How Two Small Southern California Cities Saved Their Homeless Shelter

Adam Torres and Kay Wilson-Bolton discuss Kay’s new book, Harvard Shelter.

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Show Notes:

New book alert!  In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Kay Wilson-Bolton, Author of Harvard Shelter & Volunteer Director, SPIRIT of Santa Paula. Explore Kay’s new book, Harvard Shelter: How Two Small Southern California Cities Saved Their Homeless Shelter.

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About Kay Wilson-Bolton

Kay has been in full-time real estate since 1976. She is certified competent in many areas of real estate. She is known for commitment to working early and late with a very hands-on management style. She remains “first phone” on every transaction, and her market area is comfortably Ventura County.

Kay holds two degrees: BS degree with a background in marketing and business administration from Cal Poly and a BA from the Master’s College in Newhall, currently working part-time on her master’s degree. She holds numerous certifications and designations with professional organizations. She is a co-mediator for the Ventura County Superior Court, a Biblical Counselor and neighborhood mediator.

Full Unedited Transcript

  Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on, be our guest to apply. All right. So today is a very special episode. We have a re. in our midst. Her name is Kay Wilson Bolton.

She’s author of the newly released book Harvard Shelter, How Too Small Southern California Cities Saved Their Homeless Shelter. I’m proud to be holding a copy of it in my hands. So we got a lot to talk about, about this but Kay is also the volunteer director over at Spirit of Santa Paula, and we’ve worked together in the past and we’ve also published some of her work and some of the Santa Paula story in the past and her real estate background in the past as well.

So, I mean, Kay, at this point, you’re a co host. Welcome. Should I say, welcome back to the show or should I say, here’s the mic. It’s always nice to be with you, Adam. Thank you so much for caring about so many things. Well, okay. I know you know the drill and I’m always thrilled to ask you this question and it’s a privilege.

So we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we call our our mission matters minute. So, okay. As you know, at mission matters, our aim is to really amplify stories that we feel need to be heard from mission based individuals and organizations. So that’s our mission. Okay. What mission matters to you?

The most important thing to me right now is making sure that people have a safe place to sleep at night. I wish there were a number of dwelling units that people could actually live in, like apartments, and duplexes, and mobile homes, and anything affordable, but For those who are experiencing homelessness, the only option really is a shelter.

And so I’m committed to doing what I can in my community. I would love to worry about Ventura. Santa Barbara, Oxnard, but I’ve been planted here in Santa Paula, Fillmore, and Piru, known as the Santa Clara River Valley, and so that’s where I’m going to do what I can to give people shelter, good food, and encouraging words.

Love having you on the show and love bringing mission based individuals on the show to share, you know, why they do what they do, how they’re making a difference and really like what we can all do to get involved and, and into help as well. So at the end of this, just for everybody watching this, of course, I’m going to give Kay the opportunity to leave websites, other things so that people can get involved.

So keep that in mind as this as this interview unfolds. So Kay, I was trying to, I was racking my memory earlier today and I’m trying to figure it out. So. How long ago? So, Harvard Shelter, we, we, I know the book wasn’t named and we didn’t have the full book done yet, obviously, but when did we start this project?

Like, just the conversations, I feel like it’s been a solid one, two years, maybe a little bit more. It’s been closer to two years. I’ve, somehow, I think on Facebook, I saw You talking about Mission Matters, and I said, I wonder who that guy is, and so you invited everybody to visit your website or your Facebook page, and that was our original connection, and I knew that I have a story to tell, and I wanted to connect with somebody who could help me tell it.

Yeah, and so as we’ve worked through this publishing journey, we’ve done some co authored books together, and then this is your first, like, I like to say, the the opus, the big, the big one here, and this, and this encapsulates a lot of the things that we’ve been working on throughout the years and, and to put it all in one book first off, for, for authors out there, I asked this for them question, this question for them or would be authors, Like, what’s it like going through the process of putting together like the full book?

If it wasn’t for Marguerite Bonnet, I just could not have done it. I think we worked together about a year. I’m a full time real estate broker and managing the, operations as a volunteer and some of the other things I do was really problematic for timing. So what’s interesting is I would think of a subject and at first she was interviewing me and taking notes and I thought I couldn’t make this easier for both of us.

So when I would be driving, I would record actually send myself an email and I would talk about what I Maria, and what happened to her on her first day of work, and just amplifying the story. And then when I get back home, I would cut and paste it into a Word document, dress it up and then send it to her, and there was a chapter.

