by the pandemic.
In addition to COVID testing and vaccination services, the team has offered various food programs:
- Carson Essentials to Go – A partnership program with local restaurants to package and provide grocery boxes/bags for residents at discounted cost. A free version of the program is also offered to income qualifying households and seniors 62 and older. To date, the programs have provided 2,478 grocery packs to residents. Packages are delivered by staff to households directly.
- Grab & Go – Through a partnership with non-profit Lighthouse, prepared meals are distributed via a drive through on a first come first serve basis at 11 a.m. Monday-Thursday at the community center east parking lot, To date, the program has provided 157,573 meals to the public.
- Meals on Wheels – A partnership with the YMCA saw 11,146 meals prepared at the Community Center and delivered to qualifying residents. This program has been discontinued at the Center and YMCA continues to provide offsite.
The City has also hosted three to four single day food giveaway events with various local non-profits from the community center parking lot in the past year. These have serviced approximately 500-700 residents at each event.
Carson Mayor Lula Davis-Holmes praised the city’s pandemic relief effort, noting that “We don’t want anyone going hungry in the City of Carson,” Davis-Holmes said. “We had a good response, and it’s been going on since the pandemic started.”
The mayor’s praise of the city’s efforts reflects improvements in the city’s delivery of relief. Back in January 2021, shortly after her inauguration, Davis-Holmes thought the city could have done a better job in its initial efforts reaching out and promoting relief services to city residents. Since her previous statements, the city’s service delivery efforts have succeeded.
The city has been working with non-profit organizations such as meal distribution programs that are partnering with the city to serve communities from Monday through Thursday.
“I’ve been providing meals for our residents that are in need because the city offers it Monday through Thursdays, so I started doing it sporadically on Fridays as well,” Davis-Holmes said.
Carson has partnered with nonprofits to make sure the community is well provided during COVID-19.
“We have our Carson extension program that we implemented. It allows people to order food from local stores,” Davis-Holmes said. “We have four different packages, which are the care packs, then we have a family pack, a family stake pack and a family salmon pack, which is new. So, seniors who can’t get out of their homes or go to the grocery store, we fill in the orders at our local grocery store and we deliver them to the customers. That was a very successful program.”
Additional resources are also accessible to communities such as Los Angeles Unified School District that provides families and children with free food.
Ana Meni, a lifelong Carson resident and a volunteer with Labor Community Services has assisted several food distributions. She said Labor Community Services has hosted more than 100 food drive distributions throughout Los Angeles County and Labor Community Services are assisting several outside the county as well.
As a volunteer, she discussed the hard work and progress that resources and services have offered to several communities such as the food program Labor Community Services.
“Labor Community Services is a non-profit organization, they do a lot of work and outreach with the community,” Meni said. “They partner with the Los Angeles County Labor Community Services. What they did was because of COVID-19, they switched it up to a regular pantry that they have monthly to relying on the different houses of labor or different affiliates by supplying volunteers and that’s how I volunteered.”
She said that they have created a COVID-19 volunteer taskforce for people to sign up for the different affiliate programs. The co host sends out an email to the volunteers who previously signed up or worked with food distributions in the past to join their team of volunteers.
The demographics that don’t hear about resources are the ones that are being affected.
“Lower-income and even more so those who rely on public transit are affected by not hearing these resources,” Meni said. “Not everybody has a car so that’s why I always encourage people when you post something on social media, if you have the ability to go get food for someone you know who is in need, why don’t you pick them up? Or get it for them.”
Davis Holmes said that not everyone has access to social media.
“You don’t have to be homeless,” the mayor said. “Some kids that are in high school don’t have access to social media. We’re trying to find locations. We met with the churches for the kids that did not have access to the computers or the internet, to see if the kids can come over to churches. That has not been finalized yet but it’s a conversation.”
In some cases, some families and children don’t have access to social media, which can affect their access to food services.
“Everyone says, ‘Go online to find this information,” she said. “I have a hard time navigating that system. I have a computer, I’ve just been learning how to zoom since COVID-19 started.”
In addition, Carson also has been providing the homeless population with services and resources. “We try to provide services and resources for the homeless,” she said. “They don’t know, they don’t have access to the internet. How do you get the word out to them?”
“You have to meet them where they are. That’s what our path program has been doing. Meeting our residents once or twice a year, “ Davis-Holmes said. “We offer a program for our homeless population. They come in and we bring in the barbers, we give them meals and shave them. They take showers and so forth. We also have vouchers if they’d like to be off the street.”
The city also has had a successful rental assistance program.
“We’re working on new housing projects in the city of Carson,” Davis-Holmes said. “Over the past two or three years, we opened up several housing projects to meet needs. These are not huge projects, but they do address some of the concerns for housing. We have the veterans housing project that opened up a few years ago. I’m very proud of that. That provides low-income housing for our seniors. We have the Arts Colony which provided low-income housing for people that were artists but didn’t have anywhere to showcase their art.”
Meni said her hopes and prayers are that people are encouraged to serve their community such as volunteering to help others.
“You don’t have to sit there and create a world in a day. Everyone has the ability to help.” Meni said.
The city has given food packages, school supplies, household goods, hand sanitizers, and the N95 mask to more than 1,000 families in Carson.
“Those are some of the things we have been doing to make sure some of the residents have resources, food to be exact,” Davis Holmes said. “We don’t want anyone going hungry in the city.”