17 Area Clergymen Join Call for Boost in Aid to Homeless

Seventeen area clergymen joined lawyers for the poor Tuesday in asking a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to order the county to immediately increase its general relief provision for shelter to get more homeless people off the streets.

Asking for status as friends of the court in the case, the clergy representatives lent their support to the contention that the $143 a month currently designated for housing grants to qualified single unemployed county residents is inadequate.

“Clergy are not often called upon to interpret a statute,” attorney Dean Hansell told Judge Robert B. Lopez, “but in this case the question is to decide what conditions does society find intolerable.”

Hansell said the clergy, representing various religions, include Oliver Garver Jr., suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese; Rabbi Lennard Thal, regional director of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Pacific Southwest Division; Rev. Luis Olivares, pastor of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels Roman Catholic Church; and Rev. Cecil Murray, senior minister of the First African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Los Angeles.

Others include Rev. Philip Zwerling, senior minister of First Unitarian Church; Rev. James P. Conn, pastor of the United Methodist Church in Ocean Park and a member of the Santa Monica City Council; and Msgr. Thomas Curry of St. Vibiana’s Roman Catholic Cathedral.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of the homeless asks the court to order the Board of Supervisors to raise its housing provision to at least $196 a month, pending a trial on the merits of the case.