Aid Center Finds Success Tales Rewarding

For staff members at the Burbank Temporary Aid Center, it’s the success stories that are best remembered.

Lois Miers, the nonprofit center’s manager, uses as an example the case of two young men who contacted the center last week. After dropping out of Louisiana State University and moving to California to pursue show business careers, the pair wound up broke in Burbank. The center provided them with food and a week’s free lodging at a motel.

Both found jobs within the week, Miers said, one as a cook, the other as a construction worker.

“That’s when this job is the most rewarding,” she said.

Food, Shelter Given for 11 Years

Although it can’t promise permanent solutions to its clients’ problems, the center has dispensed emergency food and shelter to needy Burbank residents for the last 11 years. Last year, it provided almost $40,000 in emergency help to 4,650 needy people. In the first five months of this year, about $16,500 was given to assist more than 2,000 people.

Miers said the center, newly relocated to 228 E. Orange Grove Ave., receives public funds only from the City of Burbank. She said it is rare for a city to help subsidize an organization that feeds and shelters the needy.

“We’re unique,” she said. “I know of no organization like ours.”

The Burbank City Council voted last week to double the center’s allocation in the coming fiscal year’s budget from $10,000 to $20,000 after Ruth Spiegel, a founder of the organization, told council members that the center’s rent had gone up $50 a month to $1,000. Spiegel also said more funds were needed because of a growing need for emergency aid.

Ruth Prinz, newly installed president of the center’s board of directors, said the rest of the center’s $70,000 annual budget comes from donations by individuals, churches and community organizations. An auxiliary plans fund-raising events for the center.

“The donations are not all money,” Prinz said. “Lots of people come in carrying a bag of groceries.”

She said the city’s extra donation is “manna from heaven” and that the City Council appears willing to allocate more funds than in the past because of recent publicity about the homeless.

Miers said the center averages about 400 clients a month or between 12 and 15 a day.

“When I first started here in 1977, four people was a big day,” Miers said. “We saw only about 75 people a month then.”

Slower Client Increase

The number of clients rose sharply between 1981 and 1983 and is still increasing but at a slower rate, she said.

“We see many families with small children, single women with children, men with alcohol problems, veterans in distress, battered wives and people recently released from a mental hospital who need a place to stay while awaiting admittance to a board-and-care facility,” Miers said.

“We see families who have come out here from other areas to look for work. They are unaware of the high housing costs out here. They don’t know they’ll have to get $1,500 together just to rent an apartment.”

Miers, who has been with the center eight years, recalled one mother who had brought her five children from another state to live in Burbank. Although the woman had found a job at a dry cleaner and located a house to rent, she couldn’t afford to pay the full security deposit on the house. The center staff issued a check to the woman’s landlord and provided food for the family until the mother’s first pay day, Miers said.

Serves 400 a Month

Of the 400 people a month the center serves, between 100 and 125 need shelter, she said.

The center, which is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, distributes its own vouchers, good for a stay in a $25-a-night hotel room.

Miers said the motel vouchers enable families and others who use them to stay in Burbank-area motels instead of being forced to seek cheaper lodging on Skid Row--often the only shelter people can find with the $15-a-night vouchers issued by the county.

Many people who come to the center are hungry, Miers said. The center’s pantry is usually well stocked with non-perishable items such as canned goods, pancake mix, dried beans and cereal. Can openers, disposable diapers, shampoo, soap and toothpaste also are kept on hand, Miers said.

She said the Burbank Police Department often asks the center to find temporary shelter for ex-offenders and parolees who are looking for work. The police also send transients to the center. Churches, state and county agencies, hospitals and the Veterans Administration send people who need help to the center. About 25% of those served come in off the streets, Miers said.

Helped Trailer Park Residents

In addition to housing and food, she said, people contact the center for a variety of needs, including bus fare and money for gasoline or utilities. Last winter, the center bought propane gas for low-income residents of a Burbank trailer park because they needed the fuel for heating and cooking.

“We issue vouchers or buy the needed items ourselves,” Miers said. “We never give a client cash.”

“There are no requirements to receive aid,” Miers said. “People just walk in our door. We rarely deny anything. We ask the person’s name, where they’re from, how long they’ve been in Burbank and when they expect some money to come in.

“Once a minister asked me how I knew people are being truthful. I just said, ‘Sir, you have to have faith.’ He didn’t say another word.”

Miers, the center’s only paid staff member, said neither she nor any of the 15 volunteers who work with her have had any professional training in psychology or social work.

“It’s a gradual learning process,” she said.