For the Homeless in L.A., Survival Can Be a Full-Time Job : Quests for Shelter, Struggles to Find Food Fill Their Days; Fear of Crime Often Fills Their Nights

To kill the frightening time between sundown and dawn, a 46-year-old woman rides a bus along Wilshire Boulevard between Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles. If anybody strikes up a friendly conversation, she’s likely to explain where to get the best--and cheapest--cup of coffee in town. She knows a place in Glendale where a cup is 25 cents and you can sit for hours.

(Her fears were heightened this month when four street people died from exposure and police arrested a 26-year-old man in connection with the stabbing deaths of five homeless men.)

In San Pedro, two single-parent families count themselves lucky to have rooms for the night. But the shelter is temporary and the next day will bring another round of calls to food banks and other agencies in a never-ending chain of survival chores.

These are some of the ways the homeless people of Los Angeles spend their time--in addition to more publicized acts such as sleeping in City Hall, which became a temporary shelter last week.

But who are the homeless, people who seem to come from nowhere in such large numbers? Why have they reached this tragic point in their lives? How do they cope? Interviews with homeless families and individuals in the city and county provide some answers.

Kate Livingston, former telephone sales clerk

Livingston and her 15-year-old son, Christopher, spent their first homeless night in a restaurant. “I kept telling them I was waiting for my husband who was in an all-night poker game,” she recalled. At first light, muttering insults against all unpunctual men, the 46-year-old divorced woman and her son pushed out into the unknown.

They have been homeless for about a year, Livingston said. Until she was laid off her $1,250-a-month job taking telephone orders at an electronics firm, the two lived in a $550-a-month, one-bedroom apartment in Culver City. She now receives $249 a month in welfare.

Before they moved to the Harbor Interfaith Shelter in San Pedro seven weeks ago, Livingston said she and her son had lived most of the year at a Santa Monica shelter, where she was an unpaid worker. She never imagined that she would be homeless.

“I was going to have it made,” she said. “Two-point-five children, a house, the typical American dream.” Her first emotion when she became homeless was “panic. That was the main feeling. Self-disgust. Helpless but not hopeless. . . . When you close your apartment door and hand in your keys, it hits you immediately.”

Now Livingston said she feels she has become invisible. “I think it’s sad that people are not even accepting that we exist. I’m educated (she has two years of college) and if it can happen to me it can happen to anybody. They (those with homes) see without seeing. I think I was the same way before. I’d watch television and see stories about homelessness and I’d dismiss them as an isolated case.”

Paul Robinson, activist, unemployed desk clerk

A Chicago native, Robinson, 33, said he has been in Los Angeles about 4 1/2 years and has been homeless for about a year. He was one of two persons arrested and briefly jailed along with homeless organizer Ted Hayes when Tent City, a homeless protest camp in downtown Los Angeles, was disbanded after the New Year’s holiday.

Robinson figures he is homeless because “I kind of choose to stay out here to some degree but to some degree I’ve been forced out here.” Explaining that he quit his job as a hotel desk clerk “out of frustration really,” he added, “I was frustrated because I used my income on wine. I wasn’t going nowhere. It seemed like I never could have money working at that job, so I took to the streets.”

Since hitting the bricks, Robinson said he has come to see homelessness as a political issue. “It wasn’t a political issue when I became homeless,” he said. “I didn’t know how political homelessness is. I figure since I am homeless I might as well do something about it.”

Geneva Reese, artist, and her daughter, Eve, 13

The Reeses, who live in a van, left Phoenix a little more than a year ago. Since then, Geneva Reese said, she has been trying to sell her art in the Southern California area--without much success. Over the New Year’s holiday, the mother and daughter migrated from Orange County to Pasadena. Reese blamed hassles with the police and a generally unfriendly atmosphere for the departure. But she also said such problems probably are inevitable anywhere.

