Skid Row Job Fair Inspires Optimism and Ambivalence

It was, as Leon put it, “a chance, at least.”

Leon, who preferred not to give his last name, spent most of Wednesday morning hanging around the little Skid Row park at 5th and San Julian streets, watching the men play checkers, admiring the hookers in tight sweaters trying to inspire a little action.

The men playing checkers didn’t want to talk about the job fair across the street. They said they weren’t interested.

But Leon, 23, unemployed “for the last six months or so” and living in a Skid Row hotel, said he was--said that he just might wander over there after a while and have a look.

“It might work,” he said. “I don’t know. But it might.”

Others, more optimistic, began lining up early Wednesday for a chance to talk to the people at the job fair, a daylong event sponsored by the Single Room Occupancy Housing Corp. in an effort to help Skid Row denizens find jobs and training that could make them self-sufficient--perhaps for the first time in their lives.

Carlos Moraleza, 21, near the head of a line that included 40 or 50 people by the time the fair opened about 10 a.m., scanned a wall listing about a hundred private and government employment opportunities--jobs such as janitor, stock clerk and receptionist--before talking to SRO representative Robert Torres.

“I told him I was interested in auto mechanics,” Moraleza said. “He gave me this slip.”

The slip directed Moraleza, who has been living “on the street” since arriving here from Miami a couple of days ago, to the Midnight Mission offices, where job referral representatives from the state Employment Development Department were waiting to talk to him about shelter and training programs.

Others of the roughly 200 who stopped by the job fair talked to firms offering ready job placement for qualified applicants--outfits such as Pinkerton’s Inc., which was looking for security guards, and the Holiday Inn at 750 Garland Ave., which was looking for a housekeeper, a busboy, a dishwasher and a general helper.

John Davis, 39, who’s been unemployed so long “that I’ve run out of excuses,” talked to job fair representatives about construction work. Drader Martinez, 35, who has been out of work for about three years, said she was interested in “anything they’ve got.”

The Salvation Army had a representative there to tell people about alcoholism rehabilitation programs. The city’s Department of Aging had a spokesman to explain special job-training programs for low-income people over the age of 55.

Mayor Tom Bradley, who stopped by for a brief opening ceremony at 9:30 a.m., said the job fair was part of Los Angeles’ continuing effort to “provide for the total needs” of the city’s homeless and indigent.

Half a block down San Julian Street, several men lounged against a car--men who joined the ranks of those keeping their surnames to themselves while watching the job fair activities from a distance.

Udell, 61, and Newt, 19, said there was nothing in it for them. Udell, a self-described “chronic alcoholic,” said he didn’t want anyone to help rehabilitate him. Newt, who calls himself a “street person,” said that if he wanted a job, “I’d get it myself.”