Mel Tillekeratne remembers seeing individuals experiencing homeless at the West Adams Church of Christ smiling in the mirror after taking showers there.
“You see them in front of a mirror fixing their hair, they like the way they look,” said Tillekeratne, who is the co-founder and executive director of End Homelessness California, also known as the Shower of Hope. The organization, which began in 2017, works to provide people experiencing homelessness with access to showers, hygiene products and more.
At its West Adams Church of Christ location, there are portable white and green-colored shower stations that provide people experiencing homelessness with the resources, privacy and time they need to take a shower.
Tillekeratne began his outreach with people experiencing homelessness by helping with Monday Night Mission where volunteers served food on Skid Row five nights a week. In 2017, Tillekeratne began working with people in the community to create a shower station for those experiencing homelessness, establishing the Shower of Hope.
“We knew showers were needed, but once we started, more and more people just kept coming up and saying, ‘Oh yeah, I haven’t showered in one month, two months, three months, six months,’” Tillekeratne said. “So we just kept expanding [the project].”
Tillekeratne said he saw the initiative’s impact almost immediately.
Good hygiene and cleanliness are essential to staying healthy – physically and mentally. Bathing has been linked to improvements in mental health and taking a warm shower can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.
“[People experiencing homelessnness] literally are not comfortable with themselves so when you see people taking a shower, when you see them saying that they’re clean, not just that they’re clean, they’re happy…It’s been really rewarding,” Tillekeratne said.
Tillekeratne estimated that throughout all the 22 shower locations, the Shower of Hope has provided a total of 1,500 showers to Angelenos experiencing homelessness per week, which continues to grow as the project expands.
However, Tillekeratne emphasized that while this increase in better hygiene is important, it still does not solve homelessness in Los Angeles.
“We can give a person a shower, we can give them meals, clothing, hygiene items,” Tillekeratne said. “But at the end of the day, they’re still on the street.”
Los Angeles has experienced a 12.7% increase in homelessness from 2019 to 2020, according to the L.A. Almanac. This rise in people experiencing homelessness in L.A. mostly has to do with a lack of affordable housing, stagnant incomes and a lack of investment in mental health services.
The Shower of Hope’s services come in trailers with three stalls each, and each shower is 15 minutes long. Guests are provided with shower necessities. Many of the shower sites also provide free haircuts, clothing, period products and monthly vaccination and coronavirus testing clinics.
Raymond Phillip, the minister of the congregation at the West Adams Church of Christ, holds a connection to the Shower of Hope initiative. Phillip, who previously experienced homelessness, recalled a time when he worked at McDonalds, and he’d go to work after spending a night in his car. His experiences, he said, helped him better understand the stigma individuals experiencing homelessness face and their need for support. He now works to help “those who find themselves in need.”
“My goal is not just to put some food in a homeless person’s hand, but rather to see what we can do along the way to get them off the streets, " Phillip said.
Phillip’s personal connection to people experiencing homelessness has made the West Adams Church of Christ an exceptional location for the unhoused community to feel safe and supported, according to Maribel Villanueva, the operations manager for the Shower of Hope.
“There’s not one unhoused community member that passes by that does not know Pastor Raymond,” said Villanueva. “He has made it a point to always be in touch with our unhoused community. And that’s why that site is so special.”
Villanueva said the Shower of Hope has been successful with the help of government grants, donations, fundraisers and volunteers. The West Adams location also holds monthly barbecues, something that only one other site in Riverside has been able to do. The organization hopes to install its first laundry service for those experiencing homelessness in about a month, according to Villanueva.
“Anything we needed, anything we wanted to bring in, any kind of resources, any kind of ideas we had, [Phillip] was always there to listen and 100% of the time agree and give us the green light at the end of the day,” Villanueva said.
Although Phillip received praise for being supportive of the Shower of Hope, he said the site’s success was due to the collective efforts of both the organization and its workers, which play their own respective parts.
“I would say we’re like sweet potato pie. I may be the potato, but I’m not the sugar. I’m not the cinnamon,” Phillip said. “So when you take a piece of the pie, you’re getting some potatoes, you get some flour, you get some sugar. You get all that in pieces. So, you know we play a part of it, but we’re not all of it.”
End Homelessness California also has other projects besides the Shower of Hope, including Destination Hope and Hope Housing for Students. Both of these projects focus on providing people experiencing homelessness with safe places to live and the tools they need to get back on their feet, including hiring individuals experiencing homelessness who have used their services.
Although Tillekeratne said that there is still a lot to be done in ending homelessness, he continues to work with his team, knowing that even a little help can change someone’s life entirely.
Learn more about how to support End Homelessness California here.