Government failed. Contractors extract. Encampments grow. The model is broken — and we're not waiting for permission to rebuild it. Sanitize Uplift is the first community-governed end-homelessness initiative in America. Owned by the people who fund it. Run by the people closest to the work.
LA alone spent over $1 billion on homelessness last year. The unsheltered population didn't drop. Most of the money never touched the street — it disappeared into administrative layers, audits, and contractor margins. Taxpayers fund the failure and have no say in the spending.
Most homelessness nonprofits answer to foundation boards and major donors — not to the people they serve or the communities they operate in. Books are closed. Outcomes are murky. Executives earn six figures while shelters cycle the same people for years.
Workers who clean the streets. Residents living next to encampments. People who used to be homeless and got out. None of them vote on what gets done. The decisions get made by people who've never slept on the sidewalk.
A Sanitize Uplift cleaning isn't a volunteer cleanup. It's a federally-certified hazardous-waste operation run by people we hired off the street, trained, and paid weekly wages. Every site is surveyed, every cleanup is documented, every dollar is dashboarded. This is professional work — with professional standards.
A trained team scopes the corridor — encampment debris, biohazards, sharps, hazardous waste, illegal dumping. GPS coordinates logged. Photos taken. Risk profile built. Nothing happens without a plan.
HAZWOPER-certified workers arrive with the right PPE for the job — Tyvek suits, respirators, sharps containers, biohazard bags. Crews of 4-8 depending on site scale. Everyone paid for the full shift.
Before/during/after photos taken at every site, every time. Waste sorted: trash, recycling, hazardous, sharps. Volume measured. Hours logged. Every metric public on the dashboard within 24 hours.
Site walked again. Cleanup signed off. Photo evidence stamped with date, time, GPS. Posted publicly so residents, sponsors, and city partners can verify the work happened — and see what their dollars bought.
HAZWOPER is the federal OSHA Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response certification — the same standard required for industrial cleanup crews, oil spill response teams, and toxic remediation work.
Every worker we hire gets the 40-hour HAZWOPER training as part of their onboarding. It teaches hazard recognition, PPE use, decontamination, and emergency response. It's not a token credential — it's the certification that lets workers handle the dangerous stuff and earns them real wages in real industries long after they leave us.
This is why our workers don't go back to the shelter. HAZWOPER is a wage unlock. Once certified, they can work in environmental remediation, construction site cleanup, industrial services, disaster response — pathways that pay $25-45/hour. We're not just cleaning streets. We're building careers.
Every Sanitize Uplift worker comes from the population we're serving. We don't hire from outside. We recruit from local shelters and transitional housing partners, train them to federal certification, pay them weekly while they work, and walk them through housing placement. This isn't outreach — it's a pipeline with real wage outcomes.
We work with local shelters and transitional housing partners to identify candidates ready for employment. No prior experience required. No degree, no resume, no references.
40-hour federal OSHA training. Workers earn while they train — no unpaid apprenticeship, no pay-to-play. The cert is theirs to keep for life.
Real wages, weekly pay, full PPE. Workers join crews of 4-8, doing real cleanups on real corridors. This is a job, not a program.
Active employment unlocks doors that were closed before. We coordinate with housing partners to place workers in stable accommodations — paycheck-backed, not voucher-dependent.
HAZWOPER is a wage unlock. Workers transition into environmental remediation, construction, industrial services — $25-45/hour jobs. Out of the cycle. Permanent.
Sanitize Uplift is rooted in Los Angeles — South Central — operating across Council Districts 8 and 9 in partnership with local leadership. The expansion path runs through Compton next, then to other council districts across LA County. We don't open in a city until we've proven the model on the block in front of us.
The home corridor. Daily operations across CD-8 and CD-9 in partnership with local council leadership. Crews deployed weekly. Every cleanup GPS-stamped, photographed, and posted publicly.
The next chapter. Building out a dedicated Compton operation in partnership with city leadership. Tiered grant proposal covering 50-100 worker slots, HAZWOPER cohorts, and housing placement targets.
Once Compton is operational, expansion across additional council districts in LA County. The same model: local partnerships, local hiring, local accountability. National rollout follows — Bay Area, Phoenix, and beyond.
Become a Founding Member from $45. Get your name on the wall, your founder t-shirt, and your tax-deduction letter. Locked-in rate for life.
