A Place Where Grace Reigns

By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor and G. Jordan Granucci, Editorial Intern

Situated across the street from the Rescue Mission from the north, and south from the tent dwellers just rising with the sun a few steps away from the women’s shelter, the Restoration Project hosts “Serve Day” every third Saturday of the month. 

The site is a relatively clean community garden filled in with regularly spaced trees and raised garden beds on the northwest corner of Broad and E Street. 

Between 8 a.m. and noon, this garden is transformed into a space where the line between the housed and the unhoused, and the people serving and the people being served is blurred — likely because the things that were exchanged most in this space were free smiles and hugs, familiarity, fraternity and trust.  

The Los Angeles County Department of Health delivers a white canopy tent to help shield people and perishables from the July sun, but people begin to gather there as early as 7:30 a.m.

The sense of hope and the visible exchange of grace and thanksgiving is palpable and stands in sharp contrast to the frustration often articulated by anyone else in regard to the unhoused. 

Last month, Angelenos learned that despite 10 years of concerted attention by city and county leaders and seven years since Proposition HHH, the supportive housing measure passed by LA County voters in 2016, homelessness is still soaring and is as visible as ever. 

According to the Los Angeles Homeless Authority’s 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, there’s been a 9% rise in homelessness on any given night in Los Angeles County to an estimated 75,518 people and a 10% rise in the City of Los Angeles to an estimated 46,260 people.

What the numbers show is that the unhoused aren’t simply victims of addiction, laziness, or some other personal failing. Rather, the unaffordability crisis affecting Angelenos at every income level is vicious. 

Even the programs that are designed to alleviate some of the pressure that comes with the unaffordability crisis in Los Angeles fall short. Section 8 has failed to attract property owners willing to take Section 8 tenants and house the clients fortunate enough to get the housing vouchers.  

Kevin Wallner, the founder of The Restoration Project and case manager with Harbor Interfaith Services, said he was frustrated with property owners who demand that a Section 8 tenant have a credit score of 620 or higher. He said that not enough is done to prevent Section 8 clients from being placed in neighborhoods that make it difficult to avoid recidivism and relapses into addiction and old patterns. 

During a recent interview with Random Lengths News, Wallner observed that the biggest difference between the housed and the unhoused is a door. We get to close a door while the unhoused zip up a tent. The pathologies assigned to each are wildly different. If the unhoused are seen with a beer, they’re an alcoholic. Anyone else seen with a beer, they are seen as a social drinker.

Wallner’s colleague, Geo, during an earlier interview, quipped: “What if we stripped all the homes and made them out of glass? Would you see addiction? Would you see loss? Would you see mental health challenges?” He solemnly nodded.

Regarding the stigma, Wallner said, “When you and I [housed people] are going through something, the first thing someone wants to do is fix it. I had enough people reminding me that I had an issue. I didn’t need that. I needed somebody to walk alongside me and tell me, ‘I’m available whenever you’re ready.’”

Wallner founded the Restoration Project in 2022. It seeks to provide a valuable stepping stone out of homelessness for unhoused people. 

Wallner, in his role at Harbor Interfaith Services, has an up-close view of the strengths and shortcomings of Los Angeles’ Coordinated Entry System — the network that aligns homeless services in the county together to ensure that resources are efficiently and equitably distributed to support people experiencing homelessness. 

When asked about it, Wallner called the situation frustrating. 

“It’s frustrating that we have all this money, we have all these resources and a lot of people living in inhumane conditions,” he said. 

Wallner’s sadness at the plight of the unhoused is demonstrated by the fact that despite being in close proximity to the Doors of Hope women’s shelter and Last Chance Rescue Mission, he has not been able to coax the organizations to engage in joint efforts in assisting the unhoused community in Wilmington. 

To be fair, there are a lot of structural roadblocks that prevent that sort of collaboration — the primary one of which is the fact that many of the projects funded by the county are funded with grants with strict requirements. They have to check a lot of boxes in order to continue to receive such grant funding. 

How It Started
Wallner’s introduction to serving society’s most vulnerable came in 2017. The married personal trainer had already been struggling with depression before he attended a health fair organized by his church in partnership with a local shelter. 

The experience made such an impression on him that he returned the following month and started asking how else he could be of service — service beyond just handing out plates of food during dinner service, and not just of the shelter provider.  

As he listened, Wallner learned that the most requested item the unhoused community asked for was clean socks. So, he started stuffing paper bags with socks and toting them to the monthly fair to distribute. He became known as the “sock guy,” passing out paper bags full of socks to the tent community in the alley behind the shelter. 

