Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation

During his tour this year, Jon Bon Jovi is doing more than just promoting his band’s new release, “The Circle.” In between sleep, practices, and shows, Bon Jovi is visiting as many homeless shelters as he can. These visits are to help the artist with the work he is doing in his Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation. The foundation is based in Philadelphia and is a charity built to fight against homelessness. Efforts by the foundation include building homeless shelters and community kitchens as well as cleaning up vacant lots in rundown neighborhoods. Bon Jovi’s foundation has been working for the past six years building affordable housing, and since 2006, has built more than 150 units of affordable housing in seven different cities. Bon Jovi says of his visits to various homeless shelters and programs, “I will go to shelters and try to learn more about the issue and how to combat it." Visiting existing programs throughout his tour, will give him new ideas and perspectives that should be beneficial when he is working with the foundation. “Various problems of homelessness require different solutions,” he says.

Before beginning the tour, Bon Jovi toured a very well known homeless program in Seattle. The building is run by Downtown Emergency Service Center and provides a place for homeless alcoholics to live, and even drink alcohol. The program has saved taxpayers millions of dollars in social service and jail costs. The program is also considered a place where residents are more likely to recover and get sober in a safe environment.

Sometime in the next few days Jon Bon Jovi is supposed to stop by Skid Row in Los Angeles with Steve Lopez. Lopez is the Los Angeles Times columnist who wrote the book “The Soloist,” about a schizophrenic homeless man, Nathaniel Ayers, who is also a talented cellist. Lopez, who has witnessed the homeless population during some of their hardest times, says, “Skid Row is an eye-opener. I don't know Jon Bon Jovi, but I suspect he may come out of this with a keener sense of how many people are suffering in this economy, and of how many people on Skid Row are dealing with a combination of financial, physical and mental health issues, many of them veterans."
Skid Row is estimated to have approximately 7,000 to 8,000 homeless people within its official boundaries. In 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that there were an inadequate number of beds for the homeless. This led the court to suspend the city's anti-camping ordinance within the official boundaries of Skid Row, between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. This meant that during the day, the homeless people must be roaming the city until about nine o’clock at night. From 9 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., people were allowed to sleep on the streets.


“Working for the Working Man,” is one of the songs on Bon Jovi’s new album that relates to the issues the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation faces.





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