NO PLACE LIKE HOME

A coalition of groups and individuals with a dream--to create a shelter for the Valley’s homeless--is struggling with some uncomfortable realities: Drunkenness, meanness, theft and torpor are not uncommon. Yet police say there have been fewer arrests since the days when the shelter was a motel. And once in a while, a resident leaves

with new hope for a better future.

A woman with six children and a baby grandchild moved into the San Fernando Valley’s biggest shelter for the homeless on its opening day this spring. They were a do-gooder’s nightmare.

The family was given food, clothing and one of the Spartan rooms at the Valley Interfaith Shelter in North Hollywood. The mother wouldn’t look for a job. She spent the day partying with friends. Even so, she and the children were allowed to stay three weeks past the shelter’s 30-day limit.

Finally the family’s goods were stacked outside, and they were evicted. Before they left, they wrecked the room.

“They tore the bathroom door right off the hinges,” said Avanelle Smith, executive director of the Valley Interfaith Council. “They knocked holes in the plaster. They stopped up the plumbing. They wrote graffiti on the walls. They took all the bedclothes and all the towels. They took all the lamps they could carry--they just stripped the room. And what they couldn’t take, they broke.

“But the last thing they did was the thing that just blew my mind, because you could tell it wasn’t done by kids. The last thing they did was to pour syrup on the windowsills. So you know they were doing it out of meanness.”

Such behavior has been one of the unpleasant surprises for those who opened the shelter four months ago in a renovated motel. Helping the homeless is no picnic, said Smith, 65, a plain-spoken ex-schoolteacher.

To some degree, it is working as planned. The effort pays off periodically with gratefully rehabilitated clients, embodying success stories that buoy a staff struggling long hours with never-ending emergencies. But, as Smith puts it, “we’ve had a lot of things not going the way they were supposed to.”

Immediate Problems

The problems started on April 1, the day the shelter opened in what was the Fiesta, a dilapidated motel, bar and truck stop at 7843 Lankershim Blvd., among auto body shops and industrial buildings.

The difficulties have included costly repairs and having some homeless guests partial to liquor, drugs, fighting and vandalism. Money is short. A sympathetic professional who has seen the shelter’s books said it might not have the resources to survive. Smith and others vow it will, but they concede it won’t be easy.

The shelter represented the culmination of a dream for a number of groups and individuals: to help the rising tide of homeless people in the Valley, estimated at from 2,800 to 6,000. The effort finally coalesced under the umbrella of the church- and synagogue-related Valley Interfaith Council.

The need was evident two or three years ago. The homeless were living everywhere: in parks, alleys and all-night doughnut shops, beneath freeway overpasses--even under a lantana bush outside the Interfaith Council’s office in Van Nuys. They would appear in churches and synagogues begging for help, but there were few places to send them.

The shelter, as ultimately conceived, would house fewer than 200 people at a time--”a Band-Aid on cancer,” in the words of Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, founder of the council’s Task Force on the Homeless. But it would be something.

In 1985 the Interfaith Council began using 25 of the Fiesta Motel’s rooms to shelter the homeless, using money from the federal and county governments. In March it bought the motel for $2.2 million with donations and loans from foundations, the state, the city and the public. It spent $142,000 renovating the motel. Employees and volunteers worked 18-hour days making beds with donated bedspreads, vacuuming rooms, scrubbing toilets, hanging curtains and washing windows, Smith said.

The shelter--one of a new breed, offering not only a bed and meals but also job referrals, counseling, medical treatment, legal advice, help in applying for welfare--seeks to tackle the whole range of ills of the down-and-out, from drug addiction to low self-esteem. Finally, when the most promising clients leave, there is the possibility of up to $1,500 in loans and gifts from United Way and Lutheran Social Services to pay first and last months’ rent on an apartment, and donated clothing, linen, furniture and appliances.

“When they moved in, many of them walked in with nothing but the clothes on their backs,” said the Rev. William R. Griffin, the shelter’s manager. “When they moved out, they needed trucks and moving vans.”

Through it all, Smith said: “Our philosophy is not to make them feel as if something is wrong with them but to treat them as our guests.”

Defects Discovered

After the motel’s sale was final, Smith said, the founders discovered plumbing, electrical and other defects that an accountant said are costing about $3,000 a month in repair bills.