“When my daughter was born, the dream of my life was to fix up a RV (recreational vehicle) or a van or a camper or something and tour the country, doing art work as I went and just seeing parts of this country I’ve never had a chance to see,” Reese said. “At that time a lot of people were doing things like that and it was accepted. Now people aren’t travelers anymore if they’re touring the country. If they don’t have a lot of money, they’re transients. It’s become a new dirty word.”

Explaining that a flower-selling business she ran in Arizona folded, Reese added, “I originally wanted to do what I’m doing now for the fun of it but I ended up doing it years later out of necessity.”

Eve Reese, 13, said she’s enjoyed being on the move with her mother, who has permission to teach her, according to workers at The Depot, a homeless day center in Pasadena. Asked what she had read recently, Eve replied, “ ‘Gone With the Wind,’ Mark Twain, part of (George Orwell’s) ‘1984.’ I’m trying to work on one of (William) Faulkner’s books, ‘As I Lay Dying.’ ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ that was really good.”

Elizabeth Presley, unemployed nurse’s aide

Presley, 46 and a native of Memphis, has lived in Southern California since 1971. She has been homeless for about two years. Although she is currently in a downtown shelter, Presley said she has spent most of that time on the streets. She declined to say where she sleeps but caseworkers at the Inner City Law Center said she has generally found shelter in a mini-storage rental facility. A cheerful woman whose religious faith apparently sustains her, Presley said her only income is from infrequent day jobs such as cleaning house. She can no longer work as a nurse’s aide, she said, because arthritis has sapped her ability to stay on her feet.

Being homeless is “terrible and it’s sort of fun in a way--trying to figure out how to do,” Presley said with a laugh. “I ride the bus at night. Or you can stay in an all-night restaurant. Go and have coffee in this one and that one and another one.”

Presley said she began riding buses at night because she is afraid. “People are all the time getting robbed and mugged. I’ve had my money taken but I don’t really have all that much. I’m going to have to put a sympathy card in my change purse--’Sorry I couldn’t contribute more.’ ”

Despite her fear of crime, Presley said she has picked up some survival skills and is expansive on the topic of cooking.

“You know those (electric) coils that make coffee and tea?” she asked. “I learned how to cook with those and I got good at it. I thought, ‘Gee, I can write a cookbook.’ I made a terrific chicken soup. I got this teapot and I would cook in that and then I made spaghetti and meat balls. That’s a little tricky. You boil the meatballs first and take them out and then you put your spaghetti in there, cook it and take it out and then you add all your spices and tomato sauce and stuff and thicken it up. But with a coil you have to be real careful. You do not poach eggs with it.”

Derrick McClendon, machinist, and family

Derrick and Janice McClendon came to Los Angeles with their three daughters, Carmello, 4 months; Sonora, 15 months, and Lakretia, 7, from Michigan about two years ago in search of work. For about a year, the family had a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood while McClendon had a job that paid $5 per hour. He was laid off eight months ago.

During an interview, Derrick McClendon, who laughed, smiled frequently and did nearly all of the talking, noted that the family had been in the Harbor Interfaith Shelter “three weeks and three days.”

The couple is time-conscious because “we have a goal,” he said. “Before five years are up we plan to be as substantial as any Californian who ever lived here. We’ve been pretty upstanding people, we’re used to having a home and making it for ourselves.”

Since losing the apartment, the McClendons have lived mainly in hotels that receive public funds for housing the homeless. Keeping the family together has been “like living hell,” McClendon said. “We’ve had a whole lot of bad times. We’ve been at each other’s throats, yelling and screaming. She’s been at the point of walking out and I talk to her and tell her that if we can make it through this, it’ll be that much better at the end.”

McClendon said he hopes to get a job with an aerospace company. But the day he discussed his family’s plight he noted that his car wasn’t running and that he had had to miss a job-testing appointment.

Looking at his family, McClendon said he believes he will find a job and a home. “I’ve got three motivations here,” he said. “She (his wife) is the biggest one behind me. I’ve got a lot of push behind me.”

