The Reweaver of L.A.’s Skid Row Safety Net : Redevelopment Chief at the Center of Hotel Controversy

In a small park in the heart of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, a man sidles up to Andy Raubeson. It’s the kind of move that usually brings a red-alert response in this part of town--eyes narrowing, muscles tensing.

But Raubeson seems unconcerned. As the man extends a hand with fingers folded, Raubeson reaches out, too.

It’s an awkward handshake. But it gets the job done.

With that stealthy move and a muttered “thanks,” the man slips $20 to Raubeson, repaying him in a way that will prevent a run on the “bank” from the dozens of others who are packed into the patch of grass and palm trees at the corner of 5th and San Julian streets, the so-called Thieves’ Corner.

‘It’s Usually Five’

“Twenty dollars is the maximum. It’s usually five,” Raubeson says as he walks to his van, adding, “and I have to be pretty sure I’ll get it back.”

Andy Raubeson is not a loan shark. In fact, such modest out-of-pocket loans--which Raubeson says he makes only if he’s convinced the money won’t go for alcohol or drugs--are not part of his official duties at all.

Raubeson is head of the multimillion-dollar Single Room Occupancy Housing Corp. (SRO), a nonprofit organization set up by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. Raubeson and SRO are charged with reweaving the lowest web of this city’s social safety net--the frequently filthy, often roach- and rat-infested hotels that for many are last, desperate stops on the descent into homelessness.

In his nearly three years here, Raubeson, a chunky, gray-bearded former cop with a penchant for opera and theater, has accumulated a lot of fans with gestures such as his impromptu loans. Such acts, backers say, show why Raubeson was picked for the $65,000-a-year job and how skilled he is at putting a human face on what could be a bureaucratic nightmare.

Yet the cheers now are mixed with raspberries as passions over Raubeson run high.

When he arrived in early 1984, Raubeson, veteran of a similar project in Portland, Ore., was touted as an experienced, savvy heavyweight who would help transform the 50-square-block downtown area that spawns cardboard encampments at sundown and fear and violence around the clock.

That opinion still holds for many. But Raubeson’s critics, mainly veteran Skid Row activists who say they still support the concept of SRO, are clearly disenchanted with the agency’s performance under Raubeson’s leadership.

Among other things, they charge that SRO has made conditions worse on Skid Row by buying hotels and shutting them down, reducing the area’s already overburdened housing capacity. Moreover, they say, the nonprofit corporation--which has spent or been allocated nearly $15 million in public funds for hotel improvements--has completely renovated only one hotel, a job that was much more expensive than projected and was finished more than four months behind schedule. (The 60-room Florence Hotel at 310 East 5th St. was purchased in January, 1985, for $375,000 and had an appraised value of $550,000. Renovation costs, estimated at $770,000, amounted to more than $1 million when the hotel opened in August.)

“This resource (SRO) that we were all incredibly excited about, pushed for its development and anticipated for a long time isn’t performing,” said Alice Callaghan, who founded Las Familias del Pueblo to work with immigrant families and children on Skid Row. “If you’re not ready to do a hotel, don’t buy it. If he (Raubeson) did buy a hotel, he should have fixed it up right away. This is not somebody who’s learning the job. He was supposed to know what he was doing. . . . We suspect he just doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Comments such as this reflect not only rancor with SRO but also a conflict of philosophies over how to blunt the sharp-edged realities of Skid Row, where by one estimate 12,000 of Los Angeles 30,000 homeless live. Stripped of obscuring details, the conflict seems to be between those who believe more services are needed immediately and those who believe that progress takes time.

The controversy over Raubeson and SRO is taking place against a complicated and emotional background, including the fact that public, private and commercial interests are elbowing for stakes on Skid Row. Some businesses and real estate people have been attracted to the area because of its low rents and proximity to the downtown financial district. Recent changes already have brought striking contrasts to the area. The bright new products of toy importers, wholesalers and retailers share sidewalks with people in need of food, clothing and shelter. On side streets, refrigerated trucks deliver and haul away seafood processed by the row’s burgeoning fish processing industry.

Raubeson and his defenders concede that SRO may have moved too slowly. However, they say that the agency has experienced understandable growing pains and that doing business--not to mention good--on Skid Row is tough at best. Better to shut down hotels that violate safety and sanitary codes, they maintain, than put SRO and hotel tenants at risk of disaster.

Enthusiasm and Energy

“We chose Andy to run the SRO Housing Corp. because of his experience in Portland and because of his enthusiasm and energy,” said James Wood, SRO’s board chairman. “We did not hire Andy because he’s a construction specialist and we didn’t hire Andy to be a bureaucrat. We knew we were going to have problems renovating the hotels, that it’s almost redundant to say renovation and problems because renovation is problems.”

Raubeson, 50, echoed Wood in a separate interview. “I think we have taken too long and maybe in some cases it’s our own fault,” he said. “But I think mainly it’s a very complex thing. We can’t speed up design reviews. . . . It takes a long time for physical projects to go through (the approval process) and ours are somewhat different from others.”

The SRO, he pointed out, did not take actual possession of its first hotel until less than two years ago in early January, 1985.

