Homeless at City Hall Moved to Little Tokyo

Los Angeles City Hall was no longer home to the homeless Friday as the City Council voted to move them to a new, temporary shelter in Little Tokyo, despite objections by local merchants.

Their complaints that the action could harm redevelopment in the area was the first community opposition to the council’s weeklong effort to aid those who have no place to go to escape the nighttime cold.

The city opened an abandoned building at 411 East 1st St., once used as a city print shop, to house up to 225 people, including many who occupied the council’s City Hall chambers Tuesday through Thursday night. The Little Tokyo facility will be open from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The City Council also decided to house 90 homeless people in another vacant city structure at 527 Crocker St., once it can be made safe. E. Brooks Treidler, assistant general manager of the city Department of General Services, estimated that the work would take about a week.

The council also voted 13 to 0 to adopt an urgency ordinance relaxing zoning restrictions on the establishment of shelters for the homeless. The law, which took effect immediately, allows charitable groups anywhere in the city to take in as many homeless as they can safely accommodate, subject to council approval.

By early Friday evening, the anticipated 225 people began arriving at the vacant print shop on 1st Street, where they were checked in by county welfare and mental health personnel and steered to cots donated by the Los Angeles American Red Cross chapter.

Representatives of Caring Hands, the social outreach program of Helping Hands Inc., were there to assist county workers and sort out families with children, who were taken away to hotel rooms provided by the private, nonprofit agency.

A church organization was providing food and the Somma Mattress Co. donated 600 quilted foam blankets made of surplus material.

“We’ve seen a lot of publicity on the homeless,” said Mike Echevarria, executive vice president of Somma. “We decided to use the material, and we went into the streets looking for them (homeless people).”

During Friday’s council meeting, about a dozen Little Tokyo merchants objected to moving homeless people from City Hall to the old print shop.

Katsumi Kunitsugu, a Little Tokyo resident, expressed concern that sending homeless into the neighborhood would reverse years of efforts to revitalize the area just east of the Civic Center.

“You are looking to make an instant slum of an area we are trying to rescue,” she said.

Burke Byrnes, who runs a business across from the print shop, expressed fear that the shelter for the homeless will drive away customers. He said a number of homeless people have been sleeping illegally in abandoned buildings in the area and the result has been fires and vandalism.

“It scares me,” he told the council. “I’ve got to look out for myself.”

Councilman Gilbert W. Lindsay sided with his Little Tokyo constituents.

“The Little Tokyo people don’t want them, and I don’t blame them,” Lindsay said in an interview. “I’m trying to please my Little Tokyo people and not hurt the homeless.”

Lindsay said he will propose at Tuesday’s council meeting that a privately owned warehouse at 2444 S. Alameda St. be substituted for the 1st Street shelter. The warehouse, donated by developer James Lucero, has been housing about 500 homeless people in recent nights.

Meanwhile Friday, the first temporary tenants began moving into 42 apartments set aside in city housing projects as short-term, rent-free shelter under an emergency measure by housing commissioners.

Reporters and camera crews clustered around the first three women--one of them blind and the others pregnant and with small children--as they moved into the Ramona Gardens project in Boyle Heights. The women were aided by city housing officials.

Barbara Hughes, 25, close to tears, could only repeat, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” as reporters asked her how long she would be staying. “They haven’t told me. I hope it’s a long time. I hope it’s forever.”

She said the apartment might help her keep her family intact. For weeks, she said, she and her husband have struggled to exist through the cold winter nights after he broke his hand and they lost their own apartment, then stayed in cheap hotels and finally in junked vans.

She clutched her 17-month-old son, General, and looked around at the two-story, two-bedroom apartment being made available to her and her family until long-term housing can be arranged through welfare or some other program.

“I’ve always wanted a place like this,” she said. “It’s going to be wonderful to have a roof over my head. Nobody knows what it’s like living out there on the street with kids. Nobody understands until they’ve done it.”

The executive director of the City Housing Authority, Leila Gonzalez-Correa, said that 30 of the 42 designated apartments were available on Friday and that she hoped to have 15 families occupying them by nightfall.

Temperatures were expected to dip into the low 40s overnight--not as cold as earlier in the week when four unsheltered people died of exposure.

With the passage by the City Council of the urgency ordinance relaxing zoning restrictions, the St. Vincent de Paul Society Men’s Center at 231 E. Winston St. opened 100 beds to homeless people for overnight housing after $250,000 was allocated from 2nd Supervisorial District funds.

Carmen Perez of Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s staff said lack of money and the presence of city zoning restrictions has prevented the center from offering anything more than daytime shelter, as well as sack lunches and showers for homeless men. The center applied for a zoning variance Jan. 8, Perez said.

Helping Hands Inc. said it would take some homeless families with children to hotels in the Wilshire and Hollywood areas, paying for their lodging. Executive Director Thomas Settle said he did not know how many families his group could help but noted that 18 hotels in the county accommodate Helping Hands recipients.

Settle said Helping Hands normally provides food and hotel rooms for the homeless.

The council’s decision to open two buildings to homeless people came after Susan Cleere-Flores of the Community Development Department reported that even though City Hall and the Alameda Street warehouse have been open to the homeless the last few nights, “there are still significant numbers of people sleeping on the street.”

Treidler said it will cost the city about $5,000 to make the 1st Street building safe for occupancy. That expense is in addition to the nearly $4,000 in costs for added security, lighting, heat and and other necessities for accommodating people in the City Council chambers Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights.

The council also called on Gov. George Deukmejian to convene a summit meeting of city, county, state and federal government officials to prepare a long-term strategy for solving the homeless problem.

And it sent to its Intergovernmental Relations Committee a proposal calling on the city to support already proposed congressional legislation to provide $500 million nationwide for homeless programs.

Meanwhile, Councilman Richard Alatorre appealed to the public to donate chairs, beds and tables to help the homeless who are moving into public housing units. Alatorre asked that donations be taken to the City Housing Authority office at 515 S. Columbia St.

Times staff writer Edward J. Boyer contributed to this article.