The Longest Night 2018

Each year on the winter solstice, we remember friends and neighbors that passed away that year without permanent places to call home.

Our annual event in honor of National Homeless Persons Memorial Day was held on December 21, 2018 at the Anaheim Cemetery in Anaheim, CA.
This was the fifth year in a row that Hope 4 Restoration sponsored this event. Each year the number of homeless persons that had died increased. In 2018 persons experiencing homelessness died in Orange County at a rate of one every 30 hours. 244 lives were lost to homelessness this year.

We Honor Them In Our Memories And Keep Them In Our Hearts

Words from Tim Houchen, Founder and Executive Director of Hope 4 Restoration
Every year since 2014, I have been involved with the organization of the "Longest Night" event. Each year the event has grown in attendance and people from all walks of life gather to honor the lives of those who died from a lack of healthy, safe and secure places to live. On this day,members from Anaheim City Council, State Legislators, Congressional Representatives, members of clergy from multiple faiths, advocates, homeless persons, formerly homeless persons and everyday people from our communities were there to pay their respects to those that died.

We gather each year to help members of the local homeless community to mourn the loss of friends and loved-ones and we honor the dead with a solemn ceremony and prayer. Our hopes are to create a greater community awareness that will facilitate solutions and end what has become a humanitarian crisis. As a result of our efforts to raise awareness, numerous news articles and television news documentaries encouraged a greater discussion within our communities for a more urgent response to those in need of help and solutions to bring an end to homelessness. If we are able to raise awareness enough, perhaps more members of our community will practice tolerance and consideration for persons experiencing homelessness and treat them as more than just human beings, but members of our community and worthy of dignity and respect.

If we can accomplish these things, we feel that no life lost will have been a life lost in vain.

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This Year Through Sponsorship!

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Our Memorial Wall

In 2017, Hope 4 Restoration commissioned the creation of a temporary Memorial Wall so that the names of the dead would be placed on the memorial. The project was important because so many homeless people pass away and their deaths are hardly ever recognized publicly. Rarely ever will a homeless person be honored with a traditional ceremony. They receive no flowers, no grave marker, no eulogy and no guests at a funeral.

We feel that every life should be honored in this way including those of little economic or housing status. This is how we remember the most vulnerable and least fortunate people that live and die in our communities and we hail them as members of our community deserving of our recognition and worthy of dignity and respect.

This video documents the annual process of removing the names of the dead from the slabs of our Memorial Wall from the previous year and replacing them with the names of the dead from the current year.

The Memorial Wall was constructed of wood in 2017. The wall consists of four free-standing panels or slabs made from interior hollow core doors like the ones in your house. There are two steps that make the base of the temporary monument. Artist Joshua Correa and his family provided the fabulous artwork that give the steps a realistic appearance of granite and gives the slabs the magnificence of marble. The names of each individual are printed on clear vinyl labels and carefully placed on the four slabs. Please view the video upper right.

This is the official tribute video of the 2018 Homeless Persons Memorial Day service. The video was viewed for the first time during the Longest Night ceremony held at the Anaheim Cemetery on Dec. 21, 2018.

Putting Face's on Those Who Died

When one views the Memorial Wall with the names of so many people, it builds a distinctive impression of the enormity of the numbers of people that die each year from homelessness. During deliberations in the planning of the event it was recognized that greater visual impact could be achieved by displaying photos of persons that passed away. It is often very difficult to find photos unless they are provided by friends or family. We made a goal of identifying at least 10% of the deceased with a photo. It was a difficult task, but we were able to obtain photos of 22 persons. Almost 10% of the 244 total.

Another goal of the event planners was to enhance the visual presentation of the Longest Night through the experience of video. The official tribute video from 2018 can be viewed at the upper left.

We nearly met our goal of 10% of all persons being represented with their image, but we would have been much happier if every person had a picture placed on the memorial and their image included in the official tribute video. We are asking that anyone with information and photos of homeless persons that pass away , help us by providing us with their information so that we can include them and honor their names on our wall. Unfortunately, we do not always get information on every person that passes away and we want to remember the lives of every homeless person and honor them during the event.

We have placed a link on the Hope4Restoration.org homepage for this purpose. Please follow the directions and upload photos there as well. Thank you for your help.

Many people that attended the "Longest Night" searched for names of homeless people that they knew had passed away that year. New this year were the photos of many of the dead placed on the memorial.

2018's Moment of Inspiration

Each year since I began organizing the memorial for the homeless in 2014, I have been faced with the sadness of memorializing people that I knew from when I was still homeless myself at the Santa Ana Civic Center between 2011 and 2015. Most often, I am unaware that they had passed away until I come across their name on the list that we receive from the Orange County Coroner's Office.

This year it seemed that more familiar names were on that list than ever before. And then there were the names of homeless people that I had worked with from the riverbed too, making this an exceptionally difficult year not only for myself, but for many other advocates as well. We work so hard trying to help them and we hope and pray for better outcomes for them, but it seems that there is nothing we can do to slow down the rate that they are dying at.

Every year also has its bright spots, or what I call " moments of inspiration." It's these moments that remind me of the importance of holding this memorial event every year despite how sad it might be. Every year brings a different set of circumstances and each year has a unique moment of inspiration for me. When these "moments" strike, it's like I am overcome by an incredible feeling of calm, peace and well-being along with the sense that at that moment I am suddenly doing the right thing, at the right place and time, for the right reasons.

In my life, it didn't always happen like that for me, Even before I became homeless, I dealt with feelings of inferiority and feeling as if I didn't belong anywhere or deserve anything but misery. I believe that these feelings led up to my becoming homeless and I think that to some extent that other persons experiencing homelessness suffer these thoughts about themselves too. I no longer suffer from these painful feelings like in the past, but it is these incredible feelings of right thing, place, time and reason have helped me to put those painful feelings behind and move forward in life.

My 2018 moment of inspiration came from a young lady that attended the memorial event. She was about 19 or 20 and real cute and very well-spoken and polite, she approached me for help finding a name on the memorial wall.

I index the entire list of names every year and each name is designated a special code that helps me to locate the name without having to search all the names to find it. When I showed the young lady where the name was located on the wall I asked if the name belonged to a friend and she told me that it was her mother.

Her mother's name was not on the original list from the Coroner, but had been brought to my attention by a fellow advocate that knew the woman. It happens every year that names are left off of the list for one reason or another. I go through a verification process to make sure that the name belongs on the wall. I was able to verify the name about a day or so before the event.

I had no idea the the daughter would show up at the event, so when the girl told me she was the woman's daughter, I was immediately choked-up. I hugged the girl and told her that I was so sorry for her loss. She told me that she was okay and that she had been raised by her grandparents and that her mother had promised that she would quit drugs and that they would get a place so that the two could be together again, but that never happened. Despite being disappointed for many

years, the girl still loved her mother very much. She told me that she couldn't believe that anyone besides she and her family would care for her mother enough to honor her in a memorial service. She said that she attended our event just so she could see her mother's name on our wall with her own eyes and that she was interested in meeting the person responsible for making that happen.

It's special moments of inspiration like this that motivate me to continue organizing this event for as many years as necessary in the future until our greatest hopes are fulfilled and no person loses their life to homelessness ever again.

2018 Homeless Persons Memorial Day
Event Photos

Please return to this page in the very near future as we will be posting information regarding
2019 Homeless Persons Memorial Day
"The Longest Night"

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