Raubeson, who held a number of bureaucratic positions in Portland, including director of the Model Cities program, said his motivation for his work both in the Northwest and here stems partly from his childhood as an orphan.

“I grew up in a state institution so I think that’s one of the things that drew me to it,” he said. But an even stronger motivation, he added, came from the intimate contact he had with Skid Row residents while researching a policy report on the future of downtown Portland.

Under Raubeson, SRO has bought nine hotels--ranging in price from $180,000 to $2.6 million--with a total of about 900 rooms. A 10th hotel is in escrow. Of those already purchased, four, with a total of 610 rooms, were judged in good enough shape to keep open and five have been closed. Within the next few months five hotels are slated to begin rehabilitation, including two that will remain open while being renovated. Besides being strengthened to meet earthquake standards, rooms will be repaired, repainted and refurbished with new beds, sinks and small refrigerators. Most of the rooms are small, usually about 100 to 260 square feet. Bathrooms are generally communal. Rents range from $143 to $185 per month, plus small extra charges for couples or private kitchens.

Skid Row is estimated to have about 60 hotels with about 6,400 rooms. The most ambitious discussions call for the agency eventually to acquire 2,000 to 3,000 rooms. The bulk of the acquisitions are concentrated in the area around 5th and San Julian streets. SRO also has rehabilitated a small park there, one of several cleanup projects undertaken under Raubeson.

When he came to Los Angeles, Raubeson was heralded as a mover and shaker because he had founded an attention-getting project to house the homeless in Portland’s Skid Row. That project, now named Central City Concern, still exists. But after a new management team took over in early 1984, it soon ran into problems, said Micheale Williams, executive assistant and manager of general operations, in a telephone interview.

In going through the books, she said, a previously unsuspected total debt approaching $100,000 was discovered, forcing major cutbacks. Williams said the debt probably was due to the fact that under Raubeson the agency “may have taken on too much, too fast.” She added that “Andy was very good for a new organization but he’s not a bureaucrat. . . . He’s a really creative and aggressive and ambitious guy.”

Given her experience with renovation projects, Williams said she isn’t surprised that SRO has had its troubles.

“I’ve never seen it (renovation) done on time, I’ve never seen it done on budget,” she said.

Raubeson disputed Williams’ interpretation of Central City Concern’s books.

“It would have been impossible to carry a $100,000 legitimate debt at any point in time,” he said. “You’d have folded.”

Not Viewed as a Deficit

Raubeson explained that when he was in Portland the organization carried some internal fees as debts but those were written off by the board of directors each year. “I don’t consider that, other than as an accounting on paper, a deficit,” he said.

Raubeson also has a letter from Central City Concern’s current executive director defending him in his current position. “Los Angeles is fortunate to have an Andy Raubeson laboring hard to make our country a little less unfair to the poor,” the letter states.

Meanwhile, Wood, a labor leader who also is chairman of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency that founded and funds SRO, conceded that he and the rest of the SRO board have felt pressure to speed up the agency’s work. He noted that Raubeson and the board have had some disagreements, too.

“When I met Andy Raubeson, the first time I met him, I knew what kind of guy he was and I knew he was going to pursue opportunities,” Wood said. “Now, Andy has made suggestions that we haven’t pursued. We don’t have a vegetable garden next to the Panama Hotel,” he added with a laugh. “The Ford Foundation or somebody was setting up vegetable gardens for the homeless and Andy was sure we could get the grant but we didn’t go that way. Andy is expansive in his view of the SRO Housing Corp. He has been reined in. He does not like it when I say we will be held accountable in the next round.”

Vulnerable to Criticism

Wood said that SRO may be vulnerable to criticism because its major renovation project so far, the Florence Hotel, did not go as planned.

“If the Florence had gone smashingly well, I think that I would be very aggressive with other criticisms,” he said. “I think it would probably be accurate to say that the experience with the Florence led the board to a tighter involvement, wanting to know more about it and (to) setting goals. Andy knows that we have those goals and everybody else does too.”

SRO’s supporters blame the estimated $370,000 cost overrun at the Florence Hotel on poor contractor performance. The contractor had previously done redevelopment-related work and performed acceptably, said John McGuire, a Community Redevelopment Agency housing specialist. Balanced against the cost overrun, supporters add, is the fact that Raubeson acquired all SRO’s hotels at below expected prices. Furthermore, they say, all renovation work was put several months behind schedule while SRO studied and eventually changed its way of meeting earthquake standards for its aging acquisitions.

“I think that on balance it’s not Andy’s fault that the Florence ran over,” Wood said. “If we have the same problem again then it will be our fault and we will have to be measured by that. But I also think that it’s unfair to have loaded him with certain requirements. For example, we had to take low-bidder. He didn’t pick the contractor. . . . We’re not doing low-bidder anymore. We aren’t free to pick anybody we want but we can make judgments.”

Said Raubeson, “I think we can be legitimately criticized for mistakes in judgment and oversight in this hotel. (But) I don’t expect to get my head chopped off for that. You make mistakes, you learn from them.”