So she was wonderful about making it easy to read, and adding, subtracting words that were, you So, oh gosh, she was wonderful, so I couldn’t have done it without her. And actually, it got to a point in, I think, September, when she said, Kay, you have to cut this off. And it was good advice, because I could have kept going, just with the stories of people’s lives, you know, connecting with them, trying to find services.

Bringing them into the shelter, getting them settled, oriented, giving them a little hope where they had none. So without Marguerite, it wouldn’t have happened, but it took a good year to get it to completion. Whether it was on those whether it was on those drives where you were dictating or in the editing process or at any point in the process, did you kind of, was there any reflection points or things that kind of just surprised you like about yourself?

Like I know whenever I’m, whenever I’m doing kind of a deep dive and I recently came out with a book maybe a year ago or so and I was, and I had to really reflect on myself and as an entrepreneur and from an angle I had in the past. past. I learned a bunch of things that I’m like, Whoa, I didn’t like I didn’t really remember sometimes and otherwise, like, was there anything that surprised you on that journey for yourself?

There were many things. And you know, even today, I’ve picked it up and kind of read a chapter. And I think, how did we do that? And that’s particularly true of the chapter on the early years. I am astonished that we ever did that. And so it’s kind of like learning to swim. As you go, you learn a little more, you do a little better next time, and You know, the chapter on early years was very emotional to write and then to read and I had to go back and really redact some things that I knew would be hurtful to, to me in this community where I still live, talking about the people who were very mean and very much in opposition to trying to help people who are homeless.

You know, and I still hear that today. Homelessness is becoming a household word. Where we’ve just become kind of complacent about that. I watched the great Gatsby again, over the weekend just to take a break from things and there was a line in there where One of the rich women said, you know, the rich get richer and the poor get children And I thought what a what?

Just what a terrible thing to even think, but it’s true. In our society, the gap is just getting bigger and bigger. Today is you know, the big Tuesday for the elections, and it’s going to be so interesting to see where we all land as a country. And who we vote for, and it will surface the issues that are really important to us, and I hope at some point the primary issue is safety, well being, fairness, housing for all, so that our kids have a chance to live a life that every parent dreams their child will live.

So back to the question. Yes, I am astonished that we ever did that. I want to stay on the early days a little bit longer, especially for some of the, you know, the entrepreneurs in that’ll watch this as well, because you’re an accomplished entrepreneur as well in real estate. I mean, you’ve been successful there.

And I feel like sometimes when, you know, I’ll speak for myself, like sometimes I get the, yet last night we had this, this meetup in Orange County. So every Monday we do this. meet up at a different location. And we have a team down there that are very nice and that that want to get together and love mission matters and what we’re trying to accomplish in uniting people.

So sometimes as they, you know, I had some people that were, let’s just say, newer to the platform or newer to me or anything else. And they’re like, this talking about how, what was my vision for this? podcast and how we thought this was going to be this, this and this. And, and, you know, I like to step back and be very humble and I’m like, you’re giving me a little bit too much credit.

The vision originally was record an episode and, and, you know, invite cool people on that you feel are like minded and mission based and, and, you know, and have a conversation and let people listen to it, like that was the start. Simple idea in which this grew from. And then we kind of built brick by brick.

But from your end, thinking about those early days, especially in the context of the book and reflecting back, like, like, what is that like for you? That reflecting back part, and maybe give us some insight into those early days. Well, it’s very humbling to go back and read that because I didn’t even know what I was doing then except same.

I was saying, well, I was me. I was, I didn’t know how to record a podcast. I didn’t my first podcast, maybe five minutes. It took to do K and I did it on my phone. Go ahead, please. So You know what we wanted to do in the very early days is to simply do a hot meal. So we had no idea who would come. We put flyers out at the various places where we knew our homeless people, and now the term is people experiencing homelessness because homelessness is not an issue.

Adjective. It’s noun. And so just planning for that first meal, I sent an email. It was the early days of email, kind of. I sent out an email to 25 people. If you’re fixing a dish for your family, will you fix an extra one for us? That’s kind of how we started. And so, the meals showed up, and as we grew Each week for people coming for a free hot meal, we expanded it and I would go to Foodshare, which is our amazing food bank, and I would see what they had on Tuesday.

