‘Sorry, but You Have to Go,’ City Tells 3 Social Service Agencies

Under pressure from the federal government to develop Angels Gate Park, the City of Los Angeles has served eviction notices on three social service organizations that use the park to serve hundreds of needy people in the harbor area.

After winning a six-month reprieve, the nonprofit agencies were told that they must vacate by New Year’s Day a cluster of abandoned military bungalows they have occupied rent-free since 1978, a city Recreation and Parks Department official said this week. The department oversees the largely undeveloped, 66-acre park overlooking the Pacific.

“We served them all eviction notices, and said, ‘Sorry, folks, but you have to go,’ ” said Ron Kraus, a department official. “We feel guilty because they are social service organizations, but we are under the gun in this particular case.”

Officials at two of the organizations--Joint Efforts, a drug rehabilitation center, and Alpha Chi Pi Omega, a national sorority with that has a chapter office on Beacon Street in San Pedro and uses a park bungalow for a number of its programs--said they have not yet found a place to move. Officials for the groups predicted that they will be hard-pressed to afford new quarters as large as the bungalows.

The third evicted agency, FISH, an ecumenical religious organization that provides food to the needy, moved its pantry into the Harbor Family Crisis Center on West 7th Street, but still uses a park bungalow for storage. Without the bungalow, the agency will not have room to accept donated furniture, FISH coordinator Ruth Lohrer said.

The park, once part of Fort MacArthur’s Upper Reservation, was declared surplus by the federal government in 1978 and deeded to the city under the condition that it be used only for recreational and park-related purposes.

The presence of the three organizations has technically violated the conditions of the deed ever since they moved to the park with the permission of former Los Angeles City Councilman John Gibson, but the city allowed them to stay in the buildings, which once housed Army officers. No formal agreement was ever signed between the agencies and the city.

Routine Inspection

In 1984, the Interior Department, which oversees the development of federally granted land, conducted a routine inspection of the park and determined not only that the city had failed to develop the largely undeveloped park as specified in the deed, but also that the social service agencies served no recreational or park-related purpose, Kraus said. It then instructed the city to evict the agencies.

Kraus said two other organizations, the California Conservation Corps and the Izaak Walton League, another conservation group, also occupy some of the old military buildings at the park and had also been targeted for eviction by the Interior Department. But those organizations will be allowed to stay at the park until mid-1987 because the federal government accepted the city’s contention that the groups’ services are peripherally related to recreation and parks.

Kraus said that the city has been slow to develop Angel’s Gate primarily because it lacked the necessary money. However, the city’s recreation and parks commissioners recently voted to spend nearly $1 million over the next five years at the park for capital improvements. The improvements will include the demolition of the bungalows occupied by the social service organizations, he said.

“Right now, you drive past the place and it doesn’t look like a park,” Kraus said. “It looks like a collection of old buildings.”

Extended Deadline

Pete Sly, a planner with the Interior Department’s National Parks Service, said the agency believes it has been “pretty lenient” in allowing the three social service organizations to remain at the park for as long as they have. He said the agency initially told the city that the organizations would have to leave by July 1, but extended that deadline to give them more time to find another place.

“We feel bad because the buildings are what you might call a convenient nuisance,” Sly said. “There are all kinds of worthy groups that need facilities, but we are really restricted.”

“In the past you might say we have worn the white hats because we are a park and recreation agency and generally do things that benefit the public,” Sly added. “But now all of a sudden we are wearing a black hat by telling these worthwhile social service organizations they can’t stay.”

Small Budgets

Officials at the three evicted organizations said they are grateful that the city has allowed them to use the bungalows rent-free because they operate on small budgets derived from grants and donations.

Ralph Mays, who serves on Alpha Chi Pi Omega’s board of directors, said the group’s eviction from the park poses a serious problem for the sorority because it needs the space for activities it conducts for the elderly and the unemployed. The eviction comes at a time when the group is struggling with a budget that has dwindled in recent years from an annual average of about $50,000 to $15,000, he said.

Mays said that the loss of the bungalow creates a void for his group. “Where do you find space and how can you afford to rent it? What kind of (long-term) agreements can you enter into when you are grant funded?”

Pat Herrera Duran, executive director of Joint Efforts, the drug rehabilitation center, said her group is hoping for temporary quarters in the San Pedro City Hall on Beacon Street until it can find new quarters. Mario Juravich, a deputy to Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents the San Pedro area, said this week that an agreement to provide the group with interim space at City Hall could be reached within days.

Herrera Duran said Joint Efforts treats a minimum of 43 patients a month, and recently allowed a group that provides temporary shelter for the homeless to move its administrative and support personnel into the bungalow. Joint Efforts, which operates on an annual budget of $90,000, has no money specifically budgeted for new quarters, she said.

Fall Within Guidelines

Herrera Duran, whose late husband Ernesto founded Joint Efforts in 1968, said the organization attempted to persuade the Interior Department to allow them to stay, maintaining that many of its activities, such as its exercise and nutrition classes, could fall within the guidelines of the city’s deed. The group also argued that another of its activities--overseeing the small plots of land set aside at the park for local gardeners--also meets the deed’s criteria, she said.

The executive director said she believes the social service organizations should be allowed to “coexist” with other cultural and recreational organizations at the park. Moreover, she said she does not understand why the groups cannot remain at the park until the city determines what type of cultural center it wants at the park and selects an operator. The city is scheduled to send proposals to prospective bidders next month.

“Why are all of these buttons being pushed when there is no gas in the tank?” Herrera Duran asked.