Shelter Found for Displaced Homeless

Temporary housing has been found for all 336 of the homeless men, women and children who were forced to leave the city’s emergency shelter in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Grace Davis announced Friday.

Davis made her announcement after the City Council appropriated $63,280 from the city’s general fund Friday morning to provide additional shelter for the homeless, including those displaced from the former print shop at 1st and Alameda streets.

The Little Tokyo facility, which had been serving as a home for more than 300 people a night for the last three months, was closed Friday after the council decided not to grant another waiver for the old brick building, which has been found seismically unsafe and is scheduled for demolition later this month.

The shelter had become a source of controversy, with police claiming that crime in the neighborhood had risen 128% since the facility opened and neighborhood businessmen complaining of a 40% drop in business during the same period.

Davis, stating that “we’re dealing with a lot of people who don’t know how to take care of themselves,” said the city offered guidance to displaced shelter residents on how and where to find their new housing and provided busing for those who needed it.

“Our approach was to provide services to deal with their needs,” Davis said. “The social workers there were extremely sensitive to those needs.”

Davis said $27,280 of the money appropriated by the council will be used to provide 110 beds during May--100 of them in hotels run by the Single Room Occupancy Housing Corp., a nonprofit organization set up by the city, and 10 of them in facilities run by the Volunteers of America organization.

The other $36,000 will be used to pay four months’ operating expenses at the city’s 90-bed facility at 527 Crocker St. These beds were filled Thursday night, but Davis said vacancies are expected.