Homeless Camp Ends Much Like It Began : A Grim Place of Refuge Closes Today--and No One Involved Calls It a Success

It was ugly to begin with, a flat stretch of land flanking the Los Angeles River, fenced and then filled up with trailers, canopies, hundreds of cots and tents. Then came the people, 2,600 in all, who said they had no other place to go.

It is still ugly as it ends, a grim, dusty refuge for 236 people who say they still will have no other place to go when the camp is shut down at 5 p.m. today.

The City of Los Angeles’ urban campground for the homeless has been, as Maj. William Mulch of the Salvation Army put it, “a desperate attempt to help very desperate people.”

No one calls the attempt a success--not the city, the Salvation Army or advocates for the homeless.

Goal of Shelter Was Met

The city’s ambition when it opened the camp June 15 was to temporarily shelter the homeless, provide social services and help them find work. The camp did shelter people, in the most minimal way, and several services were set up.

But officials noted that only a small percentage availed themselves of the services, and the vast majority of the homeless who passed through the campground apparently left no better off than when they came.

After 103 days and $397,000 in city costs, Deputy Mayor Grace Davis said the camp left city officials convinced “we should not be in the shelter business.”

“We do not have the capability,” she added. “The county has the health services, the Mental Health Department they can call on, a welfare system they can bring to bear. It’s kind of ridiculous for us to suddenly start developing these things.’

While the camp was open, in fact, the city sued Los Angeles County for not living up to its responsibilities to the homeless. The county has countersued, saying it has fulfilled its obligations. Both suits are pending.

The Salvation Army, which incurred $227,000 in costs of its own in running the camp for the city, leaves with its reputation as a friend of the needy tarnished. “ ‘We never thought the Salvation Army would be involved in something like this.’ I’ve had that said to me,” Lt. Col. David P. Riley, the army’s Southern California division commander, said.

No ‘Dignity’

“There was the dust in the air all the time, lack of drainage of the water, showers that leaked from the day they were installed,” Riley continued. “The equipment was not adequate. There was no way you could bring dignity or cleanliness to it.”

“The campground was unsanitary, unhealthy and a bad environment for children,” said Jack Faz, social services coordinator for Para Los Ninos, the service agency that shouldered most of the burden of relocating 119 families with 265 children, 75% of whom came from within Los Angeles County. “It was a bad thing all around.”

Yet, it did give a small number--240 of the 2,600 homeless who passed through-- a leg up with help to find jobs. “I couldn’t have done that on the street,” said 22-year-old Raymond Byfield, who now has a $640-a-month job driving a truck. It also helped more than 100 people obtain legal identification, which employers must require under new immigration laws.

“A lot of people learned to live collectively and to share,” David Bryant, a homeless leader, said. “For a lot of people, there was a real sense of community they hadn’t had.”

In some ways the campground’s residents mirrored the Skid Row homeless population that social service providers say has become increasingly common over the past five years--more people in their 20s and 30s, often male and black, estranged from families and unattached.

However, most of the campground’s homeless were not just transplants from the streets of Skid Row. Mission operators there say that even though hundreds of people were staying on the campground every night, they had remained filled to capacity, as usual. Other experts say it was the same at all 114 shelters around Los Angeles County, which house 5,000 each night.

Lack of Money Cited

Some had lived in the street encampments that burgeoned on Skid Row last winter or belonged to communal groups like the activist Justiceville and the Los Angeles Union of the Homeless. But many more seemed to have come either from other states or had moved out of $240-a-month single hotel rooms in Central City.

Most said they came to the campground because they did not have any money. A number said they could not find or afford housing even though they already were receiving welfare, Social Security or veterans benefits.

Camp personnel and the homeless also estimated that between 50% and 80% had drug problems.

Maxene Johnston, chief executive officer of the Weingart Center, a multipurpose agency on Skid Row, was surprised to find a higher education level than the homeless norm--with schooling “at least through high school.”

Ralph Mitchell of the county’s Skid Row Mental Health Clinic, which serves the severely mentally ill such as schizophrenics or manic depressives, found a lower percentage than expected of mentally ill residents. “For the most part we didn’t find great numbers at the camp in the same proportion--about 30%--that we know exists on the street,” he said.

