Helping People Help Themselves : Center Supplies Food, Shelter, Counseling in North County

C.G. Bartolacci, 65, broke his pelvis and right hip and suffered a concussion when his truck rolled off the freeway in 1979. The resulting medical costs wiped out everything he had worked a lifetime for, including a 2 1/2-acre ranch and a house in town.

A mother of two young children escaped a life of constantly being the punching bag for her husband. In her haste to remove her family from the situation, she didn’t think about how they were going to survive.

An Escondido man thought his job as a computer technician meant job security, until the company started laying off employees last year due to competition and a slump in business.

These people and perhaps 5,000 others have found themselves hungry or homeless in what generally is perceived as affluent North San Diego County. They are victims of shortages in low-income housing, unemployment, family breakdowns, deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and cutbacks in human care resources. They are devastated by financial upheavals--some for the first time in their lives. They are people who have never had to ask for help and don’t know where to turn.

A group of local clergymen saw their growing, and often unmet, needs in 1979. They formed the North County InterFaith Council, a consortium of churches and temples whose purpose is to focus attention on and meet the needs of the poor and homeless through community involvement.

The North County InterFaith Council (NCIC) in turn led to the establishment of NCIC Crisis Center and the “Casa de Pan” (House of Bread), a soup kitchen offering free breakfasts and brown-bag lunches to those in need.

In 1982, the council opened the Crisis Center in Escondido in a converted two-story, two-bedroom house built at the turn of the century. The center, located between the Hamburger Tree restaurant and a pool supply store at 166 W. Mission Ave., offers crisis intervention, counseling, budget and money management clinics, legal services and employment guidance. Vouchers for gas, food, shelter and clothing are given to those in need.

“We are trying for a holistic approach to a person’s needs, and not just to feed their stomachs,” said Suzanne Stewart Pohlman, the center’s director.

Upon walking in, a person is assigned a counselor who will identify the problem and set up an individualized self-help program.

For instance, a counselor may send an unemployed man to the YMCA for a shower, supplying him with towel and soap. They may also give him a voucher for clothes at one of the thrift shops.

“After the person has cleaned himself up, he can come back and look through our job book,” said Audrey March, community development officer for the council. The book contains jobs listed in newspapers and those called in directly to the center.

Once the person has set up interviews, he is given a voucher for gas to get to the appointments. Then it is all up to the individual.

“We try to help people help themselves,” March said. “Not to continually house and feed a family.”

Battered women are taken to shelters for victims of abuse, such as Hidden Valley House, operated by another North County nonprofit agency.

“Since they can only stay at the shelter for two weeks, we have to work very closely to get the woman on her feet again,” March said.

At other times the center provides emergency food, enough for 3 1/2 days, for a family. The food is donated through businesses and private parties.

In more pressing emergencies, the center will dip into its Federal Emergency Money Act (FEMA) fund to help people with the first month’s rent.

“FEMA is for people who have gotten a job but won’t be paid until later,” March said. “Yet they need the money now to make that deposit and first month’s rent on a place to live.”

Aside from the FEMA money, the center receives no financial help from the government or United Way. Next year’s projected budget of $250,000 in cash as well as food, clothing and services is donated. The council has decided to apply for United Way funds this year.

Church congregations provide volunteers, food and grants, and sometimes offer shelter.

The center employs five full-time and two part-time staff members. It also relies on 230 volunteers who help at the center and with the picking up and delivery of goods. Lawyers, certified public accountants and social workers also volunteer their services.

In 1985, the center served 19,800 people, providing them with food, shelter and clothing. This didn’t include those who received government surplus food, legal advice, peer guidance, group support and budget counseling.

“North County is seeing a burgeoning problem of homelessness because the redevelopment of downtown San Diego has done away with most of the single residencies there,” Pohlman said.

“The homeless is a kind of invisible population, easily overlooked,” Pohlman said. “Many aren’t perceived as such. The stereotypical view is not true anymore. There is no outward display of homelessness because they are trying so hard to look like everyone else.”

This is evident at the NCIC’s Casa de Pan where everyone who walks in is served a hot meal and given a bagged lunch to take with him.

“Some of the people I see here everyday, I also run into in stores around town,” said Joe Craiger, supervisor of the soup kitchen.

At the Casa, located in the dining hall of the First Congregational Church of Escondido at 225 S. Hickory St., guests sit around tables covered with red and white checkered tablecloths.

“We get people here coming from out of state who ran out of funds,” said Wanda Williams, assistant supervisor at the Casa. “So they come here for several weeks as they get back on their feet.”

Others are retirees who, when they retired, seemed to have a sufficient pension, but now find the cost of living has exceeded their funds, Williams said. The meals provided at the Casa save them precious dollars.

Still others become familiar faces who congregate every weekday morning at the Casa. “We’ve become like a family, talking, joking and sharing,” Williams said.

“Some of them that come in everyday . . . you worry about them when you don’t see them,” said volunteer Eileen Gillespie, wondering where a regular client could be this morning. “Maybe the family got back on its feet.”

Although the 90 or so daily patrons of the Casa don’t have to pay, those that can afford to will often give a modest donation, Craiger said.

Others repay by cleaning up the dining area of the Casa.

“They helped me with housing and food when I needed it,” said Bartolacci, a World War II veteran. He now lives in an apartment paid for by $658 a month in social security benefits and civil service annuity. He volunteers at the Casa as repayment for the assistance he received.

The food at the Casa is prepared by volunteers who drag themselves out of bed every morning in time to be at the kitchen by 6 a.m. Meals are served from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. on weekdays.

Located in a residential part of town, the Casa is out of the way for most of the homeless, who tend to congregate at Grape Day Park downtown. Yet many will walk, ride their bikes or drive their battered cars to the Casa.

This is the second location for the soup kitchen, which operated initially out of Louie’s Restaurant, four blocks away. The directors moved the kitchen after a falling out with the restaurant owner.

The menu is based on what has been donated, but volunteers try to make the meal as balanced and nutritious as possible, said Craiger, a former nutrition consultant. About the only thing that is bought is meat.

Each meal costs about 40 cents, Craiger said. The soup kitchen relies on donations, FEMA money ($4,800 for the first annual installment), and fund-raisers. With his deep, resonant voice, Craiger raises money through speaking and singing engagements.

Volunteers are encouraged to go sit and eat with the people. “The people we feed are not beggars, they have pride and that pride has already taken a beating,” Craiger said.

Meanwhile, a young mother of two asks Gillespie if there was powdered milk and baby food to take with her for her youngest child. She was waiting for her food stamps.

In answer, the volunteers begin filling a grocery bag with food--powdered milk, ready-to-eat pudding, bread, lunch meat, oranges and whatever else was on hand.

“When it comes to a mother and her children, we try to do what we can for them,” Gillespie said, offering the woman and her two children a ride to their motel room on the other side of town. “With adults we tend to feel they can fend for themselves somewhat, but children. . . . “

Today the 7-year-old North County InterFaith Council represents 25 religious congregations. The board of directors consists of one clergy and two laymen from each congregation.

“I’ve done a lot of different work in my life,” Pohlman said. “There could be nothing better than being a part of restoring someone’s personal dignity . . . I call it psychic dollars because there’s certainly no monetary gain here.”

The council is a “maverick operation in which the community is saying, ‘We can take care of our own,’ and by golly we are doing just that,” she said.