By Niki Cervantes
Staff Writer

July 4, 2015 --- The Pico Youth and Family Center (PYFC) has begun scaling back and scrambling for funding after failing to win a City grant for the first time in nearly two decades, center officials said.

The embattled organization – which focuses on gang diversion and low-income family assistance in Santa Monica’s poorest neighborhood – has laid off workers, cut wages and is banking on an online fundraising campaign as it tries to stay afloat without the $190,000 it requested from the City, officials said.

“It’s going to be a tremendous amount of work,” said Oscar de la Torre, the founder and executive director of the center, which helps an estimated 150 clients from the Pico Neighborhood. “We have hope. We have faith. We are the only culturally relevant youth center in the city.”

Despite pleas from supporters of the controversial center, the Santa Monica City Council last month denied the organization’s request, saying the 17-year-old agency had failed to meet the s criteria imposed on all non-profit groups seeking such grants from the City.

The $190,000 represented about 40 percent of the center’s funding.

At one point, the council considered granting $50,000 to PYFC to help cover its basic costs, such as rent – which is $80,000-- and utilities. That also failed to win support.

De la Torre, who is also a Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board member,  said Wednesday that the organization was laying off a case manager and program manager that day.

The decision was particularly difficult, he said, because both positions were held by single mothers. “But we had no choice,” he added.

De la Torre said he will personally take over those duties.

In addition to the layoffs, the center is imposing 13 percent pay cuts on the remaining four employees. Three of them were earning $16 an hour. De la Torre said he is also taking the pay cut. He said he earns $65,000 a year.

The cuts come as the center prepares to launch an online crowdfunding campaign. It is producing a video for the initiative and hopes to have it running soon, de la Torre said. 

If that fails to produce at least $100,000 in the next six months, the PYFC will shut its doors, he said.

“We won’t be able to afford the center,” he said.

PYFC is also banking on its “Hope and Unity Awards Gala,” a fundraiser set for Saturday, August 29 at the Le Meridian Delfina Hotel, de la Torre said.

The center was started by neighborhood residents in 1998 in the aftermath of gang shootings in the area. It originally received more than $350,000 from the City.  But relations between the City and the center have been rocky for years.

PYFC has been engaging in “social justice and community organizing that have diverted program focus and resources away from the original intent of City funding,” a 2013 City staff report to the  Council said.

In a report sent to the Council before its vote, Human Services Manager Setareh Yavari, said also the City already had spent $4 million in various ways in support of the struggling center.

Yavari said staff had “long-standing concerns” about the center's operation, financial management and effectiveness.

De la Torre and supporters say the de-funding of PYFC is really about some officials being at odds with its progressive political stance.