Also, the shelter had to change its mind about the kind of homeless people it would admit. At first, the bulk of the residents were to be families and people recently forced onto the streets--the ones most likely to get back on their feet. That changed for financial reasons. Three-fourths of the shelter’s 72 rooms are reserved for single people and couples receiving county general relief, the last resort for destitute adults ineligible for other forms of aid.

The shelter gets $16 per person per night in county money for housing them, an amount that covers most of the $21,000-a-month mortgage payment, said Irma Nielsen, the Interfaith Council’s fiscal administrative assistant, who keeps the shelter’s books.

The other rooms are occupied by families referred by social agencies and churches, which reimburse the shelter $23 to $26 a day for individuals and $34 for families, Nielsen said. The actual cost is $26 per person, she said. The shelter also gets some federal funds to cover the costs of families at the facility.

When the shelter opened, Smith viewed most of the homeless as ordinary people forced to the streets by calamities that could happen to anyone. She said she would feel safe inviting many of the shelter’s residents into her own home.

Now, she thinks no more than a fourth of the shelter’s clients “are really desirous of turning things around.” She added, “I want you to know it hurts me to say that.”

The shelter has tried to keep out people with the severe medical and mental problems associated with Skid Row. That has been virtually impossible, the workers admit. “Unfortunately,” Smith said, “when you screen people, they lie a lot.” Alcoholics, for instance, “come in to be interviewed perfectly sober, but by the time they get to the shelter, they’re dead drunk.”

One guest turned out to be a prostitute. She turned tricks in her room until her pimp gave her away by beating her, said Michael E. Landon, the shelter’s caseworker.

Things get especially bad when welfare checks come, said Griffin, the manager. “The pimps and drug addicts all know these checks come,” he said. “The person pays no rent, doesn’t have to buy food. They have money. They’re easy customers.”

Hoping to keep out drug dealers, Griffin banned non-residents from the shelter at night. Some dealers scaled the fences and climbed through windows. Griffin ordered the security guards to step up patrols and put suspected troublemakers on the second floor. One of them promptly broke his toilet by tying a rope to it so an outsider could climb the wall.

One couple bragged that they had used welfare money to take a Las Vegas vacation while living at the shelter. The woman had been illegally getting welfare payments under two names, said Jane Cottle, the shelter’s social services coordinator. The pair were evicted.

It’s common, officials say, for residents to swear they are energetically hunting for jobs that never materialize, meanwhile begging extensions of the 30-day limit. Some whose welfare reimbursements have expired are now housed six to a room and are asked to perform chores.

“Some of the people we get are unemployed and I know there are jobs out there,” Smith said.

‘I’m Just Lazy’

At least one resident made no secret of his disinclination to work.

“I’ve got a good skill. I’m just lazy,” Glen Hicks, a chubby man with beefy hands, told a visiting reporter as he watched “The Love Boat.”

Hicks said he has been “bumming around” since 1978, when he quit his job as a machinist for General Motors in Muncie, Ind. “I’m not too enthusiastic about looking for work,” he said. “The only reason I ain’t drunk now is I got no money.”

Urging the residents toward a healthy love of work are Griffin, 47-- at $25,000 the shelter’s highest-paid employee--and a staff of 10. Two more will be hired soon, with part of a $136,000 grant from United Way.

An ordained Baptist minister with a doctorate in urban studies from Columbia University, Griffin moved to Los Angeles to take the shelter job after seven years heading a privately run emergency food distribution program that fed 25,000 people a month in Sacramento. He reports to Smith and to a 10-member board.

He said staffers “put in every bit of 12- to 15-hour days, not counting the calls we are going to get at night,” without overtime pay. They sometimes spend half their pay on medicine, cigarettes, soft drinks, bus fare and other things for the residents, he said.

The work can be harrowing. Griffin has a box of knives and guns he has confiscated. A few weeks ago he disarmed one resident who had stabbed another in what appeared to be a drug dispute. One night a shelter resident attacked a security guard with a knife, breaking the guard’s finger. That same night, two women went into labor.

One of the women, rejected by nearby hospitals, was loaded into the back of a pickup truck packed with pillows and blankets and taken to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank has since agreed to handle emergencies, and Smith said an on-premises clinic is planned.

Less serious problems include fleas and large cockroaches, residents said.