Funds go directly to hiring people experiencing homelessness from local shelters. HAZWOPER certified. Weekly pay. Real wages. Real work.
Every cleanup is GPS-stamped with before/after photos. Every cert earned is logged. Every dollar spent is dashboarded. The proof is public.
Active members vote on what cities open, what blocks get cleaned, who joins the board. Workers and residents hold the floor.
Every tier includes a founder t-shirt, your tax-deduction letter, your name on the founding wall, and a locked-in renewal rate for life. Higher tiers add votes and access. Pay annually or monthly — both options at every tier.
Active members elect a majority of the board. Worker and served-community seats are structurally protected — they cannot be outvoted by donor-tier members in aggregate. First election: early 2027.
Monthly financial dashboard. Cost per housing placement. Executive comp. Every contract over $25K. Written into the bylaws — not a policy any future board can quietly reverse.
Higher-tier members get more votes, but capped at 5. The aggregate vote of small members always exceeds any top-tier bloc. No one buys control. No one inherits it.
Your name on the wall is forever. Your title is forever. Your locked-in founding rate is forever. Voting rights are annual — renew at your founding rate to stay in the room. Lapse without penalty, rejoin anytime.
Every pledge generates an IRS-compliant tax-deduction letter within 7 days, emailed and downloadable. Sanitize Uplift is a registered 501(c)(3) — EIN 41-2713164. Your gift is fully deductible to the extent allowed by law.
As a 501(c)(3), every surplus dollar legally must return to the mission — hires, cleanings, housings, training. This is enforced by the IRS, not by us.
We commit publicly to filing the amended bylaws — codifying every right on this page — by the end of 2026. If we miss that date, Founding Members may file a formal grievance.
Most "membership" nonprofits let you pay once and vote forever. That builds a mailing list, not a movement. Five years in, the people deciding the future have long since stopped showing up.
We do it the way real co-ops and member organizations have always done it: recognition is permanent, participation is renewed.
You become a Founding Member during the 120-day campaign. Your name goes on the wall. That stays forever. To keep voting rights, you renew at your locked-in founding rate — never rises, no matter what dues look like in 2030. Pay annually or monthly — both work, and both qualify you for the same Founding status, wall placement, and rights.
Miss a renewal? You keep the name and the title. You can rejoin anytime at your original rate. No shame, no penalty — just no vote until you're back in the work.
You're not buying a tote bag. You're founding a 501(c)(3) that the people running it actually run. Every dollar funds a hire, a cert, a cleanup, a housing placement — and the math is public. Active members get a vote. Founders get a name on the wall, a tee, and a locked rate for life.
$2,000 sponsors one full cleaning — a real crew of people we hired from local shelters, deployed to a real corridor, with your company name on the banner during the work. You get the documentation. The community gets the impact. The tax letter follows.
A "Sponsored by [your company]" banner is displayed at the cleanup site for the full duration of the work. Visible to residents, businesses, and anyone passing through the corridor your sponsorship cleaned.
Joshua Segura, founder, on camera at the cleanup site — thanking your company directly, walking through the impact, talking about why this sponsorship matters to the workers, the community, and the mission. Yours to use on your channels.
Before/after photos. GPS-stamped route. The crew on site. The work in progress. Documentary-style footage you can use in ESG reports, internal comms, or social. Plus your IRS tax-deduction letter within 7 days of payment.
Your company logo appears in our public sponsor section, ranked by number of cleanings sponsored. Renewable each year. A real, public, ongoing relationship — not a one-time logo placement that disappears.
$2,000 per cleaning. Sponsor as many as you like — Zeffy lets you adjust quantity at checkout.
After payment, we reach out within 1 business day to confirm dates, collect your logo, and schedule the cleaning.
Sponsoring 10+ cleanings or need an invoice? Email jsegura@sanitizeuplift.org for custom arrangements.
Not everyone wants a vote or a t-shirt — and that's fine. One-time donations go straight to the work. Same transparency. Same tax-deduction letter. Same dashboard you can check anytime.
You won't get founding status or voting rights, but every dollar still funds the same hires, cleanings, and housings. The proof is the same.
If you change your mind later, your one-time gifts during the campaign count toward founding tier thresholds if you decide to become a member before September 13.