Each night, hundreds of people line our city streets and doorways in cardboard boxes and other makeshift shelters. Some suffer from mental illness, others deal with substance abuse issues and some are just shelter resistant. Our job is to get them off the streets.

In September 2001, The Midnight Mission began an innovative program that extended our continuum of care to some of our hardest-to-reach clients. The program, called Project Safe Sleep, offered accommodations to those who normally avoided sheltering beds.

It began in the parking lot of our old building at 4th and Los Angeles Streets. With Project Safe Sleep, the Mission met these clients where they were by creating an outdoor, high tolerance safe sleeping environment which offered a sense of dignity sadly lacking on the streets.

Now, within our new facility, we have moved Project Safe sleep indoors to our multi-purpose room. We maintained the idea of offering a flexible, high-tolerance and highly accessible option for those who shunned traditional shelters. Our guests receive the following:

• Platform beds
• Safety Lighting
• Clean sheets and blankets
• Air conditioning and heating
• Clean restrooms
• Overnight security personnel
• Fresh water
• Referrals-housing, mental health and other vital services

Thanks to the generosity of our donors we are able to offer these services to guests at no charge. A person has to simply walk through our doors and ask. We reserve a set number of beds for families with children, who are accommodated safely in a separate room designed just for them. There are still a number of people that prefer to sleep outside and have chosen to do so in our new secure courtyard area. We have not discouraged this. In fact, we have installed outdoor heaters to make it is comfortable as possible for those that are at that place in their lives.

One of the greatest community benefits offered by Project Safe Sleep is that after experiencing a good night sleep, we have a few of the "hard to reach" guests ask for additional services - referrals to housing, drug and alcohol services and other beneficial services. With the program, we continue to establish trust allowing us to provide services to those once thought of as unreachable.

Project Safe Sleep also offers you another way to support your community and our efforts. By supporting the Adopt-A-Bed program you can give the gift of a "Good Nights Sleep".

For more information contact Tami Phillips at 213.553.2327