“We saw more families than we had ever seen before,” Deputy Mayor Davis said. “That means that element is being affected by the economy.”

Expensive Rentals Cited

In the course of helping the 119 families get short-term hotel lodging, Para Los Ninos’ Faz said, “We found 109 were receiving some form of public assistance or were on the verge of receiving it. You might say if there’s such a high preponderance of people receiving assistance, why would they be homeless? The fact is the income they received was not adequate to meet their needs. With the existing rental levels, they cannot maintain their families.

“The basic problem remains. Whether people are on the campground or in a hotel room, there’s an inadequate amount of affordable housing. That remains the primary factor.”

Low-income housing was among several solutions Davis said she felt the city should pursue to combat homelessness. Services at existing shelters should also be expanded, she added, and steps taken to improve conditions in low-income single-room-occupancy hotels.

Some measures have already been taken, she pointed out. The city placed a moratorium on rents charged at single-room hotels and adopted an emergency shelter program under which certain city buildings will be open to the homeless if the weather drops below 40 degrees. And, the City Council has started drafting a comprehensive homeless policy.

The city will also be receiving about $900,000 under the recently passed Federal Homeless Assistance Act, Davis said, which will be used to put more beds in shelters, maintain single-room-occupancy hotels and provide temporary housing.

About 60 buildings were considered as potential shelter properties, but Davis termed their cost, at $2 million and up, “too high.”

Mobile Homes Bought

The city did authorize $1.2 million for 102 mobile homes as transitional housing for homeless families, but has not decided where to put them. Mayor Tom Bradley has tentatively proposed buying 630 modular units, at a cost of $6.3 million.

If the camp had one positive outcome, Davis said, “I think we did a good job bringing to bear outside public service resources.” These included county welfare, mental health, state and city job services, and federal Veterans Administration and Social Security Administration personnel.

“There’s certainly a great need for shelter,” she added. “But you can’t just shelter. You’re just recycling them into the street.”

But the provision of these services proved a failure because the bulk of the campground residents were unresponsive. Weingart’s Johnston calls this hard-core segment of the homeless “the will-nots: No matter what you do, they will not take advantage of what’s available.”

The “will-nots” are those Police Chief Daryl F. Gates was referring to last spring when he announced police enforcement of ordinances against sleeping and living on city sidewalks. “The vast majority are there because of their indulgences,” he said of the Skid Row homeless. “This is where they want to live.”

But Davis said that even though the city was not successful in reaching most of this group, government should not give up. “Just because you have these services doesn’t mean people are going to respond,” she said. “There’s a lot of counseling that has to go on to undo the complexities of having been on the streets.”

The county is not doing this kind of outreach, she said. “We’re just going to have to increase county resources to be able to go out on the streets.”

Some felt this kind of counseling was needed even for the homeless who did try. “I thought the whole thing was jobs,” said Tom Seidman, a Studio City film maker who spent much of the summer making a documentary at the camp. “But I saw people get jobs and then lose them. It’s not jobs. It’s that people down there need a support system so they can get and keep jobs. Counseling, interacting with other homeless people.”

‘Needs Support’

“It’s stability,” said homeless leader Bryant, who ended up spending much of his time on the campground working with a jobs services team started by the homeless, called the Homeless Employment Labor Pool. “The homeless person needs support, even when back in the mainstream,” he said. The “nightmare” of homelessness follows a person, he added.

Davis also felt that the county needs to modify its stringent general relief procedures, under which homeless people can be cut off from aid for 60 days for any rule violation. Bob Achterberg, chief of general relief programs for the county Department of Public Social Services, said he could not comment on any of the county’s programs or policies because of the litigation pending with the city.

By late Thursday, 236 were still on the campground. The city said it will provide short-term housing in single-room occupancy hotels for those who were unemployed or not already receiving other aid.

City officials did not know how many will qualify for welfare or hotel rooms.

Meanwhile, Capt. Rick Batson of Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Division said officers will continue to enforce ordinances against sleeping on the streets.

Times staff writer Andrea Estepa contributed to this article.