Robbie and Kim, juvenile runaways

Robbie and Kim are among 20 juveniles in a new program--Project Homeless Youth, operated by the Los Angeles Youth Network--for the runaways who descend on Hollywood by the hundreds, perhaps thousands. Project workers say the program provides multiple services, including shelter, to young people who, as one worker put it, are “homeless with a skateboard or a suitcase full of (music) tapes.”

Robbie, 16, and Kim, 17, were interviewed and photographed with the understanding that their last names would not be used.

A four-year veteran of the streets, Kim said she was “kicked out of the house at 13. There were a lot of family problems, things just did not work out. I’ve been in several girls’ homes and I’ve lived on the streets quite some time. When you’re out there, it kind of helps you learn really fast--how to deal with people, how to get around, how to stay safe.”

Robbie hitchhiked to Los Angeles from Philadelphia. He has been here only a few weeks. “My mother and father left me when I was only about 8 and my sister took care of me,” he said. While he was away from his sister’s home one day, Robbie said, she moved without leaving word where she had gone and he decided to come to California.

At last report, Robbie had broken an arm in a fight. Despite the fracas he “has been really improving. He seems to be working harder and getting along with the kids here better,” the youth network’s Joel Schwartz said.

Debbie Robinson, unemployed secretary

Robinson, 32, lives in her 1982 Ford EXP in the parking lot of an Encino discount store. The car’s windows are blocked with plastic and cardboard. She shares the cramped interior with her two cats, Mollie and Kalayaan. The car has Ohio license plates but Robinson said she came to Los Angeles a few months ago from Seattle where she lost her job. Robinson dotes on her pets and said that she has taken them to a veterinarian when they needed medical attention.

She said her car has a broken radiator and became inoperative almost as soon as she arrived in Southern California.

“I was going up and down the boulevard when black smoke started pouring out of the back,” she said, adding that she has an agreement with the store manager to move her car as soon as possible.

The woman has apparently had few steady contacts since coming here. Workers at the Women’s Care Cottage in Van Nuys reported that Robinson rides the bus to their office about once a week to bathe and wash clothes.

Thomas Gist, former drug / alcohol addict

Formerly of Detroit and Phoenix, Gist, 47, has lived in the streets of Los Angeles since quiting drugs and alcohol nearly two years ago, he said. Currently staying in a downtown shelter, Gist said he is a loner when he is on the street.

“I was on drugs and alcohol for 20 years and I’ve got some behavior that’s not normal,” he explained. “I have fear attacks, anxiety attacks. I don’t talk to people. I’m anti-social, I guess. If somebody gets too close, I move. It’s really kind of simple.”

Living on the streets gives him “an anxious feeling,” Gist added. “You know, like if you live a life style where you have to seek food and shelter each day, that’s kind of anxious. . . . You might get killed any minute.”

Gist said he has spent much of his time at City Stage, a Skid Row theater that produces shows by and about the homeless. And he has written poetry. Leaning toward a tape recorder, he recited in a strong, clear voice:

“Homeless. No place to go, no date to keep, no one who cares, no one to meet. Drug addiction, alcohol, wild schemes, obsessive dreams, the hand of fate, a vindictive mate. An accident, I meant no harm, a gambler’s risk, a false alarm. A factory quits, a dream that missed. All these things cause homelessness. . . .”

Jimmy Harris and Karen Davis, jobless

Harris, 29, and Davis, 42, live out of a 3-by-5-foot trailer parked near an entrance to Hansen Dam Park in the San Fernando Valley. They have been in the park area about three months, they said.

The two said they plan to marry next month and hope to tie the knot in Las Vegas. But, Davis admitted ruefully, they may have to settle for less.

A native of Tyler, Tex., Davis said she has been in the Los Angeles area 26 years. She has not had a regular job for about a year, she added. Harris said he had been out of work for about six months and that when he was working he often had to choose between food and shelter.

“Before I got in this position,” Davis said, “I was in a truck most of the time, was living on the truck. So if you want to consider that homeless, too, it’s been a lot of years.”

