Homeless Plight Made Worse by a Growing Backlash, Advocates Report

The plight of Los Angeles’ homeless population is being aggravated by a backlash from business and homeowner groups that have organized to drive shelters, food pantries and other social services from their neighborhoods, according to a report released Monday by a coalition of homeless advocacy groups.

At a press conference at the site of one now-demolished city-run shelter, homeless advocates asserted that while Los Angeles residents are generally concerned about the homeless, they want them in someone else’s neighborhood.

Even when funding is available for homeless services, business and community groups are creating political pressure and legal obstacles to stymie the programs, the report said.

The 102 trailers purchased to house homeless families earlier this year by the city and now held up by council members fighting placement of the mobile shelters in their districts are the latest symbol of the backlash, said Gary Blasi, a public interest lawyer representing the National Coalition for the Homeless.

“Tonight there are women and children sleeping outside . . . because there is no leadership in the City Council,” asserted Blasi, speaking for the groups that assembled the report. Other groups involved in the report’s creation are the California Homeless Coalition, Commission of Conscience and the Los Angeles Homeless Health Care Project.

Publicizing Problem

Nancy Minte, with the Inner City Law Center, said publication of the report is the first step in an effort to make the public and politicians aware of the problem.

“We would like to see the general public--the silent majority, I believe--put some heat on the backlash,” Blasi said.

The report said the organized backlash “has taken two forms, inconsistent on the surface but emerging from the same anti-homeless impetus.”

The first form is to attack the programs that attempt to provide survival services to the homeless, the report said.

“Backlash leaders have lobbied, picketed, conducted telephone campaigns against realtors who would sell property to service providers and threatened violence to stop social services,” according to the report.

“The other facet of the backlash,” the authors wrote, “has been against homeless people directly. First in downtown Los Angeles, then in Venice and most recently in West Hollywood, police have attacked and destroyed homeless people’s possessions. . . .”

In one case that illustrates the effectiveness of organized opposition, the report detailed the problems faced by Las Familias del Pueblo, which in 1985 secured $1.4 million in funding to open a shelter for homeless families.

Suitable Site Found

A site was found in the Temple/Beaudry area near downtown Los Angeles, but despite initial backing from City Councilman John Ferraro and the Community Redevelopment Agency, “the site was opposed by local business and property owners and was ultimately made unavailable for shelter,” according to the report.

The group then located a tract of land owned by the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The city was agreeable but, the report charges, team owner Peter O’Malley opposed locating the project near Dodger Stadium.

The report went on to say that O’Malley pledged money to the shelter project if it were located somewhere else, “but he did not make good on his promise.”

O’Malley has said the site is occasionally used for overflow parking at large events held at the stadium and is not appropriate for a homeless shelter. A spokesman confirmed that the team owner had promised to help financially if a suitable site was found. But one never was, he said.

Las Familias del Pueblo ran into similar problems at other sites and some were ruled unfit when toxic wastes were found at the locations.

Finally, the group abandoned its project when its grant ran out. The group had to return $1.4 million to its state and local government backers and is still unable to offer emergency shelter to the homeless families it serves.

Plight of Men’s Place

In another case, the report examined the problems faced by the Los Angeles Men’s Place, a day center for mentally ill homeless men that operates in Skid Row. The group secured $4 million in grants and the rights to develop an abandoned warehouse and planned to build a center to provide housing and jobs for mentally ill homeless.

Although it had the funds for the renovation, it still needed a variance from the zoning board. That variance was opposed by the Central City East Assn., a business group composed of wholesalers and food processors in the area. The group convinced the zoning authorities to first deny the variance outright and later to allow only a four-year conditional variance.

Now, one year after the warehouse location was first made available, there are still more zoning hearings and appeals. And LAMP officials said they fear their benefactors may not support the program if it could be forced to close just a few years after opening, under the terms of conditional permit.

In Venice, the situation is even more explosive.

According to the report, the building in which the St. Joseph’s Center operated a free lunch program, was burned down. Arson was suspected by Fire Department officials but no suspect was ever identified.

Threatening Message

When the organization located another site, it received a telephone message that said: “If you think your building will still be standing if you go through with this . . . deal, you’re wrong.”

One owner of the property being purchased received a similar threatening message: “If you close the escrow, the building will not be standing.” The chairman of St. Joseph’s had his tires slashed and the center received bomb threats.

Daybreak, a Santa Monica-based homeless women’s social services provider, reported that landlords refused to rent it property upon learning that it would serve the homeless.

On an individual level, the backlash is most evident in the police sweeps of homeless encampments, according to the report’s authors.

During the first sweeps in February, which according to the report came at the urging of the Center City East Assn., people were given less than 10 minutes to remove their belongings before they were cleared by a skip loader.

In Venice, where a technicality in the city code makes it impossible to arrest people for sleeping on the beach, there have been numerous “middle-of-the-night wake-ups . . . (and) homeless people have had their belongings confiscated and destroyed,” according to the report.

And in West Hollywood, where a final vote has yet to be taken on a proposed ordinance prohibiting sleeping in public parks, sheriff’s deputies have begun systematically clearing out homeless people encamped in West Hollywood Park and Plummer Park, the report said.

In one sheriff’s action detailed in the report, 24 deputies armed with shotguns entered Plummer Park. Those who admitted to being homeless were searched.