As Other Shelters for Homeless Falter, This One Survives on Faith and Gumption : Good Works Very Well in Pacoima

Several times since it opened in 1965, the Valley Rescue Mission in Pacoima, the oldest shelter for the homeless in the San Fernando Valley, has been on the verge of closing.

But, unlike the urban campground for the homeless that shut Friday in downtown Los Angeles, the mission operated by Sister Gloria Davis has managed to persevere as a beacon of hope for the area’s destitute.

Through faith and determination, Davis, a practicing minister, has kept the facility open 22 years, outlasting temporary shelters in the face of growing demands for services and an almost constant hand-to-mouth existence.

“Make your needs known and the Lord will provide,” she tells people who ask how she manages to keep the shelter going. “Sometimes, I have to pass the hat to pay a bill,” she adds.

The mission, which can house 40 people, serves a growing number of families that fit into the category called “the new homeless,” otherwise self-sufficient people who have fallen on hard times.

Padlock Surprise

“Many have come home to find padlocks on their doors because they’ve fallen so far behind on their rent or their mortgage payments,” Davis said.

Some have been laid off from well-paying jobs as electrical engineers or teachers, or as executives in public relations or other occupations.

“It’s getting harder and harder to deal with the people,” said Elva Green, Gloria Davis’ 82-year-old mother, who serves as the shelter’s coordinator for senior citizens. “The people we’re getting are so depressed. We’ve had families with seven and eight children and girls with 3-week-old babies.”

For the “new homeless,” not having a roof over their heads is a traumatic experience, said Alice Johnson, Davis’ financial manager. “Imagine picking up your kids from school and not having anyplace to take them to.”

“It’s the little children I feel sorriest for,” Davis said. “They don’t understand why they have to go hungry.”

Davis and her husband, the Rev. Isaac Davis, founded the mission because of a vow made when he was floating in the Pacific during World War II after his plane was shot down.

“Right then and there, my husband made a promise to God that, if He’d save him, he would do His work for the rest of his life,” Davis said. “And this is surely the Lord’s work.”

The Davises are ministers in the General Interdenominational Church of the First Born, which has been dubbed by some the “church with a heart.” As time passed, Isaac Davis turned more and more to running the church, leaving the management of the shelter to his wife.

“On Sundays, I take a back seat to him,” she said. “That’s his day. He’s the preacher. I don’t try to preach too, although I am a preacher.”

Over the years, Gloria Davis, 61, handsome and well-dressed, has been called the angel to the San Fernando Valley’s destitute.

She has received commendations from Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, the Board of Supervisors and the state Legislature for her work. In July, Davis received the 14th annual Freedom Fund Award from the Valley Chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Additional Shelters

In 1982, at the request of county officials, Davis took on the operation of two other shelters--in Compton and the Watts-Willowbrook area. The Compton facility has room for 20 homeless people. The Watts-Willowbrook shelter holds 40.

The only other overnight shelter for the homeless in the Valley is the Valley Shelter, converted from a 77-unit motel, bar and truck stop in North Hollywood and operated by the nonprofit Valley Shelter Inc. It opened April 1, 1986.

A daytime drop-in shelter for homeless women and children opened early last year on the grounds of the First Methodist Church in Van Nuys. Its co-sponsors are the church and the San Fernando Valley Friends of Homeless Women and Children.

Davis calls her three-shelter operation the Emergency Services Network and says she wants to expand because of an escalating need.

“We need bigger buildings,” Davis said. “Not only are we getting more people, we’re getting larger families. Some have seven or eight children. There are more girls with young babies.

“They call us from Holy Cross and Serra Memorial hospitals to see if we can take mothers with their newborn babies. We take them in if we can.”

Anna Gonzalez, the mission’s bilingual coordinator, said the shelter staff is forced to turn away as many as 15 families a day.

Steady Increase

“We’ve seen a steady increase over the past three years,” said Gonzalez, a former nurse. “We used to have more people who needed food than shelter. Now, it’s the other way around.”

The Valley Rescue Mission sits on park-like grounds on Terra Bella Street in Pacoima. Davis does not give out the address because she said she would have to turn away even more people. The shelter consists of a two-story house and six bungalow-style buildings furnished with cots, tables and chairs. All are near bathrooms with tubs or showers.

A modest building at 11741 Glenoaks Blvd. in San Fernando serves as the reception center for the valley facility. There is no sign on the building, but homeless families often turn up on the doorstep.

“It’s a miracle, but they find us,” she said.

Davis and her mother drove back to the headquarters after closing about 7 o’clock one recent night and found a 43-year-old man sitting on the porch.

“He had all his belongings with him in a sack,” Davis said. “He’d been incarcerated and couldn’t get anyone to give him a break. He said the only way to have a roof over his head was to commit a crime so he could go back to jail. He was very hungry. Mother Green got in there and fixed him a meal right away.”

The man worked at the shelter as a handyman in exchange for room and board for about six months. Then he found a job and, Davis said, “is now doing fine.”

Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 of this year, the shelter took in 215 needy people. By contrast, Davis said, it served 301 people during all of 1982. Davis’ three shelters together provided emergency shelter to 588 people during the first eight months of 1987.

Finding Funding

The only funding Davis can depend on to operate her three facilities is $177,099 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds allocated by the county. This year, because she fell three months behind on her rent, the Board of Supervisors voted to give her $16,000 from the county’s general fund.

Nobody ever pays to stay at one of Davis’ shelters. Residents are given clothing, two hot meals a day and transportation for doctors’ appointments, job interviews and other necessities. They also get counseling and, at times, she said, a dose of religion. But residents are not required to attend church services, she said.

Davis considers her shelter program a model for others.

Officially, a family’s stay at the shelter is limited to 30 days, but, Davis said, “We don’t put people back out on the street until we can get them back on their feet and in a home.”

She tells countless success stories about former residents.

“We keep track of them all,” Davis said. “Many keep in touch with us.”

Last week, for example, Marie Shipley, a 30-year-old mother of three, had saved enough money to put a deposit down on an apartment. She’d lived at the shelter since Aug. 5, Davis said.

“She’s a model client,” Davis said.

Children such as those belonging to Shipley are enrolled in school while staying at the shelter because, Davis said, she attempts to make life as normal as possible for the residents.

Serves All Races

The shelter serves all races. Most of her clients over the years have been white, Davis said.

“Some of the little white children are scared of me at first,” she said. “They’ve never seen a black person like me before. One little 4-year-old white girl called me the ‘chocolate-coated mama with the licorice-stick hair.’ I liked that one. There ain’t nothin’ sweeter than chocolate. So, now I tell all the kids that I’m their chocolate mama.”

Although Davis looks on her program as a success, she can’t help dreaming of having more money for items such as new residential buildings, playground equipment, charge accounts for clothing for her clients and enough money to pay her bills on time.

“If we could just get somebody to pay our phone bill or our utility bill,” she said.

Davis also envisions getting landlords to open their boarded-up homes for transitional housing for the homeless to enable her shelters to serve more people.

“When I first started asking for money, people would say, ‘Here comes Sister Davis and her bums,’ ” she said. “We’ve become respectable, but rich people still don’t want to give money to the homeless. We’re not glamorous enough. They’d rather be associated with the Philharmonic than the homeless.”

In the beginning, Davis said, she believed that the Valley Rescue Mission would be a temporary emergency facility.

“It sure hasn’t turned out that way,” she said.

“Those shelters are her life,” her mother said. “She’s my only child, and I’m very proud of her. She’s doing the Lord’s work.”