And if it was frozen, I knew I’d have to figure out. unsafe way to get it defrosted. I would go to the local market and buy Roma tomatoes because they were the cheapest, 29 cents a pound. They’re not that now. Find cheese, find cabbage, find local restaurant, donated carrots every week. So we have carrots every week for 10 years, but it’s nutrition, right?

So, yeah. Yeah, just scrambling to put things together, find utensils we didn’t want to use plastic and then every, the silverware would get thrown away in the trash, and just things like that, I read, reading the book, I just can’t believe we ever did that, but it was tough, but you just do what you have to do and you don’t think about it because you don’t know better, I certainly didn’t know then what I know today about possibilities and opportunities.

Hmm. I feel like the that being naive in the beginning and, and just going after and doing something at one step at a time and not knowing, like sometimes not knowing and being naive and going forward and just doing the action, the next meal in your case. And like the next week of how many people we could help.

Like that’s almost a blessing at time before you’re you’re then blessed with the ability to not be able to unknow what, you know, right. It’s simple in the beginning sometimes. Right. You know, when I look back, we had, like, for one week, we had 25, and I had to decide, you know, we used take out containers for people who didn’t want to sit down and eat, and, you know, then we grew, and so we have a budget now of about 2 million a year, which is, like, unbelievable growth.

But, you know, God was so much a part of it, and you know, blessing us, giving us setbacks, giving us challenges, giving us disappointments. And I know is to see if we were in it for the long haul or not. And what is the level of commitment to people who really need the help. And so here we are different audience, but same problems.

What do you hope jumping around a little bit here? What do you hope that the readers of Harvard Shelter get out of this book? Probably two things. I didn’t know you were going to ask that, by the way. I’m going to say two things. One is that all things are possible. And if you have a longing to make a difference in your community, There is something you can do.

It could be small, and it could be taking water bottles to the local park where people who are homeless are congregating. It could be anything. Anything is possible. And so, And there’s power in numbers. Don’t try to do it yourself. You can certainly have the idea, but involve as many people as you can who are like minded.

Ignore the critics. Ask them to leave you alone. If they want to criticize, do it in the background. Stay off the book. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks because view them as an opportunity to grow. And so if you’ve got two or three people in your community, you can do this too. And the other thing is I want people to be kinder, think softer, speak more kindly about people who are experiencing homelessness.

I catch myself sometimes driving by the pretty little gazebo in Santa Paula, and there are three or four men who are, Huddled with blankets early in the morning and had I not read my own book, I would say, I wonder what those people are doing there. Why are they there? I can tell you why they’re here.

They came here for a better life. They came here because they were offered work. They’ve lost their job because of some economy. Maybe they have an alcohol problem. They didn’t show up for work two days in a row. They got fired. You know, people, Addiction comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be your love for chocolate, it can be your love for new clothes, it can be your love for food, Taco Bell, and those are things that are hard to give up.

Try giving up a cup of coffee or all your coffee every morning for six months and just see what it’s like. So people have addictions and have fell into a drug and alcohol, you know, state of being because of loss of hope, discouragement. Who knows what caused that? You know, but for the grace of God, most of us are not there.

And to the people who think that could never happen to you and you despise the person that you’re having to see on the way to work. It appears to be homeless, you know, lighten up because we. Be a kinder community. And I’m so worried that homelessness is becoming a household world. And it wouldn’t affect us anymore.

We feel like homeless. Oh, well, and I’m really afraid we’re in that mode now. There are two, how can America can be. communities lined with people living in tents on sidewalks. How can they? For the audience, because obviously I know the backstory, but what, for what you can share, specifically on the cover the fact that the choice to go with these two individuals, maybe if you could just share a little bit around the, the backstory to why, why you went with that design.

Yes, that that picture was taken on about January the 12th, 2019, at our winter shelter at the Methodist Church. So, Abrianna and Nomi are a couple, and they had have, but at that time their daughter was four years old, and they had lost their shelter because they were renting a room, paying the rent to another tenant who was the actual lessee of the property, and the tenant was not paying the rent.

So, 11 o’clock at night, they were told by the tenant and the person receiving their rent that they had to be out at 6 a. m. because the sheriff was coming to evict them all. Of course, they said, how can that happen because we paid our rent? Well, the tenant used the money and didn’t pay the rent to the landlord.

So, at 6 a. m., they found themselves homeless. And they had two bicycles and a little trailer behind one of them, and Christina was in the back, and I shouldn’t have used her word, but she’s in the book, it’s alright. She was in the back, so for about three weeks, they were riding the streets of Santa Paula with Christina in the back.

