Agencies for Homeless Question Phone Solicitation Effort

You get a phone call at home. Will you please help the homeless in San Diego by giving $59 to buy them a one-way bus ticket to any destination in the country?

If you agree, someone comes by the next day to collect. You are given a receipt that reads:

“Thank you for your donation of $59. Thank you with deepfelt gratitude for your support in helping with the plight of the homeless people in San Diego.

“One need not travel far, especially in downtown San Diego, to see parents on the street with children--no home to go to, elderly people, young people--many who would love to return to their home state, wherever that may be.

“Your kindness will help many of these people return home, others will be helped to establish their lives here.”

But several agencies that help the homeless in San Diego say the solicitation appears to help no one except Lee Taylor, 59, owner of Global Vision Enterprises, which she formed just over a month ago.

Taylor--also known as Leslie Taylor and Verna Lee Payne--is a veteran phone-room solicitor who says her cause is well-intentioned and that the established agencies for the homeless are simply worried that she will give the destitute more money than they do.

Her company, however, has no soliciting license, is not incorporated, has no tax-exempt status and doesn’t even have an office, details she says she intends to remedy.

“I’ve been interested in helping poor people for the last seven years,” Taylor said in a telephone interview from her San Diego home. “I’ve got a ledger book. If the city attorney wants to see it, he can. I’m just trying to fill (a) need.”

Others who help the homeless, such as the Regional Task Force on the Homeless and the St. Vincent de Paul Center, say that of all of the problems facing the several thousand homeless in San Diego, finding money to send them home ranks near the bottom, mainly because most don’t want to go home.

“If we thought the best solution would be to send them home, we’d send them home,” said Father Joe Carroll of the St. Vincent de Paul Center, which is building an $8.6-million center downtown to house 350 people and serve 2,000 meals a day. Carroll says that in the four years he has worked on the homeless problem, only twice has his agency helped to send a transient home.

“It’s such a minor part of their problem,” Carroll said, adding that he never heard of Global Vision Enterprises, even though Taylor claims to have contacted St. Vincent de Paul. “I’d be highly suspicious. . . . I’d have real qualms” about the organization, Carroll said.

Though the appeal for donations is aimed at tapping people’s sympathy, there is also the possibility that contributors will give simply to rid San Diego of the homeless, said Mary McCarroll, executive director of the YWCA, which provides temporary housing for women at its downtown building.

“I could see a whole lot of people giving money and thinking they are doing something great and getting rid of (the homeless),” said McCarroll, who also had never heard of Global Vision Enterprises.

“I would have a lot of questions about this. Who determines who gets the money and how do they get the money?”

So far, Taylor says, she hasn’t quite worked all that out. Since she started her company April 2, she has raised about $1,500 but has yet to give any of it to the homeless. She figures that once her company is better-organized, she’ll give the homeless about 25% of the $2,000 she hopes to collect each month.

Taylor said she wants to work with Greyhound Bus Lines to provide bus tickets. Greyhound officials say they have never heard of Global Vision Enterprises. To qualify for a $59 fare, bus officials say, a ticket must be purchased 30 days in advance, something Taylor says she was unaware of.

The bus company has a program with Travelers Aid Society of San Diego, which provides ticket vouchers to the homeless. But there’s more to it than just handing over bus tickets.

“It’s not as simple as someone saying, ‘I want to get back to Des Moines,’ ” said Mary Colachicco, executive director of Travelers Aid. “This isn’t something where you want to perpetuate people going from place to place.”

Before Travelers Aid will give out vouchers, it will investigate, for example, whether the homeless person has a place to stay and a job or at least the likelihood of finding one.

“Our mission is to get people stable again,” Colachicco said. “You’ve got to check it out.”

She said she had never heard of Global Vision Enterprises, and worried aloud that providing the homeless with bus tickets without an adequate evaluation is overly simplistic and a disservice to the homeless and other communities.

So how did Taylor get involved in raising money for the homeless? She says she worked for several years as a telephone solicitor, learning the trade while selling various items and raising money for charities, and decided she could put her experience to use to ease the plight of the homeless.

In September, she started a business called Global Enterprises, according to records filed in Superior Court. She listed her name as both Verna Lee Payne and Leslie Taylor, the latter a name she uses, along with Lee Taylor, when soliciting by telephone.

She listed her residence as the YWCA, where she lived for six weeks from late August to mid-October, and gave a post office box as her business address.

