PPTFH Shares Second Local Success Story at Community Meeting

This Article Marks the Second Part of a Three-Story Series Detailing the Shared Stories

By LILY TINOCO | Assistant Editor

Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness invited community members to hear client “success stories” during its meeting on Monday evening, November 14—and featured here is the second of three stories highlighted at the meeting.

PPTFH invited Glanda Sherman, Jennifer Dukes and Jessi Cortez—members of the Outreach Team from The People Concern—to highlight three clients of the program, including their progress and their journey from “homelessness to housed.”

Sherman explained The People Concern works to empower the most vulnerable to improve their quality of life, and ensure they are “housed, healthy and safe.” Sherman said 2016 marked the start of the Outreach Team, the first engagement and collaboration between The People Concern and PPTFH.

Sherman introduced the second program participant who spoke that evening, Janet Rodriguez, also known as “Yaya,” who appeared with her daughter.

Rodriguez said she started off in the Santa Monica area before making her way to the Palisades.

“The hardest part about being homeless, especially in the Pacific Palisades, was the judgment,” Rodriguez confessed. “I felt like I was looked [as] a troublemaker, or a thief, or a drug addict because I surrounded myself with … people, but I really didn’t have a choice. I was hurt. That’s not me. I’m not a thief. I’m not a drug addict. I’m not a troublemaker. I was just out there trying to find myself.”

She credited members of the Outreach Team and her two children for getting her out of a prior situation.

Sherman explained when the Outreach Team saw Rodriguez pregnant on the streets, they knew they had to “do everything” within their capacity to help her.

“It became our mission,” she said.

“They saved my life,” Rodriguez said of the Outreach Team. “I think they really truly saw who I really was, not what I was out there doing … They helped me learn how to trust a little bit more. Eventually, I actually started believing that they were to help me and I started believing in myself.”

She introduced and referred to her daughter as her “second chance,” sharing that she and her son “saved” her.

“What keeps me going, I would say, is my children,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t have room for mistakes with them. I have no choice, I have to make it for them.”

Of being homeless, Rodriguez said she learned the value of patience and faith, and that it is OK to ask for help.

“I had to have faith that things were going to be OK, and I had to have patience that things were going to happen when it was time for those things to happen,” Rodriguez concluded. “It’s OK to ask for help. It’s OK to fail, but not to give up.”

Sherman said Rodriguez has a driving force to “get things right,” and her love for her children pushes her even further.

The final story will be printed in a future edition of the paper, highlighting the third and last success story covered in the meeting.