Living in the open, Davis said, is “not any different really than living in an apartment. I mean it’s different because you have to heat up your own water to take a bath or you have to heat up your own water to do dishes or stuff like that. You just have to work harder, that’s all.”

Opening up the trailer to a visitor’s inspection, Davis said, “It’s not much but it’s a warm place for me and him to sleep. It’s our first little home together.”

Harris, originally from Memphis, and Davis said they sometimes have been harassed because they are an interracial couple but generally they cope well with their environment.

“The homeless, the mentally retarded, the hopeless winos and stuff like that, they need help and they’re homeless and they probably can’t do anything about it,” Davis said. “I’m out here by choice and I like it. If I had a job, I’d stay here.”

If she could do something to make life better for the homeless, Davis said, “I would get 15 or 20 of these trailers, just like this, and I’d clear out part of this field right here and I’d fix it all so that people like us had some place to go and could be left alone.”

Harrison and Nichols, veteran street people

Bryan Harrison, 50, and Jerry Nichols, 46, inhabit the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Harrison, who has been homeless for more than two years, said he is an alcoholic. Throughout an interview he sipped wine from a plastic bottle. Nichols, who said he is a homosexual and a longtime drug addict, has been “rambling for 20 years.”

His life on the street, Harrison said, has been “pure agonizing hell. Every day and every night, about every hour, my life is in danger. I’ve been beaten up so many times it’s not funny. My first three weeks on the street I was beaten up three times. Also, I’m a drinker, an alcoholic and one thing I try not to do is ever get real drunk and stagger and collapse on the street. I would be dead if I did that.”

After a moment, he added, “If I can say one general thing about homeless people, we’re all people just like everybody else in the world. We’ve all got a different story to tell. It’s a long story why I’m here and why I’ve stayed here, and I guess everybody else’s is too. I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t ask to be here and I sure want out of here. I’m trapped and once you get in this trap, it’s so hard to get out.”

Nonetheless, Harrison expressed some satisfaction with himself. “I’m very proud of myself,” he said. “At my age and in my physical health, I survived this, so far. That took a lot of courage. It took a lot of stamina and it took a lot of character. I’ve been through a war. As a matter of fact, I’m more proud of this than anything I’ve ever done in my life. But I’m not proud of what I look like or what my situation is or the fact that I’m not communicating with my son or relatives.”

Nichols was more upbeat in describing his circumstances. He’s homeless partly because “I had a real bad drug habit, anything I could put in a needle, anything I could eat, swallow, shoot or snort,” Nichols said. “After you do something like that, nobody wants to give you a job. You might as well be an alcoholic brain surgeon. I handle the streets a lot better than Tennessee does. To me, they’re still funny. When they cease being funny, I’m going to have to do something. You see the damnedest things. When I was walking up here, there was a guy over there changing clothes, naked as a jaybird. If you want to let things depress you and get you down, the quickest way in the world to do it is to live on the streets. I would rather laugh.”

Asked what they would be doing if money were no object, Harrison and Nichols perked up noticeably.

“What I would like to do--this is really true--” Harrison said, “is if I had me a little log cabin back in my hills and a puppy dog and a fishing pole and a rifle and a good knife. . . .”

Nichols broke in: “And a couple of chickens, too, got to have those.”

“Well, whatever,” Harrison continued, “and I’d be very happy. I would reestablish contact with my family and maybe have a nice party with friends in and music and laughter, good food.”

Then Nichols sketched his dreams. “I’m quite fortunate,” he said. “I’ve got some land, it’s up in Nebraska, timber ground, and I’ve got some real good ideas on building an underground log cabin with a greenhouse on top so I can grow vegetables year ‘round and have a couple of chickens and a hog and kind of live the life of a hermit. Give me some good books and just lock me away. I love history, autobiographies, good fiction. No Gothic romances or Westerns, please.”

Said Harrison, “You haven’t read anything in depth, lately, I noticed that.”

The humorous mood ended when Nichols was asked why he yearns for solitude.

“You get to the point where the only thing you want is to be left alone,” he said.