Vacant Buildings : L.A. Looks for Shelter for Homeless

The brick building with boarded windows sits uninvitingly in an industrial neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. The driveway fence is padlocked and crisscrossed with barbed wire, and bordering the top is a roll of concertina wire.

Despite the forbidding image, this city-owned property is the occasional shelter for homeless people who scale the fences or break through the barriers to sleep in the air conditioning ducts that jut from the building walls.

Like other vacant buildings, the Crocker Street address is an unofficial home for the homeless. But some city officials are hoping to change that situation, there and at other locations, with a policy that would utilize uninhabited, city-owned buildings to shelter the growing number of men, women or families without homes.

“We think the city is at a desperate stage in getting the homeless off the street,” Councilman Ernani Bernardi said Tuesday as the council’s Public Health, Human Resources and Senior Citizens Committee held the first hearing on the proposal.

Bernardi, who chairs the committee, has pushed hard for the conversion of the city-owned properties--such as old fire stations and abandoned churches--into temporary or permanent shelters. “As long as we have these buildings available,” Bernardi said, “we should utilize them.”

The first candidate for such a renovation is the one-story building that fronts on the 500 block of Crocker Street. Now used largely for storage, a portion of the partitioned building--facing San Pedro Street--already houses the Turnaround Center, a detoxification program that uses acupuncture as a treatment method.

But city officials said another 13,000 square feet of the building could be available for a “drop-in” center or a place to sleep for the homeless. According to building and safety officials, proper city permits would have to be obtained and additional work would be needed to ensure that the building meets city fire codes and an earthquake safety ordinance. The price tag to convert the building, they said, could eclipse $300,000.

Although Bernardi insisted that funds are available from federal or local sources, an aide to Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, who represents the downtown district, expressed reservations about the cost and effectiveness of the project.

During the hearing, some representatives of the homeless also questioned the likely effectiveness of the plan, which would join a number of private and public efforts to help the homeless.

However, the Bernardi proposal received favorable reaction from some speakers as well as some merchants and workers in the neighborhood where the new Crocker Street shelter would be located.

Bruce Monroe, president of the Turnaround Center, said that while his organization has not taken a stand on the proposal, he personally sees no problems in sharing the building with homeless people.

“If this is the best space, and it’s the safest and the closest and the healthiest and most cost-effective solution, then as a private citizen and a businessman, I would endorse it,” he said.

Jose Compean Jr., who works for a furniture-making company next door to the proposed shelter, said opening the city building could benefit the homeless.

“Some people are already sleeping there. They break in and sleep in the air conditioning ducts,” he said. “This would give the others who now sleep on the streets a place of their own.”