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Illumination Foundation’s Homelessness Tack

He wandered Orange County for almost a decade, 29 but looking much older from harsh street living. One night he took shelter under a bridge to let a storm pass.

Three days later utility workers found what seemed to be a dead body under the bridge. Emergency workers doubted he would make it.

The man survived—an insect bite, possibly from a brown recluse spider, led to an infection and amputation of an arm.

Then drug detox.

The next obstacle in the cycle of homelessness is just as formidable. It’s called the challenge of “safe discharge.”

In past years, the man could well have returned to the streets of Orange County. But now he had somewhere to go:

the Illumination Foundation Recuperative Care Program.

More Than a Bed

When foundation co-founder and Chief Executive Paul Leon tells the story, his eyes well up. He and Chief Financial Officer Paul Cho founded the Irvine-based nonprofit organization a decade ago “to break the cycle of homelessness” by linking arms with private companies and philanthropists. A centerpiece of their approach was solving the discharge problem.

The concept was an immediate draw for business leaders, who saw the program’s potential to start to break the cycle of homelessness and in a more cost-effective manner. That the county could answer the imperative and emerge as a leader in tackling homelessness—a battle being waged in every major metropolitan area—must have also been appealing.

Dan Young, founder of Newport Beach-based entitlement-development company Camino Enterprises and longtime homebuilding chief at Irvine Company, has long been involved in the cause, working with people such as U.S. District Court Judge David Carter, who took a contingent of concerned people to the homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River in Anaheim in February. Young believes that combining the unique resources of nonprofits, county government and private enterprise is key to solving the homelessness conundrum.

“Attracting the skill set of the private sector can save money, lead to a better client and patient experience through better design, and it opens doors, not only to investment but to meaningful philanthropy,” Young said. “I think it’s a great way to go, as it’s such a humanitarian benefit to both sides of the equation. It’s not just a nonprofit entity entering into a contract with the county; it’s the building of a cohesive coalition that can make a bigger difference faster.”

The foundation offers an array of programs and services that serve and support homeless people. The Recuperative Care Program is by many measures one of the most impactful, serving 254 clients since July 2017.

The program provides case management, connecting clients to social services, housing and mental health services. And it takes an even longer view, offering training in financial literacy, medical-care management, job readiness and community re-engagement.

The foundation charges patients nothing for their stays. The sole requirement is that they’re without a home, recovering from a medical event, and referred from a contracted Orange or Los Angeles county hospital or facility.

The programs’ five facilities total 200 beds. Clients number 154 today and have been as high as 190—a symptom of success and a driver behind the effort to build housing here.

Housing, in five locations in Orange County, Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, is a mix of leased motels, recovery centers and a Midway City sublease from nonprofit American Family Housing, the lone local facility.

Next

Young, Santa Ana mayor in the 1980s and 1990s, is well cast as outside missionary. He’s pulling together corporate and political leaders to build housing in partnership with the foundation. The project is still in the planning stages. The goal is expanding the Recuperative Care program, now near capacity.

“The private sector is coming together to build the facility,” Leon said. “The foundation will provide the services.”

Construction will be funded by private donations and the county, he said, and he hopes construction will take months instead of years.

“Private companies don’t have the red tape that counties must go through.”

Mary Niven, a Disneyland Resort senior vice president in operations, and Beth MacLean, a PIMCO executive vice president and bank loan portfolio manager, serve on Illumination’s board.

Bill Taormina, founder and chief executive of developer Clean City Inc. and trash hauler Taormina Industries in Anaheim, is partnering with Young.

“We’re at a point of realization in Orange County that we have to have a systematic approach with interconnected facilities that are available to people facing issues that range from successful health and mental health treatment to the acquisition of housing,” Young said. “We’re all beginning to connect and that’s really where the solution lies.”

Met in College

In 2007, Leon and Cho enrolled in the Healthcare EMBA program at the University of California-Irvine. Cho was a retired investment banker from Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs after a separate career in healthcare; Leon was a longtime public-health nurse seeking new solutions for homelessness.

They met on their first day—opposites attract.

Cho said he picked healthcare in order to do something meaningful. Leon showed him meaningful at the Santa Ana Armory.

“I never even thought about (the) children who were homeless,” Cho said. A woman walked in with a 3-day-old infant. “I said, OK, this isn’t right, something has to be done.”

By the Numbers

Banker Cho likely saw few private companies grow like his foundation. Illumination’s revenue spiked to $15.8 million in the fiscal year ended June 30, its expenses $14.6 million. Its revenue two years ago was less than $7 million, according to its audited Statement of Activities—that’s a roughly 125% bump.

Money comes from an array of sources, including the state Department of Health Care Services, Whole Person Care program, Orange County, contracts with area hospitals, CalOptima, and private and corporate donations.

“Our biggest corporate donors (all exceeding $500,000) are Disneyland Resort, Kaiser Permanente, PIMCO and Wells Fargo,” Cho said. “Their cash and in-kind donations provided leverage funding for government contracts that require a match.”

The plaudits have rolled in with the money: Outstanding Founders at the 32nd Annual National Philanthropy Day celebration in Anaheim in November; feted in June by the state Assembly as Nonprofit of the Year.

Delivering

Though the program was officially launched just over a year ago, the nonprofit has been engaged with recuperative care since its 2008 founding. The 2016 data collected from three Orange County hospitals show recuperative care has led to an 84% drop in emergency room visits by chronically homeless people, saving the hospitals $2.8 million annually. The annualized savings estimate for all Orange County hospitals is $7 million.

The financial success will never be tantamount to the work being done.

“One day, I was sitting in my office, and a handsome young man comes in,” Leon recalls. “He has two lovely ladies with him. One of his sleeves is pinned up; he was missing an arm. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.” The young man introduced himself and the women with him. One was his mother, the other his wife.

“He told me that our program completely turned his life around,” Leon says, beaming. “He got the medical care he needed, the right counseling, and reconnected with his family.” They were with him now, the young man explained, to take him back to his home state, where he would go to rehab and complete the transformation of his life. He said it never would have happened without the Recuperative Care Program.

“That’s why we do this, Leon said, “stories like his.”

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