A classy effort

Bryce Alderton

After a day of planting and painting, volunteers, friends and

residents at a Costa Mesa shelter basked in the glory of a refurbished

home Sunday.

A group of about 20 volunteers with Leadership Tomorrow’s class of

2002, along with friends and community members, labored Saturday, tilling

the soil, planting impatiens and tomatoes, painting walls and replacing

bathroom floors for residents of the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter.

Leadership Tomorrow, open to residents of Costa Mesa, Newport Beach

and Irvine who are pursuing management careers, is a yearlong program

that educates volunteers about their community, said Cindy Brenneman, a

member of the 2001 class.

Group members choose a project each year to work on, and this year

they chose the interfaith shelter.

“We took on the responsibility for making some changes to look as nice

as possible for them,” said Gregg Steward, a 2002 class member and a

Costa Mesa Fire Department battalion chief. “[The organization] will

expose you to people you can make contact with and help them find answers

to some of their needs.”

Volunteers painted the walls of five bedrooms and bathrooms, installed

new towel holders and planted flowers around the shelter Saturday. All of

the help was a welcome sight for a shelter that hasn’t seen maintenance

to this degree in three years, said Sheri Barrios, the shelter’s

executive director.

“It’s a 100% improvement,” Barrios said Sunday. “We were due for some

renovation.”

Shelter resident Melody McKown, 38, took advantage Sunday of the free

haircuts offered by students of the Paul Mitchell salon as she twirled

her blond hair.

McKown moved into the shelter five months ago with Lawrence Gibson,

38, and his two children.

Gibson drank a Snapple and commented on the friendliness between

neighbors as they ate pizza and talked together.

“This is the best it’s ever been,” Gibson said. “It’s more like

family.”

McKown and Gibson are in the shelter’s transitional program that

provides families a place to live for two to six months. Families must

agree to save 80% of their income to secure housing when they graduate

from the program.

Living off 20% of their total income is a challenge, said Gibson and

McKown, but they’re confident they will have enough money to rent an

apartment when they leave.

“We’re way passed what we expected,” Gibson said. “We’re hoping to

have first month’s rent and a deposit covered and then have enough to buy

a car.”

Families in the transitional program receive counseling, mental health

outreach and referral, help finding a job, access to child care and

parenting classes.

In addition to the transitional program, the shelter also offers

emergency shelter to families, couples and single women for three to

seven days, providing them with a bed, meals, laundry facilities,

transportation vouchers, counseling and referrals for jobs and housing

placement.

The shelter is the largest in Orange County, with the ability to house

18 families in the transitional program and between 60 and 65 people in

the nightly emergency program.

The goal of the shelter is to help homeless families become

self-supporting and move into stable housing.

* Bryce Alderton is the news assistant. He may be reached at (949)

574-4298 or by e-mail at o7 bryce.alderton@latimes.comf7 .