Community Hygiene Program | Kohler Mobile Shower
Story 157

Mel Tillekeratne: A shower to an unhoused individual is very different for a shower for you and me. And what I mean by that is for us, a daily shower in the morning or at night is a chance to get clean, feel clean. But when you are living on the street, when you have no access to showers for long periods of time, what actually happens is that feeling of being unclean pushes people into isolating themselves. So when we are talking about a shower for an unhoused individual, first and foremost, that feeling of being clean gives them an opportunity to reconnect back into community.

Lisa Marie Nava: So since the beginning of the coronavirus, we have seen quite a few changes. We've seen a lot of new people who haven't come before, partly because their gyms close and that's where they used to shower. Another one is we have a new sort of batch of people who they lost their job, a lot more families also because of the coronavirus. So there's the single person living in their car, families with children living in their car. Those are the main things that have changed since the virus.

Andrew Pyles-Froemming: So the Hollywood Adventist Church is uniquely positioned being that we're right on Hollywood Boulevard and we're also along the freeway. So we have a number of neighbors that live right next door to our property that are in need of services like showers and being able to access clean, fresh water. The Kohler Relief shower trailer helps us be able to provide showers for individuals in this neighborhood. And the trailer being here and being here every day allows us to be able to provide those showers to individuals that need them.

Lisa Carter: Yes, I mean, because I have nowhere else to take a shower. We have nowhere else to take a shower. We don't live in an apartment, so we're not in housing or anything. So this is the only way to shower up. Well, you start to look bummy, you start to sweat a lot because of the heat. And there's days I go without my hair combed if I'm not taking a shower or trying to stay tidy. I'm just thankful that there are places. Yeah, I'm very gracious actually. It makes me feel happy. I feel like fresh and clean and now I get to comb my hair today.

Mel Tillekeratne: So the Kohler shower trailer is a blessing to Hollywood. For a place that had a previous capacity of delivering 60 to 80 showers a week, now it ups that capacity to servicing 300 individuals a week. And what that means is if this pandemic is going to last another six months, a year or two years, this trailer itself, when we put it into operation five, six days a week, can help sustain the massive homeless population in Hollywood.

John Schroer: Adventist Health is a partner with World Vision who partnered with Kohler to bring an opportunity of hygiene to Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic. When we have the unhoused population feeling like they are actually cared for, that they're important, they feel like they can actually be part of our community, they feel like somebody cares for them. And what we're trying to do through the Shower of Hope partnership that Adventist Health has is we're trying to bring the opportunity to the street, right to their backyard so that it can be accessible to them. Also, there can be relationships built, because through these relationships we understand that they can work themselves up and off the street.