The Quality of Mercy : Interfaith Council Does Some Soul-Searching After Losing Important Contracts

After more than a decade at the top in the role of serving the poor, the ill and the elderly, the Valley Interfaith Council has fallen upon hard times of its own in recent months.

Last November, financial losses and administrative problems forced the agency to relinquish control of its most ambitious venture, a multimillion-dollar program in which a North Hollywood motel was purchased and operated as a home for the homeless.

Then, earlier this month, the Los Angeles City Council struck another blow by selecting other agencies to operate two federal programs for the elderly that the Interfaith Council had held unchallenged for years.

The two rival agencies scored slightly higher than the Interfaith Council on a city evaluation to administer $647,000 for both the Wachs senior citizens’ center in North Hollywood and a citywide ombudsman program for residents of nursing homes and board and care homes.

Another Contract Won

The loss was softened somewhat by the City Council’s decision to restore a $316,000 contract to the Interfaith Council to operate another senior citizens’ center in Pacoima. The agency had lost the contract in competitive bidding a year earlier to the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks.

Because of the reshuffling, the Interfaith Council’s annual budget will drop from about $1.4 million to $1.1 million, requiring some employees to be laid off and some to be hired, and fresh private fund-raising efforts to be undertaken.

More seriously, the latest setback left another dent in the image of an agency whose leaders had decided it was time for soul-searching after rapid growth transformed it from a “mom-and-pop” organization into a modernized social services institution.

Most of the 10 City Council members who voted against the agency offered no explanation but merely praised the rival organizations.

The unusual absence of council debate reflected reluctance of those in government to publicly criticize an agency long revered for its courage and innovation in serving the needy.

Some behind-the-scenes observers suggest, however, that, at a time when the funding of such programs has grown fiercely competitive, the Interfaith Council may have stretched its management capacity too thin, in part because it characteristically does not say no.

An anecdote provided by a private social-services executive who asked not to be named illustrates the point.

A man committed suicide, evidently so members of his family would qualify for more benefits, at a time when they faced eviction from the agency’s shelter after the maximum stay of 60 days.

Personal Campaign

So touched was Avanelle Smith, the Interfaith Council’s executive director, that she extended the family’s stay and launched a personal campaign to pay for the man’s funeral, even though the shelter was already facing monthly deficits.

“It sounds typical of what she would do,” said Nancy Bianconi, director of Valley Shelter Inc., the nonprofit agency that took over management of the shelter last November. “Avanelle Smith is about the most kind and loving person I know.”

Bianconi said the shelter cannot be run successfully that way.

“When you become a social worker, you have to have two abilities,” Bianconi said. “One to care enough to go out on a limb and help them, and two, so you don’t burn out, you have to withdraw, too. You can’t give too much of yourself up, or you become ineffective.”

The unhappy experience with the shelter led the Interfaith Council leaders to begin reassessing objectives even before the recent setbacks dealt by City Council, they said.

After 14 years as the agency’s director, Smith, 65, is planning to retire this year.

The summer edition of “Interfaith Reporter,” the agency’s newsletter, said a management consultant had been hired and board members had discussed whether the agency might withdraw somewhat from operating programs it created and leave them to others to run.

The newsletter quoted Lois Hamer, board president, as telling other board members, “The increased amounts of privately raised funds needed to support these efforts require a thorough reexamination of our mission, goals and objectives and modes of operation.”

Although the options are not clearly defined, some see this as a time for the organization to look to its roots.

“Whether to stay with the philosophical, the interfaith, the good will, working for peace and justice, or whether to try to administer programs that simply do not pay for themselves,” said board member Marsha Hunt--”I guess that’s probably the choice right now.”

Formed by church members and clergy of several denominations during a bitter 1964 initiative campaign to repeal the state’s fair-housing law, the Interfaith Council was at first a lobbying and educational group.

Without representing any specific church, it tried to influence and mobilize churchgoers on peace and social-justice issues, Hamer said, including trying to improve race relations and to get more public money channeled into anti-poverty programs and less into the military.

“I don’t think the nature of the board has changed over the years,” Smith said. “It’s an immediate response to human need.”

In response to recent flare-ups of racially motivated vandalism, the Interfaith Council set up a committee to combat racism.

Smith said an example occurred when the board once had to chastise its president for taking sides during a desegregation debate at a public school board hearing in the 1970s.

“They were so supportive of him as an individual, you know, everybody was hugging him and patting him,” Smith said. “They didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He finally remarked, ‘Doing this feels so good, I may do it again.’ ”

The 1971 Sylmar earthquake opened a new avenue of direct involvement for the Interfaih Council, still a tiny operation, which formed a committee to handle donations for hundreds of displaced residents.

“We just ran along as best we could,” Smith said. “It was always amazing. It does your faith a lot of good. Because we always had the money when we needed it.”

The 1970 census, identifying large concentrations of elderly in the Valley, touched off an unexpected period of rapid growth.

Even before federal money became available, the Interfaith Council established a meals program for the elderly through private contributions. In 1974, it set the standard for federally funded elderly programs, opening the Wachs Multipurpose Senior Center in North Hollywood, the city’s first.

