Foundation Laid at ‘Campground’ for the Homeless : Families, Street People Pitch In as Routine Takes Root

Most of the men leave Los Angeles’ “urban campground” in the early morning. Some head for breakfast at one of the Skid Row missions, others to downtown spots where they hope to be hired to unload trucks or pass out handbills, for $15 or $20 a day.

By mid-morning, those men who have stayed behind, along with a handful of women and children, make scrambled eggs on a “stove” made from stones collected on the flat stretch of dirt next to the Los Angeles River. The eggs come from a Studio City movie producer who has made it his “mission,” since the campground opened June 15, to donate food every day.

Under one canopy, Great Lord Mahaprabhu, as the 64-year-old Filipino calls himself, straightened up the sleeping bag on his cot. He staked out the cot on the camp’s first day. Three friends have “reserved” cots nearby.

His friends were not there. “When I go out, somebody watches my things, and when they’re not here, I stay,” explained the gray-haired man, who said he is a part-time judo instructor, homeless for five years. He waits until one of the others returns, so that he can leave.

After two weeks, a daily routine has developed at the homeless camp.

The number of people staying at the camp has increased, from about two dozen the first day to more than 500. The city, after a controversial crackdown on sidewalk encampments on Skid Row, set up the campground as alternative housing for two months.

But it has attracted more than just the former street campers.

There are about 10 families on the grounds--with about a dozen children. They have either journeyed to California with dreams of a better life, or are local people. One family, for example, said they had failed to pay their rent and got evicted.

There are alcoholics and derelicts who relocated from Skid Row missions “to be in the fresh air,” as one said.

There are homeless who are looking for jobs: a former RTD bus driver, a former waiter, an aluminum dye-caster, an air conditioning repairman, a dairy cow milker.

And there are people who are homeless by choice, such as Justiceville founder Ted Hayes, who are using the campground as a forum for publicity and political activism.

The campground’s Spartan collection of trailers, open-air canopies, tents and picnic tables does not look quite as bleak as when it first opened on land leased from the Southern California Rapid Transit District.

Camp residents have started to find ways to humanize it and make it more habitable. Laundry is hung to dry on chain-link fences, rug remnants are set out in front of some tents and cots like welcome mats, and there’s even a dog named Snowball in residence.

The dusty compound now has two shower trailers, a battery of lockers for personal goods, four pay phones and a trailer filled with free clothes from the Salvation Army, which is operating the camp.

The 12-acre campground has a fence cutting through the middle of it. Most of the camp’s 100 small, domed tents have been placed on one side, and on the other, under open-air canopies, are about 300 cots.

Already, the tent side has emerged as the “prestige” section, much to the annoyance of people living on the cots. Although everyone at the camp is homeless, Miguel Campano stared through the fence from the cot side, and said the tent people acted superior. “This side, we’re considered transients,” the 38-year-old complained.

Campground rules prohibit weapons, alcohol and drugs. About a dozen campers have been forced to leave for “assaultive” behavior, said Salvation Army Major William Mulch, camp director. A handful of them were arrested.

Apart from the formal camp leadership, the place has begun to develop its own social fabric. Most residents have worked out their own security, baby-sitting and clean-up systems and have even set up their own governments.

About 60 strangers got together within the first several days, for example, and became “a group.” At first they were merely trying to escape the cots, after Salvation Army staff members told them that the only way to get tents was to be part of a “group.”

Then they became more than that. They pooled money for cooking supplies, elected officers and named themselves the “United Homeless League.”

“We help each other,” said John Fountain, 30, the group’s president. One day they also held a “trial” for one member accused of stealing hair grease from another. The man was found innocent.

Equal Distribution

A group also was organized on the cot side of the camp to bring pressure for equal distribution of food, blankets and outside donations between cot and tent dwellers.

There are two other groups on the tent side, clustered in the southern section of the 12-acre campground. One is Justiceville, led by the 36-year-old Hayes, a showman who wears an African headdress and often carries a long wooden staff, like a latter-day Moses.

Two years ago, Justiceville was a camp on Skid Row. From there, Hayes staged media events to say that new ideas were needed to combat homelessness, that the traditional shelters and free food lines led people into a perpetual cycle of “Skid Row-ism.” Police closed down his camp, however, because of alleged criminal activity there.

Hayes calls the new quarters at the campground a “launching pad” to showcase his latest ideas. One of these is to use geodesic domes as housing, with homeless to build them.

The other group is Love Camp, organized by the Los Angeles Union of the Homeless on a Skid Row sidewalk last winter. It is led by Adam Bennion, 37, a Los Angeles resident, also voluntarily homeless, and David Bryant, 39, a former RTD bus driver who said he has been homeless for several months.

Discipline, Encouragement

They believe that collective living, with shared duties and group support, can give people enough discipline and encouragement to overcome being homeless. “You can’t do it by yourself in a voucher hotel room,” Bryant said.

During the urban campground’s early days, the leaders of Justiceville, Love Camp and the newly formed group worried about intergroup rivalry. “Our groups are not important,” Bryant kept saying. “We need jobs and housing.”