Taylor said she attempted several business ventures, including selling coupon books and doing swap-meet work, before opening Global Vision Enterprises, an offshoot of Global Enterprises.

So far, Taylor said, she has done almost all of the work, including the majority of telephone solicitations and, until a few days ago, picking up the donations. She said she has added two other solicitors and has hired a driver to pick up contributions.

‘No One Is In’

The receipt she leaves with contributors lists her office as 2423 Camino del Rio South, Suite 126. However, there is no Suite 126 at the two-story office building in Mission Valley. Calls to her company are received by an answering service called A-AABBY Answer, situated in the building, which informs callers that “no one is in the office right now” and takes a message.

Taylor said she intends to open an office on El Cajon Boulevard in the next week or two and that the soliciting will be done from there, rather than from her home.

Among those Taylor has called is Robert Weaver, a retired General Dynamics employee who lives in La Jolla.

“I got a call, and the woman said there were a lot of homeless in San Diego and a lot wanted to go home, and couldn’t I help,” Weaver said. “She also said I’d be contributing to a shelter.”

Weaver said he initially agreed to donate the $59. “She told me a driver would be in the vicinity the next day and would stop by to pick up my donation. Actually, the woman who called (Taylor) was the one who came by.”

After he talked to Taylor, though, he became skeptical and called the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. Officials there said they had never heard of Global Vision Enterprises and cautioned him about making a donation. So warned, Weaver backed out, though Taylor left a receipt and an envelope in case he changed his mind.

Taylor said she decided to launch her company after she ran into people downtown, including homeless families with children, who wanted to return home but had no money.

‘Trying to Fill Need’

“I’m trying to fill a need,” she said. “I intend to check people out and not pay for a joy ride. The point of this is not to give them a fun trip.”

Exactly how she will accomplish this, though, is unclear. Taylor says she has been too busy raising money and attending to other business ventures to have a detailed program or a fully organized business.

The San Diego city attorney’s office, which investigates consumer fraud, says that, under the law, companies that raise money for charities must voluntarily disclose how much is going to the charity and how much is going for overhead and other administrative expenses, something that Taylor says she doesn’t do unless asked.

Part of the reason she doesn’t, Taylor said, is that she’s not sure how much she’ll be able to give, saying that although she thinks it may be 25%, it could be more or it could be less. “I’m going to wait and see on that. I’m going to try and give as much as possible,” she said.

Taylor also has recently been invoking the name of San Diego Life Ministries--which runs the Rescue Mission downtown that provides housing for 243 people--in raising money.

Jim Flohr, executive director of San Diego Life Ministries, said that until two weeks ago, he had never heard of Taylor’s company. He said Taylor has given his organization about $90, part of which will be used to send a 19-year-old homeless man back to Kentucky.

He said he cautioned Taylor against saying she was soliciting for Life Ministries but told her it was all right to mention that some of the money would be turned over to his organization.

But on Wednesday, Flohr said he had doubts about the arrangement and called it off. “I think people don’t understand the (distinction). There may very well be a misunderstanding, and we want to protect our good name,” said Flohr, adding that he didn’t know, for example, how much Taylor has raised or how much of the total Life Ministries stood to receive.

In an earlier interview, Flohr said it’s rare that the homeless people his agency serves want to go home. “It happens very seldom. They’ll ask for money to go home” but use it for other things, he said.

Action Defended

Taylor acknowledges that her activities have aroused both skepticism and criticism, but she defends what’s she’s doing.

“Why shouldn’t I do it? I want to give something to the poor people. A millionaire won’t do it. He’ll buy a yacht instead,” she said.

“I want this to be legal. I want to do the same thing they (established social agencies) are, but maybe they’re concerned because I’m going to give more money than they are,” Taylor said. “I just haven’t had the time for some of the details, but I intend to take care of it in the next couple of weeks.”

Frank Landerville, executive director of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, says he has talked with Taylor and is convinced that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, and that if anyone has something to gain from her efforts, it’s Taylor.

“However well-intentioned her case may be, people can’t go about raising money for the homeless without some accountability,” he said. “I don’t know how much she’s raised. When I talked with her, she had no apparent knowledge of the laws or accountability for the money or any nonprofit status. It seemed to be an ill-thought-out effort.

“I hate to see something set up where the homeless don’t get anything,” Landerville said. “There are plenty of quality and legitimate programs in San Diego for the homeless.”