“When the city needed to run a senior multipurpose center 11 years ago and decided the first one needed to be in the Valley, it was Valley Interfaith Council that stepped forward to do it,” said Mark Siegel, aide to Councilman Joel Wachs.

Soon the Interfaith Council was running three nutrition programs, at Wachs in North Hollywood, and in Van Nuys and Pacoima. Later it added a day care center for Alzheimer’s victims, the citywide ombudsman program to investigate complaints of the elderly and a project to help the frail elderly live at home. Eventually the Interfaith Council’s payroll reached 100.

A New Issue

The 1980s brought the new issue of the homeless. Characteristically, the Interfaith Council jumped in boldly.

The agency put together $400,000 in no-interest, deferred-payment city loans as a down payment on $2.2 million for the former Fiesta Motel on Lankershim Boulevard. The motel was converted into the Valley’s only large-scale shelter for the homeless, and opened in 1986.

Soon, however, the shelter ran into financial troubles despite hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by the Interfaith Council.

Adding to the disappointment were vandalism, an inability to evict those who had not found homes and funding restrictions that made it difficult to take in homeless families, rather than single people.

In November, under threat of foreclosure by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, the Interfaith Council turned the project over to a new agency called Valley Shelters Inc.

Since then, the shelter has bounced back. Through professional fund-raising services, it is meeting its monthly expenses, and a tough-minded management has controlled its other problems.

Officials now credit the Interfaith Council with having created a badly needed stopgap for the destitute that would not have otherwise existed.

On the other hand, Siegel thinks the shelter absorbed too much of the Interfaith Council’s attention just as growing competition for federal grants under the Older American Act was accentuating other weaknesses.

For many years, those funds were allocated almost without competition among several agencies such as the Interfaith Council. Customarily, the offices of the mayor and City Council recruited agencies that were considered capable. Once established, an agency would retain its contract year after year.

That casual system began to change, Siegel said, when Wachs and other Valley council members, contending that the Valley wasn’t getting its fair share, prevailed in having the money allocated among the 15 council districts according to census data on the number of needy.

More money came to the Valley, but the Interfaith Council wasn’t able to spend it all. Consequently, the agency’s contracts were reduced by $163,449 in 1983-1984, $90,610 in 1984-1985 and $124,134 in the first three months of 1985-1986, said Dennis Jackson, director of the city’s Department of Aging.

Then delays and some discontent plagued the agency’s efforts to set up centers for the elderly in Glassell Park and Highland Park, in the eastern part of Wachs’ 2nd District, Siegel said.

“They had to immediately go out and set up nutrition and multipurpose centers in parts of town they weren’t necessarily familiar with,” Siegel said. “They made a big effort to do that, but didn’t have the organizational infrastructure.”

Contract Lost

In June, 1986, the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks bid against the Interfaith Council for the contract to operate the nutrition and social services program in Pacoima, and the City Council voted 14-0 to make the change, without explanation.

This year the agency won back the Pacoima center but was challenged for a $548,000 grant to run the Wachs center and a $99,000 contract for its ombudsman program.

The intensity of the competition became apparent in February when Jackson made a study trip to Jerusalem, accompanied by staff members of the Jewish Family Service. That agency eventually won Jackson’s recommendation as administrator of the Wachs center. The trip was financed by a federal grant, Jackson said. He said no one lobbied him during the trip.

When proposals for funds under the Older Americans Act were evaluated this spring, the department rated the Interfaith Council lower than all three competitors. In each case, its lowest scores came in the category of administration.

Staff Size a Concern

In commenting on Interfaith’s proposal for the ombudsman program, the evaluator noted that staff members assigned to the program are given only “a relatively small amount” of their time to work on it.

The report also criticized the Interfaith Council for covering only one third of the city and for failing to describe in its proposal how it would find clients.

Interfaith Council officials contest the agency’ conclusions.

“On the contrary, we have been doing a top-notch job,” said board member David Mencher. “No one can fault for us for any of the programs we have put forth. And all our programs have been innovative.”

Hamer complained that Jackson never informed the agency of any shortcomings in its administration of the multipurpose centers or the ombudsman program. Nor was the agency consulted by the department on how much money it needed for nutrition programs, she said.

“It is not fair to tell an agency to serve 200,000 meals when we know from prior experience that the people are not there,” Hamer said.

In spite of the setbacks, Hamer, who, at 71, became president of the Interfaith Council only a few weeks ago, sees an aggressive future.

“It takes a while for a ‘mom-and-pop’ organization to come to the realization that they have corporate responsibilities,” she said. “I think they’re beginning to come to that.”

Still, even some of the Interfaith Council’s firm admirers see another lesson in recent events.

“There is nothing wrong--maybe it is even a good thing--if interfaith groups, councils of churches, start good projects and then eventually they’re taken over by others, leaving the council free to begin the next generation of needed services,” said Gene Boutilier, manager of Emergency Services Issues for United Way.

Perhaps, Boutilier thought, the fundamental purposes of the Interfaith Council are not even compatible with large corporate ventures.

“If you’re going to be a well-funded, well-greased organization, you don’t do things like defend integration of schools in the Valley,” he said. “And you don’t oppose B-1 bombers in a district that makes them.”