They would ride at night so she could sleep. And finally, the police officers said, we’re not going to let you go. I don’t know if you guys do this anymore, so they took Christine away one night, and one of the officers said, you need to go see Kay, and get yourself straightened out. So they came to see me the next day, and I took that picture of them.

Christine was gone. And they had a little dog named Brownie, and Brownie’s in the picture, and that is them five years ago. So what happened, and why they’re so important to the story is, it’s all about hope, it’s about somebody taking your hand, and it’s doing what you’re supposed to do. Don’t fall back to any old habit you might have that gives you an excuse for not.

So they kept every appointment. They got connected with homeless services, behavioral health. They had a caseworker. They had to work with CPS, Child Protective Services, because Christine had been taken away from them. They, Nomi got jobs and Sabriana was kind of taking care of the family. And so they, Went from us into Gabriel’s house, which is a transitional living environment.

They were able to have Christine come visit. Christine had been placed with a beautiful foster family in Santa Paula. They love visits. They, actually wanted to adopt Christine because she was such an adorable child and Nomi and Sabriana weren’t working full time and supporting a family yet, but then Sabriana got a job.

They were able to afford an apartment. They found a landlord who was willing to give them a chance. That’s another piece of this. So they rented a little studio. Christine was able to come back and stay weekends with them and They evolved into both getting jobs, higher pay. They ended up working for spirit of Santa Paula.

Both of them know me is now the operations manager. So I’ll be on as the case manager the case manager and Christina’s back thriving in school and they have their own apartment. They both have braces on their teeth. They have a budget, they have a savings account. I mean, it’s a dream come true for how you want a story of sadness and sorrow and hopelessness to end.

That’s why they’re on the cover in their first day, and they’re inside the book as they are today, healthy, prosperous, happy, you know, to dream come true. So if every story could be like that, you know, we would see daylight every day. We don’t see daylight every day for many of our guests because they’ve got addictions.

They’re lazy. They are housed now and they think everything’s just fine, but at our shelter they have to be compliant with case management and follow instructions or sadly they are asked to leave the shelter to make room for somebody who wants to come in and actually better their lives and cooperate with us.

Yeah. And I, I feel like there’s a, and thank you for sharing that story, Kay. And the reason I wanted to bring that out too is just to kind of dispel the, the myth. I do understand that there is a segment of the, of the people that are experiencing homeless population that are, that, you know, may have addictions or other things like you mentioned, but then there’s also like the story you just shared where that was just kind of some bad luck really, like on that one.

Like they were paying their rent and, and all of a sudden, like in the blink of an eye, their entire life. is, you know, flipped upside down and at least they had each other and were able to work back. But some people and that they found you, but that narrative had the shelter not existed, had you and your team not been there like that could have been very different, right?

Right. I mean, if we weren’t here, the issue of homelessness in my community would be disastrous. The last count, we don’t have the count for 2024 yet, but for 2023, we had 121 homeless people counted. And we probably figure there’s 180. We have a number of undocumented people coming into the community, and I know that’s a sensitive topic in all of America right now.

But here’s what just happened. We had a young couple come from Colorado, who are actually from Venezuela. They came across the border. They were given a bus ticket. They could choose Florida, Colorado, or California. They ended up in Colorado when work ran out. They were 23 years old, married she’s pregnant, and when work ran out they found on the internet Harvard Shelter ended up in Santa Paula one day.

And wanted to stay. Well, we’re funded by and for the communities of Santa Paula, Fillmore, and Piru. We have an obligation to our community and to our funders to take care of our community. So, you know, turning somebody away is just a wretched experience, particularly in those circumstances. So, we kept them for one night, we drove them to One Stop in Oxnard, turned them over to other providers who have more ability to take care of them.

But we’ve got a lot of complicated problems in our country that are creating even a greater complicated problem in the area of homelessness. So, that being political, you know, that’s part of what’s impacting our, our ability to keep people housed. Let’s I want to, I want to go a while with some of the time we have left here.

I want to talk a little bit more about Spirit of Santa Paula for maybe some people that didn’t catch some of our previous work. Of course, we want everyone to pick up a copy of the book. That’s a, that’s a given, but like to give us some updates, it’s been a while since you and I talk like, like what’s happening right now and really what’s next, like on the, in 2024 year for people that are watching this in the future.