Over time these men and women became more than just “the homeless” to him. They became like family to him. Particularly, he saw himself in them. Afterwhile, he began exploring more ways to serve, including gathering donations from friends, family, and local businesses. 

Then he started to struggle personally. He experienced a sudden onset of depression and anxiety that made social situations difficult. He developed an intense aversion to noises of all kinds, which further isolated him. 

Things got so bad that his marriage began to unravel. 

Wallner explained that anyone who knew him prior to 2017 would have described him as a happy-go-lucky, extroverted guy who spent his days hyping, motivating, and encouraging his clients as a personal trainer. Then suddenly, he was doing none of those things. 

“Everything about me felt flat and dark,” Wallner said. “I struggled to find faith and my thoughts circled often around taking my own life.” 

The one constant was the relationships he formed at the shelter, Wallner explained. Within these relationships, Wallner explained he could talk openly about what he was going through without scaring anyone. Men and women who had no places to lay their heads at night offered him comfort, unconditional support, and prayed for him more times than he could count.

“I experienced what can only be described as miraculous healing from that season of my life. I’ve been depression-free since early 2019,” Wallner said. 

The former personal trainer said he developed a deep appreciation for people who give of themselves to communities that are often overlooked, excluded, marginalized, and considered lesser, without regard for their status in life.

Where Next?
Wallner said that the Restoration Project is a faith-based nonprofit and run by a “faith-based guy,” but he emphasized that their work does not seek to convert or proselytize. The Restoration Project serves up to 100 people every month. He is very excited at the levels of community involvement that his organization receives.

“My biggest desire was for this last year just to gain the respect and the trust of those that were serving,” he said. “Because we’ve got to build a safe base for all ages. Our youngest volunteer we’ve had is six. And he’s a rock star! He’s passing out socks, and it’s awesome. This last Saturday ([this past June], we had a 16-year-old cutting hair and a 12-year-old making pancakes.”

The people volunteering their time and energy with the Restoration Project come from many walks of life and neighborhoods.

On July 15, at the last Serve Day, a South Shores-San Pedro volunteer named Mitch Rachman was handing out numbered slips of paper to arriving people in need. The rail-thin 60-something-year-old volunteer greeted everyone that arrived with a sunny “good morning,” a hug, and a fist bump with a familiarity that was as disarming as it was engaging. The numbered slips indicate an arrival’s place in line for food and haircuts. 

Wallner introduced a tall, blond-tattooed man, John Chesney, as his right hand as he unloaded pickup trucks filled with materials. 

Another volunteer, a Redondo Beach manicurist, arrived in a van outfitted with a workstation inside and provided free manicures.

Indeed, it appeared as if whole families came out to volunteer.

The thing that seemed to connect them all was a desire to share the love as their Christian faith called them to do.  

“We are an extension of love, of serving and giving, because that’s what we were called to do. I never bring what I do [outside] in because people always say, ‘Oh, who are you with?’ I’m with the Restoration Project. That is who I’m with. ‘Oh, what church?’ I’m with the Restoration Project. You’ll know, based on our actions, based on our showing up for you, and the way that we love you, but we don’t need to be like, ‘You need to get to church.’”

Wallner’s goals for the project are ambitious.

“A lot of people don’t understand that Wilmington, Pedro and the [Harbor] Gateway are connected,” he explained. “We stay in Wilmington based on what I went through. So once we figure out that and we can settle really well in Wilmington, we’ll do another city.”

The Restoration Project is looking for a day center in which they can provide shower and locker access, a mailing address, and a business center.

He said they are also looking to add a spiritual counselor. 

“People want someone to listen to,” Wallner said. 

If you have “just a tiny bit of willingness to extend your hands and feet for a few hours, once a month,” then your help is wanted, as Wallner explained.

Donations are greatly appreciated too, with an Amazon wishlist up and running on their website (www.therestorationproject.org), but he stressed the importance of donating clean clothes.

“If you’re going to donate to any organization, especially a nonprofit, please ask yourself this question: ‘Would I give it to my best friend?’ And if the answer is no, please do not give it to us.”

Wallner demands this sort of effort from both the service providers and the people being served.

“We’ll be available to walk with you through whatever you need,” Wallner said. “But it starts with your desire.”

Wallner tells all of his volunteers they have a five-second window of opportunity to potentially shift somebody’s whole world and it begins by saying “Hi. My name is ________ , what’s yours?” 

“When we say that and we do that, we humanize that person,” Wallner explained. “We look at them in the eyes and say, ‘You Matter.’ A lot of people don’t hear that because they look a certain way or they smell a certain way, or they’re dressed a certain way. It’s not up to you to decide who gets grace and who doesn’t. We are grace givers, not grace takers.”