Shelter for Homeless Outlasts Its Travails

Nancy Bianconi received a memorable welcome her first day as executive director of the Valley Shelter: a shelter resident threatened to kill her.

“I came to work all excited about starting, and a man came up to me and said, ‘I already killed one person. I could kill you just as easy,’ ” Bianconi recalled.

Security officers responded to her screams. Later she learned that the man had recently been released from 27 years in prison for killing a policeman.

“Oh, what a welcoming!” said Bianconi, who assumed stewardship of the troubled North Hollywood shelter for the homeless after a management shake-up last November.

The shelter, the largest in the San Fernando Valley and the seventh-largest in Los Angeles County, opened April 1, 1986, in a converted motel, bar and truck stop under the name Valley Interfaith Shelter.

Besieged With Problems

Problems plagued it from the start: for example, vandalism, costly repairs and violence-prone tenants, some of whom used the free shelter as a base for prostitution and drug sales. Grandiose fund-raising plans fizzled, and acute financial woes forced the shelter to temporarily turn away the homeless families it was created to serve. The shelter’s director was fired amid allegations of mismanagement.

But the shelter emerged intact from its troubled year and last week celebrated its first birthday optimistically.

Six months ago a new nonprofit agency and management team took over, and observers agree that the shelter has made a dramatic turn for the better.

As shelter residents, founders, donors and guests drank punch or coffee and ate pastries, Mayor Tom Bradley called the shelter “an outstanding example of what our community can do when we pull together to solve a common problem.”

In its first year of operation, the shelter has housed 1,500 adults and more than 200 children, officials said.

“I am very pleased with what I see. We have definitely turned the project around,” said Tanya Tull, the respected founder and executive director of the social service agency Para Los Ninos. Tull was brought in by the new management team as a paid consultant for the shelter. “It has ironed out the kinks and it’s operating smoothly and well,” Tull said.

Gene Boutillier of United Way, which provides funding for the shelter, agreed.

“I think there’s been a dramatic turnaround since November,” said Boutillier. “The fund raising is ahead of schedule. Staff morale seems up. The place looks nice. And the primary funding sources seem pleased with what’s being accomplished.”

Last fall, the picture was bleak. The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, a mainstay of the shelter’s financial support, was taking steps to foreclose on the struggling shelter.

The funding shortages and the expiration of a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant forced the shelter in October to begin turning families away and accept instead single persons and childless couples, whose stays are in part reimbursed by the county.

Less Funding for Families

The shelter had previously reserved about a third of its 72 rooms for families. But there are fewer sources of emergency funding available for families.

The shelter’s problems culminated in the Dec. 5 firing of the shelter’s director, the Rev. William Randolph Griffin, because of problems regarding management, record keeping and compliance with shelter contracts, officials said.

A Times investigation revealed that Griffin has left previous jobs for reasons that include problems with his handling of money and questions about the validity of the academic and military credentials that he claimed.

The CRA agreed to drop foreclosure proceedings when a new nonprofit agency, Valley Shelter Inc., replaced Valley Interfaith Council as the group responsible for day-to-day operation.

Bianconi had been one of several key people involved in the effort to open the shelter. She had gone on to other projects and had watched in frustration as the Interfaith program foundered.

The shelter was more than $100,000 in debt and fast losing credibility when Bianconi took over, sources said.

She rehired a management firm specializing in shelter operations, the National Housing Ministries, to handle the shelter’s monetary affairs. The company had been dismissed by Griffin and the Interfaith Council the day after the shelter opened, Bianconi said.

Personnel expenses were cut by 15%, in part by discontinuing the practice of hiring day laborers, Bianconi said. Sources said the shelter had spent about $20,000 on temporary labor in its first six months.

Families began returning to the shelter in early January after it received a $60,000 FEMA grant, administered by United Way. The grant pays the shelter $10 per night for housing one person, $20 for two people, $30 for three, $35 for four, $40 for five and $45 for six or more, Bianconi said.

50 Reserved by County

Today, about 15 of the shelter’s 72 rooms go to families, Bianconi said, and officials hope to increase that number to 20 soon.