He and other homeless seemed bemused by Hayes, however, who gets the lion’s share of media attention and calls the Salvation Army’s administration “a low-level concentration camp.”

When a misunderstanding arose over procedures for weapons searches, Bennion suggested to Hayes, “We could be gracious about it,” adding he was sure that the problem could be “worked out.” But his words were lost when Hayes, trailed by reporters and television cameras, refused a Salvation Army search and ended up being arrested by Los Angeles police.

“You are violating our rights. We are not criminals,” Hayes said dramatically as he was led off to a squad car. He was cited for trespassing and released.

A Coordinating Council

Last week, camp residents selected five homeless representatives to the campground’s “coordinating council,” which will meet with city officials and the Salvation Army about continuing problems. They also designated another 25 to advise the five representatives so that the camp will stay democratic.

Some said they didn’t want to be involved. Miguel Campano, back at the camp for the day after failing to be hired to unload trucks, said he thought camp government was irrelevant.

“How can you worry about things like that when you’re out looking for a job?” asked the unemployed shipping clerk, who lost his job four months ago. “I didn’t come here for a life style.”

But then he joined the group on the cot side, called H.E.L.P., for Homeless Emergency Labor Pool, because employment assistance promised by the city had not started. “We want jobs, not handouts,” he said.

The camp has had start-up problems. Job-finding services have been delayed by lack of facilities, according to Deputy Mayor Grace Davis, who said the city was seeking an extra trailer to accommodate them.

Sleeping in the Cold

Campers sleeping on cots say it is cold at night, because the open-air canopies lend no protection from wind or moist night air. They wake up, they add, with dew on their faces.

The city has not yet been able to locate extra canvas, Davis said.

“There are a lot of health problems,” observed Clare Justice, a public health nurse who works for the Single Room Occupancy Housing Corp. She walked through the campground one day on a project to locate senior citizens needing help. “There was a lady aborting (a baby). I saw flu, colds, lice, ear infections, DTs (alcoholic tremors),” she said. “I was only there half an hour.”

Salvation Army’s Mulch said his agency was completing arrangements to have medical personnel from a clinic at a nearby Skid Row mission treat camp residents. Every day, at least one person has required hospitalization, he said. “It’s a fact of life. Many of them are ill when they get there.”

Los Angeles County welfare and mental health workers have been on the campground almost daily, Mulch added. Of the campground overall, he said: “This is coming together. Take a look at what was just a vacant lot three weeks ago.”

Soil Contamination

Some campers said they were concerned about contamination of the soil in the camp, and Davis said the city was having tests done. Hazardous waste specialists from the Los Angeles County Health Services Department did a “visual inspection” before the campground opened, according to spokesman Steve Stewart.

“They did not do soil tests, based on its past use, as a parking lot and warehouse,” he said, adding that the inspectors determined “the history of the area wouldn’t present a real problem in terms of contaminated soil.”

There are many examples of campers sharing with each other, and many gifts from outsiders as well. Church groups bring food, toys and clothes. Downtown wholesalers drop off unsold vegetables, and two tow truck drivers even carried in groceries from a car they had impounded for the police.

Sometimes the giving doesn’t work out. One anonymous donor left a case of bananas, but they were bad. Several of the homeless, including some children, became ill from eating them.

Despite the presence of the Salvation Army at the camp, it is usually the homeless themselves who first reach out to new arrivals.

Help From Homeless

Carolyn Blue arrived with her five children late one day. The 28-year-old had come by bus to Los Angeles “to be a songwriter,” she said. After a week in Los Angeles, however, she had only gotten as far as the campground.

As night fell, she and her children were shivering when one camper quietly appeared with a tent and set it up for them. Another wordlessly handed her a jacket to put on and a third some warm clothes for her children.

By late last week, she was still there, planning to try to sell a song she had written about “my experience here.” She had refused an offer of free housing, she said, because, “I want to be independent . . . build something on my own.”

Other families, however, have accepted offers of help.

A Los Angeles couple took Patti and Richard Benton home after seeing them interviewed on television. The Bentons had driven from Texas with two boys, aged 4 and 2, in quest of a “new life,” but had been robbed of their possessions and money.

Before they left the camp, they had gotten other donations as well, Patti, 22, said. “Somebody came by about 2 a.m. and said, ‘Ma’am, here’s some food for you and your kids.’ ” The man quickly disappeared, so she thought she was “dreaming.” But when she awoke the next morning, there was a paper bag beside her cot, filled with fruit juice and canned foods.

One Full Meal a Day

The Salvation Army provides one full meal each day, at dinner time. During the day, however, the agency hands out coffee, bread or snacks from a trailer that also has free clothing.

By 7 p.m., a long line forms for dinner. It includes many transients who don’t spend the night at the camp. A few times, the line stretched to more than 600 people, and the agency ran out of food. Some camp residents accuse the visitors of going back for second helpings, and even taking food back to Skid Row to sell.

One night, Love Camp’s Bryant and Darrell Heard, 33, of the new United Homeless League, were staring at the line, figuring out on their own how to keep it “honest.” They would set up a number system, Heard said, so that people could only go through “once, and in sequence.”

Bryant nodded in agreement.

“We’ll do it like we do it on the street.”