Several things have happened. One is that we were able to achieve a stable funding source on June 8th. I announced to our board, again, that if we didn’t have money, In our bank account by June 30th, we’re going to have to close the shelter, which would have been disastrous. So assembly member Steve Bennett, who wrote the forward in the book heard about that.

We were on NPR one morning So homeless shelter in Santa Paula may close because of lack of funding. We had people run to the rescue. Assembly member Bennett coordinated the dialogue between the city of Santa Paula, city of Fillmore and the County of Ventura to create a funding program for us for two years, which would allow us to hire a grant writer.

Hire an executive director hire an additional case manager. I have one case manager for 42 people. That does not work. It needs to be like one for 12 to 15. So we do have the new case manager, Desiree Magana, has joined Sabriana. Jessica Lucas taking care of people, shepherding them from pillar to post to make sure they get the services they need so that they actually experience a permanent supportive housing.

We’ve entered a new program with the County of Ventura and behavioral health to create six new beds. Thanks to the Meriwether family. In Ventura, they provided funding to get us started on that program and we utilized their funds for other sources, but they were the inspiration to help us get started, where we have six new beds for people who are attached to behavioral health, case managed social worker.

psychiatrist, caseworker, to be sure that they are attached to all services. We will house them for 90 days and then move them on, hopefully, to supportive housing. That’s going to be intense case management, but that’s a breakthrough for our community to have that kind of program. For people who are desperate for mental health services they’ve had breakdowns, they’ve been suicidal, but they’re being managed so that they have outlets for services that deal with their particular challenges and we want everybody to be housed.

But in Ventura County, the cost of affordable housing is not affordable for anybody. And we just don’t have enough places to put people. We have programs willing to provide funding, but we don’t have the opportunities. And you know, and there’s still just really. harsh dialogue between people who have theirs.

I mean, what I hear them say over and over, I worked my butt off for what I have and they can too. You know, it’s just, yes. I’m glad you were able. to do that, but there are people who work, didn’t have opportunities, education, that first time job a car that actually ran for two weeks. You know, they invest money in a car because they think it’s going to provide transportation, it breaks down, they can’t get it registered, they can’t insure it.

Car disappears because it’s towed and there goes the opportunity to get to work. A lot of harsh problems people experience. So that’s our new program with case management. Lots of opportunities exist to move people from shelter into permanent supportive housing. Okay. I’m, I’m thrilled to continue to promote this book with you.

So Harvard Shelter definitely want all my listeners and viewers, readers, everybody that supports Mission Matters to definitely please support Kay on this book. We’re going to have a link in the show notes. So that everyone can go grab a copy and okay, if somebody wants to follow up and learn more about Spirit of Santa Paula or to connect, I mean, what, what’s the best way for people to get involved?

Two ways. One, we have a very informative website, spiritofsantapaula. org. We have an interesting podcast too. It’s called Bruised Reads Santa Paula. And it’s the story of people who have been. homeless and it’ll make you cry to hear their stories about child abuse neglect. You know, there’s a a set of circumstances called adverse childhood experiences, ACEs.

If someone has had more than two or three ACEs in their lives, their chances of not surviving as an adult in a productive way are multiplied. So it’s adverse childhood experiences, poverty abuse, sexual abuse, neglect parenting prison, that just add to terrible experience, homelessness, particularly within their parents, and then all of that abuse that follows the, the tragic circumstances of living in a homeless environment.

So. Podcasts are very interesting. It will give you an insight into the lives of real people who have and are experiencing homelessness. And then anybody can call me, 805 340 5025. And you can put that maybe somewhere for somebody. So happy to talk to anybody and I’d encourage anybody who has a thought in their community that want to do something to call me.

I’m available for consultation free and I can come and meet with you if that would even help. So don’t be shy about wanting to do something because there’s lots of possibilities and opportunities. Fantastic. And we’ll put, and we’ll put that information into the show notes for the audience. And, and speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters or engaging in an episode, we’re all about bringing on mission based individuals to share, you know, why they do what they do, how they’re doing it, and what we can learn from that so that we can all grow together.

If you haven’t done it yet already hit that subscribe button because we have more interviews coming up on the way and we don’t want you to miss a thing. And don’t forget, pick up a copy of the book. There’s a link in the show notes so that you can grab a copy as well. So I have mine. You grab yours as well.

So Kate, thank you so much. It’s a pleasure. I can’t wait to continue promoting this book with you. Thank you, Adam. I appreciate you a lot. Bye for now.