Center Faces Up to Fact That Simi Has Homeless Too

It began last summer when a few women from the Simi Valley Presbyterian Church, who had been letting teen-agers with nowhere else to go sleep in their spare bedrooms, noticed that more and more young people were sleeping in the streets, hillsides and parks of their middle-class, family-oriented city of 85,000.

The Presbyterians contacted the Methodists, who had observed the same phenomenon. The two groups agreed that most of the youths had not drifted into Simi Valley from the more crowded communities “over the hill” in the San Fernando Valley or downtown Los Angeles, or from Ventura County beach cities.

“Most were from right around here,” said Sandra Herr, a Methodist and mother of six teen-agers. “Our own children were bringing these kids home with them. We got together with members from other churches and decided we had a homeless problem in our community we had do something about and right away.”

Drop-In Center Opens

The small group established the Simi Valley Christian Foundation in August and convinced Mitchell Realty to let them use the company’s former office for its headquarters. Individuals furnished the building with sofas, chairs, desks, refrigerators, a stove, a freezer and other items.

A drop-in center for the homeless was open by the end of the month.

The center at 5496 Los Angeles Ave., which is open from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, is the only facility of its kind for homeless people in the San Fernando Valley and western Ventura County. The San Fernando Valley Friends of Homeless Women and Children plans to open a similar facility soon.

Foundation board member Jeff Morris, a local car dealer, said the Simi Valley center is “a place people can come for a snack, wash their clothes, take a shower or just sit and relax for a while.”

Permanent Shelter First Sought

“Our original dream was to have a permanent shelter where people could come and stay until they could get back on their feet,” said Herr, the center’s executive director. “Now, we’re reassessing our goals. We see the needs. We found that perhaps there is a need for both a center like this and a live-in shelter. We need to integrate the actual needs and our dreams.”

Herr, whose husband Warren is president of the foundation’s board of directors, said some of the people who use the center appear to prefer “sleeping out there” but also “like the feeling of being clean.”

“There’s a only a certain percentage, 25% to 30%, we can help,” Herr said.

“We’re trying to focus on that small percentage interested in making a change in their lives,” Morris said. He said one of the first orders of business for the board was to attempt to survey the homeless in Simi Valley by determining who uses the center.

Most Are Single Men

He said foundation members found that most of the homeless are single men between 18 and 26, many of whom have either run away or been kicked out of their homes. Morris said 5% to 10% are families or single women with children. Overall, about 80% are from Simi Valley.

An average of 12 people a day use the center, Morris said. Of those, about four are first-time clients, but the foundation board expects that number to increase during the warmer summer months, he said.

Herr said the center staff saw 75 new clients during May, which she called “a lot for a community our size.” However, she said, no one really knows how many homeless people there are in Simi Valley because “homeless people look just like everybody else.

“We don’t know whether we’ve reached the tip of the iceberg or what,” she said. “In general, we’ve found the homeless are very friendly but very closed-mouthed. We do hope we’ve made some kind of dent.”

Home Base for Homeless

People who come to the center can use its address and telephone number for job-hunting and to collect food stamps and public assistance or unemployment benefits, Herr said. Telephone messages are taken for the clients by Bill Wheat, a 66-year-old retired contractor who lives at the center, and other volunteers.

The center staff arranges free clothing from the Church Attic, the Methodist Church’s thrift shop, for anyone who needs it. Transportation is provided for people who have job interviews or who need a ride to school or a government office.

Present most every afternoon at the center to help clients are Wheat, who serves as a watchman, custodian, general handyman and counselor; divinity student Bruce Kellogg, an intern from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, and 71-year-old Henry Dutwiler, who handles the information forms filled out by people who use the center. Phil Kochman, 75, a retired educator and vice president of the board, also is frequently seen around the center.

Wheat said he has been able to find jobs for several youths with the California Conservation Corps.

Some Youths Return Home

“They get their room and board plus around $500 a month,” he said. “That’s not too bad. They work their fannies off, though. They have to be motivated.”

The center staff has been able to reconcile some youths with their families, and has gotten some older clients enrolled in vocational classes at the local adult school.

Wheat said the center is helping Linda Kidd, a woman in her 30s, not only find employment but regain custody of her two children, ages 4 and 8, who now are in foster homes. Kidd said the county took her children from her at Christmas last year when welfare authorities discovered she was homeless.

Kidd said the center “is a gift from heaven.”

Although an information sheet on the center describes it as a “local effort for local people,” Herr and others acknowledge that they have a long way to go to gain the support of the entire community.

‘It’s Been a Shock to Us’

“It’s been a shock to us who are very middle-class to find homeless people in our community,” Herr said. “People feel threatened by homeless kids. They fear theft and other crimes, which some homeless people do in order to survive.

Divinity student Kellogg, who lives in La Canada Flintridge, puts the organization’s problem with community apathy a little stronger. Simi Valley residents “think that the homeless problem is something that just flashes on their television screens from Skid Row in Los Angeles,” he said.

Morris said the center’s immediate needs are a permanent shelter, volunteers to staff the present center and money. He said the board is seeking support from the city and from business and civic organizations.