The women of the Ocean Park Community Center homeless shelter in Santa Monica were thankful there weren't any beets - or any other unfortunate residuals of a grocery store 10-for-$1 sale.

"A lot of times people give food drives, you know, the can of beets," said Margaret, a shelter resident who prefers her real name not be used in this article. "But we got some really lovely things. They even bought us razors, which is great because I can't afford razors anymore."

Part of a series of charitable workshops organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Nov. 22 Furoshiki Food Drive donated 80 bundles of food and toiletries to homeless women and families, each wrapped in a hand-made bundle, or furoshiki. After collecting donations of food and toiletries for weeks, the event's organizers held a craft session to demonstrate how to bundle the items using the traditional Japanese cloth gift-wrapping method.

"What we do with these programs is make art and make a difference," said Asuka Hisa, the Museum's Director of Education. "It's a nice way for the museum to engage with its own community by looking in its own backyard."

The backyard in question is the next-door OPCC, some residents of which joined museum members in the afternoon workshop to help prepare the bundles that would later be distributed to the entire shelter during a special Thanksgiving lunch.

For the local hobbyists who took part in the furoshiki workshop, it was a chance to give back and to learn a traditional Japanese craft without leaving the comfort of Santa Monica. But for the women of the OPCC, it was a momentary escape from days spent coping with mental illness and struggling to rebuilding their lives.

For Margaret, that struggle began in February of this year when she was unable to make rent, lost her apartment and began sleeping on buses. A former adjunct professor at York University in Toronto, she never thought it would happen to her.

"I was a liberal academic, and I really thought there was enough help for people who needed it," she said. "I was extremely shocked and sorely surprised to find out that there isn't."

After getting her PhD in the history of science at the University of Toronto in 2006, Margaret moved to Los Angeles and began working as a paralegal for a television studio. In 2007, she was diagnosed with a degenerative spine disease that would require two operations within the year.

In the first operation, doctors inserted two artificial disks in her neck, and it was successful. But the second, which would create a titanium cage around her lower spine, was fraught with complications. Margaret contracted a severe infection in the hospital that left her on antibiotics and with a tube inserted in her heart for several months.

While she was recuperating, she learned that the disability insurance she had purchased would not compensate her leave from work.

"They said I could work even though I had a [catheter] in my heart," she said. "I never saw another penny."

Though she was no longer working, her employer kept her on the company's payroll for several months so that Margaret could keep her health insurance benefits. Then she lost her job in February 2008, and she began burning through her savings in order to pay down her medical bills.

She attempted to find work, but she said her combination of her physical and mental ailments prevented her from holding down a steady job. She was paying for her antidepressants and pain medications out of pocket, and by the end of last year, she was completely broke.

"I owed my roommate money, so I gave him all my furniture," she said.

Unable to make rent, she was told to leave by her landlord in February. She spent two weeks roaming the streets of Los Angeles with her cat, Linus, before coming to OPCC for help.

"I said, 'I'm disabled, I have this cat, and I'm crazy, pretty much'."

They took her first into the center's emergency beds, and then later into the Daybreak transitional housing, which offers beds for 30 women for a period of six to nine months.

The shelter is specifically targeted for women with mental illnesses, offering counseling and help navigating Social Security paperwork, as well as therapeutic excursions like the museum workshop. Margaret credits OPCC with her life.

"Without this place, I wouldn't be here," she said. "It's wonderful. This is the best shelter for women in L.A., but things are getting really hard all around."

Of the 43,000 homeless people in Los Angeles, 32 percent are women, and 24 percent of those suffer from mental illness.

"Losing a job and having a mental disability tends to result in a person going through safety nets that continue to crumble," said Amy Turk, project director at OPCC.

Because Margaret has been unable to find low-income housing while at OPCC, her time at the shelter has been extended to February of 2010. After that, she's not sure what awaits her.

"There's no housing, and everyone assured me that by now I'd be housed," Margaret said.

As the recession has deepened, so have cuts in housing assistance for low-income workers and the unemployed. The Housing Choice Voucher Program, the primary national low-income housing subsidy program, is facing a $130 million shortfall, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The shortage has forced housing agencies to cut back on the number of individuals eligible for the vouchers, which cover the difference between the cost of an apartment and what the person is capable of paying.

A report released in November by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority found that housing a homeless person cuts his cost to society by 79 percent, partly by decreasing reliance on other government services like emergency rooms and jails. But with far fewer vouchers available, thousands of poor families and disabled individuals have no choice but to take to the streets or to shelter wait-lists.

"We were already in a crisis, our doors have always been overflowing with need," Turk said. "But since the recession, we have been receiving more and more phone calls of people who have been losing their homes."

On top of that, many of the women at OPCC have lingering medical bills to contend with.

Margaret is still hounded by hospitals about her bills. She said letters arrive at the shelter telling her she owes $16,000 and suggesting that she put it on her credit card.

"What's that joke? Health insurance in America is 'don't get sick'," Margaret said. "I think I might have to move, because I can't afford to live in the United States anymore."

While they wait for a housing breakthrough, the women at OPCC rely on free programs like those offered through the Santa Monica Museum of Art to stay engaged with a world they once belonged to.

The OPCC staff has distributed to the residents a list of local museums offering free entry, and the women have already made plans for more outings like the furoshiki workshop.

"We tend to get so isolated with just homeless people, and we have a lot of intellectual curiosity that's not being fulfilled," Margaret said. "We're really hoping we're gonna get out more because staying in all the time is not good."

The Santa Monica Museum of Art plans to continue the "cause for creativity" workshops as a way to unite philanthropy and to promote art, especially for their backyard neighbors.

"People want to give and people want to create, so here we are doing both," said Hisa, who buzzed around the furoshiki workshop wearing a plaid shirt emblazoned with a message in white block letters: "WE JUST WANT TO MAKE YOU HAPPY."

"This is the truth," Hisa said. "It's the truth. We just want to make you happy."