Homeless Shelters Facing Money Crisis

More than half of Los Angeles shelters face critical shortages of money, a new study of the shelter system for the homeless in Los Angeles County has found.

So far, the shelters have managed to keep their doors open and even double their service to nearly 5,000 beds in the last 2 1/2 years, according to the study by the Shelter Partnership Inc., an organization that assists in developing and maintaining emergency shelters.

But it is clear that some of the shelters will not survive unless the funding problems that plague them are resolved, according to Ruth Schwartz, executive director of the Shelter Partnership.

“If we’re to provide services for the homeless and give them a chance to live at least a humane life,” Schwartz said, “we need to assure that the delivery system is adequately funded. Or these nonprofits at some point may be forced to close, and we’ll find more and more people on the street.”

Study’s Recommendations

The study recommends additional private and public funding, increases in the county’s emergency housing payments, and changes in what the study calls the “environment of uncertainty with which shelter providers operate.”

“The hardest thing for them is to plan anything,” Ann Reiss Lane, president of Shelter Partnership’s Board of Directors, said, “because they don’t know where their money is coming from.”

The study, based on a survey of 13 of 46 shelters countywide, not including the 22 religious missions, found:

- The shelters always operate at full capacity and have a shortage of beds to meet the demand. The average stay is 34 days.

- The cost per person for shelter averages $14.21 a day.

- Staffing costs represent an average of 62% of shelter expenses.

The study found what it called an “evolving shelter system” that provides counseling, job help and other services along with beds. Shelter staffers spend from four to 13 hours a week with each of their clients.

The cost and staff counseling time reflect a shift away from custodial care, according to Gene Boutilier, emergency services manager for United Way, which co-funded the $4,000 cost of the study with the City of Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. “We’re not running motels on the cheap, with the goal of a night’s rest,” he said. “The goal of these shelters is to change lives.”

The survey was intended to determine how a cross-section of shelters operated and obtained money, Schwartz said. “We wanted to find out what kind of problems the shelters were facing. . . . Shelter operators for a long time have been saying they’re having a difficult time, but it’s never been documented in a systematic way.”

The study noted that public funding in 1986 for homeless shelters totaled $13,870,749 from city, county state and federal sources, a figure at least double the funding available three years ago, Schwartz said.

But the study said even this increased funding is “insufficient to meet the growing needs.” Though the survey did not supply figures on the need, estimates of the homeless in Los Angeles placed the number at about 33,000 people. And according to Info Line, an emergency referral hot line, during the first six months of 1987, the calls asking for emergency shelter that could not be met totaled 4,413.

Needs Predicted for 1990

“I don’t assume what is needed is a shelter bed for every homeless person,” Boutilier said. “I believe in the year 1990 we need to have about 9,000 shelter beds in all parts of the county.”

The 22 missions that operate in the county were not included in the study because they do not receive government funding, Schwartz said.

The 13 shelters surveyed are in Long Beach, Hollywood, Pasadena, Santa Monica, East Los Angeles and on Los Angeles’ Skid Row. Al Greenstein, chairman of the board at Weingart Center Assn., a 550-bed multipurpose service center on Skid Row, said the center was facing difficulty early this year before it was able to negotiate a $3 increase, from $8 to $11, in the nightly bed rate paid by the county Department of Public Social Services for emergency shelter. The increase, he said, “kept us from making serious decisions about whether we could afford to maintain that large a shelter.”

Martha Brown Hicks, president of the Skid Row Development Corp., which has operated the 130-bed Transition House for single men and women for four years, said raising the shelter’s $400,000-a-year operating cost is an ongoing headache. “I am constantly pounding the pavement to keep our doors open,” she said.