LOS ANGELES, May 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern
California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) and Covenant House California (CHC)
today announced that SoCalGas and the Sempra Energy Foundation
together have donated $50,000 to
Covenant House California, a non-profit shelter that provides
sanctuary and support for homeless and trafficked youth, ages
18-24. The $50,000 donation includes,
$25,000 from SoCalGas and
$25,000 from the Sempra Energy
Foundation. In addition, SoCalGas, is donating commercial cooking
equipment for the shelter's kitchen. Please see here for photos and
video from today's delivery of the kitchen equipment to Covenant
House.
"SoCalGas is proud to support our friends at Covenant House of
California with this donation,"
said Mia DeMontigny, Vice President
Controller and Chief Financial Officer at SoCalGas and Covenant
House California board member. "Covenant House works tirelessly to
provide critical and life-changing services to youth experiencing
homelessness in Los Angeles and we
are proud to be able to support their efforts."
"SoCalGas is showing what an amazing partner they are, during
the greatest time of need for young people experiencing
homelessness. This gift helps us to be able to meet the needs
of more youth than ever who do not have a safe place to sleep right
now, as the result of the pandemic. We are so incredibly
grateful to SoCalGas for stepping up in such a significant way for
the most vulnerable people in our community," said Bill Bedrossian, CEO Covenant House of
California.
CHC provides not only housing services including transitional
living programs but also support services such as street outreach,
medical and mental health services, and career and education
programs. Covenant House California has over 100 youth currently
living at its Los Angeles campus
and served over 240,000 meals to youth throughout California last year.
The donations from both SoCalGas and the Sempra Energy
Foundation will supplement the cost of food for the shelter's
Los Angeles location as well as
support other services the non-profit provides.
Last month, SoCalGas announced a $1
million donation to nonprofit organizations throughout its
service area to support the region's workforce, feed the hungry,
and provide bill assistance to customers most affected by
COVID-19.
Together, the Sempra Energy family of companies – including
SoCalGas' sister California utility San Diego Gas and Electric and
the Sempra Energy Foundation – are stepping up with more than
$8 million to those in need during
this crisis.
SoCalGas has suspended service disconnections for its core
customers until further notice. This means no residential or small
business customer will have their natural gas turned off due to
non-payment. SoCalGas has also temporarily waived late fees for
small business customers. Late fees are never charged for
residential customers.
Natural gas continues to flow and is being delivered to
SoCalGas' 22 million customers across southern and central
California, just as it does on a
"typical" day. There is no shortage of supply of natural gas
for homes or businesses or to power plants that generate
electricity.
For more information about SoCalGas' response to the COVID-19
pandemic, please visit www.socalgas.com/coronavirus.
Covenant House California COVID-19 Response
Covenant House California is ACTIVELY serving nearly 5,000 youth
a year who are experiencing homelessness across the state in
Los Angeles, Oakland, and Berkeley. Simultaneously, each night in
California, there are over 10,000
youth experiencing homelessness who don't have a safe place to
sleep. Their need for shelter, sustenance, medical attention,
sanctuary, and support has not quelled in the midst of social
distancing and the shuttering of non-essential businesses; IT HAS
DRASTICALLY INCREASED.
The work of providing care to an already traumatized population
of youth centers upon human connection, contact, and engagement. To
that end, our shelters are sheltering, our street outreach programs
are outreaching, and our counselors are counseling; we make a
commitment to every youth we serve that, when they are with us or
working with us, they will receive absolute respect and
unconditional love, and we will not relent in that covenant.
We work with a highly traumatized population. As a result, their
response to this crisis – and our society's collective anxiety –
requires a targeted, trauma-informed approach from a mental health
standpoint. Our counselors are working double-time to ensure that
youth who are scared are enveloped with love and support and
reinforcing their inherent strengths that fuel healthy coping
mechanisms – mechanisms that will prevent returns to
homelessness.
Our Rapid Rehousing programs are structured to provide support
to youth who have worked unbelievably hard to maintain a job and
their first apartment lease. Many of those youth are now faced with
the elimination of their employment (i.e., those working in the
service industries). We are not willing to stand by and watch youth
lose everything as a result of their work stoppage or shortage, and
as a result, we are paying their rent – or whatever portion of
their rent that they cannot afford.
In fact, a significant majority of our youth lost their
employment just one week into the pandemic. This has created
the need for additional food and staffing costs on our campuses as
well as the need to have increased programming on our sites to
ensure that youth are being constructive and staying healthy during
this time where employment prospects are very low for them.
We will not stop doing this work. We have made that commitment
to the youth we serve and, frankly, to the communities we serve.
Every unrestricted dollar that can be mustered makes the
fulfillment of that commitment less strenuous. In a time when
everything is constantly changing, this funding allows us to
rapidly target emergencies as they arise.
About Covenant House California
Covenant House California (CHC) is a non-profit youth shelter
with locations in Hollywood,
Oakland and Berkeley that provides sanctuary and support
for homeless and trafficked youth, ages 18-24. CHC believes that no
young person deserves to be homeless; that every young person in
California deserves shelter, food,
clothing, education and most importantly, to be loved. Now serving
over 5,000 youth a year, CHC has served over 200,000 homeless youth
since we've opened our doors. CHC provides a full continuum of
services to meet the physical, emotional, educational, vocational,
and spiritual well-being of young people, in order to provide them
with the best chance for success in independence.
www.covenanthousecalifornia.org
Facebook: @covenanthousecalifornia
Twitter: @CovenantHouseCA
About SoCalGas
Headquartered in Los Angeles, SoCalGas® is
the largest gas distribution
utility in the United States. SoCalGas delivers
affordable, reliable, clean and increasingly renewable gas service
to 21.8 million customers across 24,000 square miles of
Central and Southern California, where more than 90 percent of
residents use natural gas for heating, hot water, cooking, drying
clothes or other uses. Gas delivered through the company's
pipelines also plays a key role in providing electricity to
Californians— about 45 percent of electric power
generated in the state comes from gas-fired power plants.
SoCalGas' vision is to be the cleanest gas utility
in North America, delivering affordable and increasingly
renewable energy to its customers. In support of that vision,
SoCalGas is committed to replacing 20 percent of its traditional
natural gas supply with renewable natural gas (RNG) by
2030. Renewable natural gas is made from waste created by
dairy farms, landfills and wastewater treatment plants. SoCalGas is
also committed to investing in its gas delivery infrastructure
while keeping bills affordable for our customers. From 2014 through
2018, the company invested nearly $6.5 billion to upgrade
and modernize its pipeline system to enhance safety and
reliability. SoCalGas is a subsidiary of Sempra
Energy (NYSE: SRE), an energy services holding company based
in San Diego. For more information
visit socalgas.com/newsroom or connect with SoCalGas
on Twitter (@SoCalGas), Instagram (@SoCalGas)
and Facebook.
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SOURCE Southern California Gas Company