Episode 225: Mary Agnes Erlandson, Director of St. Margaret's Center, on Serving Low-Income and Homeless Persons (December 29, 2021)

This week, we explore concrete and person to person ways of serving low income people and the homeless. Our guest is Mary Agnes Erlandson. She directs St. Margaret's Center, a program of Catholic Charities of Los Angeles. The Center provides help to about 10,000 unduplicated individuals annually. Over the past 34 years, people with multiple needs have come to the Center for food, shelter, legal, medical, employment, housing, and education services. Erlandson counts on teams of volunteers ranging from active seniors to college students, as well as her small and dedicated staff. We’ll be asking the following questions. As always, feel free to add your own.

1. Mary Agnes, if we may, you are a native Angeleno. Could you tell us a bit about growing up here?

2. You crossed paths with St. John Paul II during his visit to Ecuador in 1985. What memories do you have of that event?

3. How did you come to be the director of St. Margaret Center? Could you manage the job without being bilingual?

4. Over the past few decades in Los Angeles, you’ve witnessed so much—and now the Covid pandemic. What impact have these changes had on you and St. Margaret’s?

5. What factors have led the Center to offer everything from showers for the homeless to medical services, ESL classes, a food pantry, diaper distribution, utility bill relief, and many more?

6. Let’s talk money. How is St. Margaret’s funded?

7. Let’s talk giving. How did this year’s Christmas party go?

8. Your work depends on volunteers. Where do they come from and what do they do?

9. If you could have a heart to heart conversation with our current crop of political leaders, what would you tell them?

10. The best exegesis shows that retirement is not a Biblical concept. So where do you see yourself ten years from now?