Wood also noted that on occasion, the board has forced Raubeson to spend more money than he would have liked. “His Portland mentality was to run them a little cheaper than we wanted and that led to some confusion at the beginning,” Wood said. “He tended to try to get second-hand furniture and appliances and if somebody gave him 50 sinks, it didn’t matter that they all didn’t match or that they were all old or they all had paint on them. Well, that’s Portland but that ain’t Los Angeles, and we said we want a more professional approach to this and we’ve got it now.”

Unique Personal Touch

On a more personal note, Raubeson’s backers, who include Community Redevelopment Agency board members and staffers as well as the SRO board, say that while Raubeson may lack some administrative skills, he more than makes up for it with a unique personal touch that prevents SRO from being just another bureaucracy.

“He is a unique personality,” said Wood. “There’s no two ways about it. He sort of looks like Santa Claus but he moves very broadly, (he) has the ability to move broadly in national and local circles and generates attention. I’ll tell you a story about what Andy does. He did a spaghetti dinner for the tenants at the Florence. Somebody donated a case of tomato paste so Andy then buys spaghetti and he’s in that new kitchen down there at the Florence and he makes dinner for the tenants. This is what he does best. His whole purpose there is to weld tenants together and make them feel part of the family and part of the community. . . . If I have to put up with the problem of him rubbing some people the wrong way in exchange for him cooking dinner at the Florence, I’ll take dinner at the Florence.”

Among Raubeson’s backers are some tenants, including Rodger and Claire Hickman who live in a room at the Florence. Before SRO took over the hotel, the couple were paying $360 a month from disability benefits for a dilapidated room. Their rent is now $210 a month. “It’s great. We’re fortunate to have a good room,” Hickman said.

For Raubeson’s critics, such endorsement aren’t enough, though.

John Dillon, founder of the self-help Chrysalis Center and currently a tenant of the Florence Hotel, said that Raubeson is more concerned with image than substance. “I’ll tell you what he’s good at, he’s good with the media,” Dillon said, referring to widespread publicity, including national television coverage, that SRO and Raubeson have received.

A Critic’s List

While the slow pace of tangible results is their chief complaint, Raubeson’s critics have a list of contentious items. These other points of debate revolve around what kind of housing SRO should be supplying. Central to this dispute are the Panama and Russ hotels, which SRO bought but did not close. With 520 rooms, these hotels represent the majority of rooms owned by SRO. After deciding that the hotels were in good enough shape to remain open, SRO continued the previous owners’ policy of taking “voucher” tenants who are referred for temporary shelter by Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Social Services. Three hundred and sixty of the 610 rooms currently open are set aside for voucher tenants, Raubeson said.

Wood made no apologies for the SRO accepting vouchers because, he said, the agency needs the $8 per tenant per night it receives for providing emergency housing to the county’s homeless clients in the Central City. Voucher clients are entitled to shelter, too, Raubeson added.

But those opposed argue that SRO was supposed to create permanent housing for the people of Skid Row. Moreover, they say a city-funded agency has no business helping the county shelter people it is under court order to house anyway.

By accepting voucher clients, SRO is working against itself, said Nancy Mintie of the Inner City Law Center, which represents many homeless clients. She and others noted that any hopes of stabilizing Skid Row’s population depend largely on establishing a sense of community among permanent residents.

‘It’s a Tough Call’

Raubeson agreed that the voucher issue is a difficult one. “Maybe that’s a legitimate criticism,” he said. “It’s a tough call. It would be a lot easier for us to manage (the hotels) without the voucher tenants. I can see how people could reasonably disagree with that.”

Some of SRO’s critics also say that the agency should have tried harder to work with hotel owners to upgrade their establishments. Such a strategy, they say, would have saved money and would have kept all the hotels open.

While this policy was considered, it was soon dropped as impractical, Wood said. On this issue, Mintie, who said she is “constantly suing” the owners of Skid Row hotels and apartment buildings, parts company with other activists.

“You can’t reform a slumlord, you’ve got to run them out of town,” she said.

Such changes concern activists like Callaghan and Dillon who worry that Skid Row may succumb to fast-buck economic pressures, destroying long-standing plans to preserve the area as a refuge for the dispossessed.

“For 10 years there was a plan to protect Skid Row as a skid row area,” Callaghan said, “ . . . to basically preserve Skid Row but clean it up for the people who have nowhere else to go--the single, handicapped, elderly of Skid Row. That was the plan and suddenly, just as it’s about to be worked on, it’s being threatened from all sides. . . . It is a hard, tense situation.”

Her complaints, she added, are motivated by the fact that she and her allies “still have lots of hope for SRO and the reason we’re making noise is precisely because we care about it so much and believe it can be turned around and salvaged. If we didn’t think it could be salvaged, we’d just give up.”

And while those policies are shaped far from Skid Row’s streets, nearly everyone interviewed said that the level of anger, desperation and violence on Skid Row seems to be increasing.

“It’s getting so violent and so crazy, people are just going off,” said Mintie, noting that a mental health worker was stabbed on a street near her office recently. “Coming to work is just like a nightmare. I just don’t understand why it’s gotten so bad. . . .”