Fifty of the shelter’s rooms are still reserved by contract for the County of Los Angeles, which pays $16 per person per night--$10 less than the shelter’s estimated costs--for single persons and childless couples on its General Relief program. But the arrangement provides the shelter with $25,000 per month, Bianconi said.

The shelter has also begun recruiting social-service agencies to lease rooms that are then filled with homeless families. Fund raising has become easier as the shelter’s reputation improved, Bianconi said.

“Nobody likes to back a loser. People want to give money to a program they think is going to last,” she said.

The shelter has received $60,000 from the Los Angeles County Homeless Fund, and $110,000 more has come from churches, synagogues, corporations and foundations. Shappell Industries, the Weingart, Ahmanson and Stern foundations, and the Valley Mayor’s Fund are among the contributors, Bianconi said.

The shelter has received another $10,000 in contributions from individuals, she said.

A major fund-raising event, including a raffle and dinner held in conjunction with a local radio station, is planned for May, Bianconi said.

The shelter should have little trouble meeting its annual operating budget of $750,000, she said.

Rehabilitation Aspect

It is harder to assess the shelter’s progress in rehabilitating people.

While past shelter officials released glowing success stories about former residents who turned their lives around, Bianconi is cautious about superlatives and statistics.

Homeless people are hard to track, and no accurate statistics exist as to how many make a successful transition into mainstream society after leaving the shelter, she said.

The shelter is continuing to help residents find a job and is providing medical and psychological care and other assistance beyond a bed and two meals a day.

But, Bianconi acknowledges, “For every success story we have, we also have families back on the street.”

Among the shelter’s successes are half a dozen people who now work for the shelter in security and other jobs.

The shelter’s live-in operations director, David Weinstein, was himself a homeless person when the shelter opened a year ago. Weinstein worked his way up to security guard, then head of security before assuming his present job six months ago.

Weinstein said his experiences as a homeless person--which occurred after he underwent a divorce and lost his job--help him understand shelter residents.

Under Weinstein’s direction, the shelter has tightened security, resulting in fewer violent incidents, the project’s officials and police said. Assaults, fights, a rape and stabbings have occurred there in the past, officials said.

“When I came here, there was such a heavy drug and prostitution problem, so much violence here, I felt terrible,” Bianconi said. “Now there is no prostitution. There’s an occasional drug problem, but it’s probably the same amount of people taking drugs as in any residential area.”

Since November, about 40 people have been evicted for possessing alcohol, drugs or weapons on the premises, Weinstein said.

“No one had ever been thrown out for breaking the rules before,” he said. Now, he said, “There are no exceptions.

Routine Searches

Weinstein also instituted routine searches of residents’ rooms for weapons and contraband. Residents must agree to the searches when they first come to the shelter, he said.

The searches, conducted most mornings, also discourage residents from sleeping late instead of going out and looking for work, he said.

Los Angeles Police Capt. Glenn Ackerman confirmed that the shelter seems to be having fewer outbreaks of violence. “I don’t hear that much from them anymore,” he said.

Residents don’t always appreciate the shelter’s efforts.

One recent evening, for instance, they lined up in the kitchen as volunteers served heaping plates of beans, frankfurters and rice, salad with brown-tipped leaves, pasta salad, fruit salad, bread, pastries, coffee, fruit punch and angel food cake.

One young blond man who called himself John and refused to give his last name complained that the volunteers serving the food weren’t cheerful enough.

In a slurred voice between mouthfuls, he also criticized the free food he had been eating for a month.

But a young couple from Honduras who were spending their first night at the shelter with their baby daughter were grateful for the food and the clean, small, simply furnished room.

“This is a gift from God when I most needed it,” Luis Andres Soto, 21, said through an interpreter as his wife, Anasota, 24, played with their 6-month-old daughter, Luisiana.

Luis Soto said he lost his job in a junkyard recently when he got sick with what doctors described as trichinosis, a parasite-related disease associated with eating pork. Luis said his wife and baby slept at the hospital until a woman saw his wife crying. The woman brought the mother and baby home for a few days, but when Luis was released, the home was too crowded. The woman’s son then brought them to the shelter.

“Thanks to God, there is a roof over our heads,” Anasota said.