Camp to Bar Homeless Newcomers After Friday

As the City Council voted Wednesday to appropriate up to $350,000 to meet operating costs of the urban campground, city officials posted notices that no new homeless people will be allowed to move in after Friday.

“We have to address the people that are there. We can’t have this endless parade,” Deputy Mayor Grace Davis said, noting that 1,400 people have moved on and off the campground since it opened June 15.

As of Wednesday, there were about 600 people, including about 45 families, at the campsite at 320 S. Santa Fe Ave., a dusty 12-acre area that smells and is often littered with garbage. This week, many of its residents have been battling a lice infestation.

The city recently voted to extend the campground, which is on land leased from the Southern California Rapid Transit District, past its original Aug. 10 closing date while alternative housing options are sought. It is scheduled to close Sept. 18.

IDs to Be Issued

Those on the campground today will be issued photographic identification, and officials will concentrate on relocating them, Davis said, even though no permanent alternatives have been identified. Those who are turned away from the campground will be given “referrals,” she said.

News that the campground will be closed to newcomers was greeted with concern by some social service providers who wondered if the spillover from the camp would cause the homeless to return to the streets of Skid Row. However, police continue to enforce laws there against sleeping on the sidewalks, which led the city to establish the campground in the first place.

“What do they expect all these people to do?” asked Alice Callaghan, director of Las Familias del Pueblo, a family service agency on Skid Row.

“The referrals are going to be to places that are full. They’ll be back on the street, in the same situation as before,” said Gary Blasi, director of the homeless litigation unit at the Legal Aid Foundation. “On the other hand, I’m glad to see an end to the camp because it is an unacceptably low level of treatment of people.”

Efforts to relocate people will begin in earnest Monday, Davis said, starting with the families. According to the city’s notice to the homeless, families with children must leave by Sept. 4.

‘Not an Appropriate Place’

This group is the first priority, Davis said, because “it’s very obvious that’s not an appropriate place for them.”

So far, most of the relocation for families has been shouldered by Para Los Ninos, a Skid Row family service agency that has moved 79 families--including 174 children--off the campground.

According to Dana Tkac, director of development for Para Los Ninos, most of them “came from outside the state.” The families, she said, told the agency they came for various reasons, “economic, social, they saw Tent City on television, or they came out here for the weather.”

Para Los Ninos has used $25,000 in federal emergency shelter funds to house most of them in hotels outside the Skid Row area for up to a month, Tkac said, adding that the agency will assist those who are turned away after Friday.

The single transients who comprise the bulk of the people at the campground will be given more help as well. “We’ll put more staff out there, probably three to four people,” said Bob Achterberg, an official at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services. Since early July, only one social worker from the Public Social Services Department has worked there two days a week.

Suit, Countersuit

Achterberg said county efforts are “cooperative” and unrelated to a lawsuit filed last month by Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn charging that the county had failed to meet its obligations to provide for the homeless. The county filed a countersuit against the city late last week.

The money voted by the council Wednesday will be used to pay for remaining city expenses, such as equipment and supplies. The funds include nearly $100,000 for the Salvation Army, which has been operating the camp for the city. The money will also pay for an unspecified number of hotel vouchers after the camp closes.

According to City Councilman Robert Farrell, who proposed the additional expenditures, the city expects to be reimbursed for the funds through federal legislation recently passed for emergency food and shelter aid.