“It’s hard, and there are times I want to quit,” said Landon, 22, the caseworker. He earns $14,000 a year there while studying sociology at California State University, Northridge. “It’s emotionally draining. You don’t get thanks, and the people you help turn on you. But I wouldn’t trade it. It makes it all worth it for those few that do get on their feet.”

Great Boon to Some

One who made it is Gail Williams, 36, an attractive, neatly dressed divorcee living at the shelter with her daughter, Sha-roun, 11, and her son, James, 17. She injured her foot and back in a fall down stairs at a friend’s house in February. Then the house she rented in Pacoima was sold, and she was evicted.

Unable to work, she spent half her $400 savings on motels before being sent to the shelter. There she has saved her disability money and found a house to rent. She hopes to return to work this month. She was so grateful that she volunteered her services to answer the phone at Better Valley Services, a social agency that helps support the shelter.

Some people started as residents and became employees. David Weinstein, 42, slept in the shelter the night it opened. He’d lost his job as a truck mechanic when his company went bankrupt. Hating the welfare process, he found a job outside, but now he’s one of three night managers at the shelter.

He says that on the outside, “all I’d really do all day is earn money. I figure, here is a chance to help people who are like I used to be.”

Griffin said the shelter has placed 37 people in full-time jobs. But success can be short-lived. A 23-year-old man cited in a press release as a “shelter success story” lasted barely a week in his shipping-clerk job. He was fired for staring into space instead of working. The next night, apparently under the influence of phencyclidine, or PCP, he attacked Weinstein with a lead pipe.

Neighbors had objected vehemently to a hotel for the homeless during its planning stages. Some of them have changed their minds.

“I thought they were going to make a Skid Row out of it,” said Mike Winkler, vice president of Communications Signalling Inc. across the street. Now, he says, “I’ve had less problems out of that place than I did when it was a motel.”

“There’s fewer dope addicts now,” said Al Takunaga, owner of Tri-Arts T-Shirt Co. “The paramedics only come twice a week. They used to come every day when it was a motel.”

But John Thenot, owner of Addin Glass Service, said the residents scare his customers by panhandling on his property. “People are leery of leaving their cars in the street,” he said. “I lost a couple of new customers because they drove up and saw a bunch of police cars. They said, ‘What the hell is going on there?’ and left.”

Another businessman, requesting anonymity, called the shelter “a home for the lazy.”

Police See Fewer Problems

Los Angeles police have made reports of several assaults, a robbery and a burglary at the shelter. Still, they do not consider it a “problem location,” said Capt. William O. Gartland. “When it was the Fiesta, we were making a lot of arrests up there for prostitution, assaults and crimes of violence,” he said.

The shelter’s most acute problems are financial. Its monthly operating cost is $65,000, and the need for repairs has been a constant drain. The plumbing alone needs an estimated $150,000 worth of work, Smith said.

“How would you like to be in a room where every time the person up above took a shower, you got one?” she asked.

Damage to rooms adds to the costs. One resident stuck cassette tapes down his toilet. A manager struggled for an hour with a plumber’s snake before calling in a plumber. Toilets seem to get clogged when people are told their time at the shelter is up, and when they leave, they frequently steal the linen and even sometimes the furniture.

The shelter ran out of money before the motel bar was fully converted to a kitchen and dining room. These rooms are scheduled to be open in September. In the meantime, about 35 churches, schools and synagogues provide food. They are mostly cold brown-bag meals, served twice a day, but there are some hot meals. Once a church in Bel-Air sent cucumbers and sour cream.

Private grants help keep the shelter afloat. Organizational gifts have included $10,000 each from USA for Africa, the Mayor’s Fund, and Arco; $14,000 from Magic Years Nursery School; $3,000 from TRW Inc., and $12,000 from the Presbytery of San Fernando. Reseda Methodist Church gives the shelter $500 every month, Nielsen said.

Donations come unevenly from individuals, down from a high of $7,700 in June to a low of $500 last month, the accountant said.

On the expense side, one recently added item is $3,000 a month for a fund-raising firm.

“This is a classic example of very well-intentioned people with no financial sense,” said the sympathetic outsider quoted above. “They’ve gotten themselves into a very deep financial quagmire. Now it’s a question of trying to keep the thing from going under.”

Nielsen, the Interfaith Council’s accountant, professed not to be worried. “We run on a shoestring, but we make it every time,” she said. “Our middle name is faith.”