It’s Home for the Holidays : ST. VINCENT DE PAUL : ‘This Place Is Really an Oasis in the Midst of Sadness’

It’s the largest collection of homeless people under one roof in San Diego County, but it’s hardly a flophouse, either in accommodations or in spirit.

To the outsider, it conjures stereotyped images of disillusioned men and women down on their luck, in need of a shower, a good hot meal, a clean bed and a glimmer of hope for what tomorrow might bring.

So then a double-take is in order once you’re inside the facility:

You see carpeted hallways and bedrooms, its occupants issued card-keys to ensure their privacy and dignity. There’s 24-hour security with guards and cameras. There are television rooms and a library and a resource center where one can look for permanent housing and a job and figure out how to master the city’s transit system.

There are children’s activity rooms and quiet reading rooms. There’s a full-size laundry area and a sparkling clean, ultra-modern kitchen. The resident population--they’re called “guests”--share the tasks of cleaning restrooms and vacuuming the halls and scrubbing down walls. There are potted plants in the hallways illuminated by indirect lighting and, this week, Christmas trees and presents are everywhere. There’s even an actual petting zoo this week for the children, next to a full-scale Nativity scene in the central courtyard.

If the accommodations aren’t too shabby, neither are the occupants. One is a former journalist who figured on being a press secretary to a big-city mayor--until the candidate lost the election. Another was a security manager for a chain of retail stores until her health deteriorated and her personal life crumbled around her. Another is a mental health counselor who got into a financial bind while between jobs.

One is an aerospace worker who was barely living within his means and who couldn’t get immediate work when a job contract was finished. Another is a graphic artist looking for work. One day a businessman in personal financial straits ran into his accountant who had taken a room down the hall. Who’d ever figure on seeing you here, they remarked sheepishly to each other.

And so it goes at the St. Vincent de Paul Joan Kroc Center, where the broken dreams and misfortunes of 300 people are being swept up, resorted and reassembled, and where the future is half-full, not half-empty.

“A lot of people think falling on hard times could never happen to them,” said Sister Christine Giordano, one of the administrators at the center. “But the fact is, most of us live within 60 days of being homeless if we were to miss two paychecks in a row.”

Lives in Transit

It seems an appropriate irony that the 3 1/2-month-old facility at 15th Street and Imperial Avenue, which looks a bit like an ultra-modern monastery, is situated across the street from the San Diego Transit headquarters. The folks who are living at St. Vincent de Paul, too, are in transit between life styles.

Consider, for instance, the trials faced by the Thomas family: 25-year-old Rich, a six-year Navy veteran; his wife of 5 years, Kelly, 24; their 2-year-old daughter, Nicole. Nowhere in his blueprint for their future did Thomas figure he’d have to live for a week on the streets of National City, his duffel bag serving as a baby crib as the three dodged police and huddled in alcoves for overnight shelter. But then, he didn’t count on a roommate bugging out, leaving him unable, on Navy pay, to cover the back rent that was due.

Thomas made a few phone calls, got temporary housing at an El Cajon community shelter and then ended up on a referral here, at the St. Vincent de Paul center.

With the peace of knowing that his family was warm and fed, Thomas--an electronics technician--hustled around for a job and was hired two weeks ago at a Radio Shack store. Just the other day he was promoted to assistant store manager--”I’ve got the keys to the palace,” he boasts--and now they’re planning to move into their own apartment on Jan. 2. In the course of 40 days, Thomas went from sleeping penniless on a National City street to a modest management job.

Story Typical

The folks who run the center say Thomas’ story is typical of the lives and times of the guests here: persons, including entire families, who are temporarily homeless--but emphatically are not street people--and in need of temporary room and board but who are motivated to get on with life as soon as they can.

“There’s a crisis in this city, but it’s more than just needing more beds for the homeless,” said Patricia Leslie, the residential services coordinator--or housemother--for the center. “More beds alone are not the answer. We also need to sit down with the homeless and discuss how they got that way, how they can get back on their feet and keep from becoming homeless again.

“There are people on the streets who are chronic homeless because they want to be. They wouldn’t take a bed even if you tried to carry them to one. They’re the ones who get the attention. They’re easiest to label, and they’re the ones who can be scary. They make their living on the streets.”

Lunches Available

Street people are not ignored by the St. Vincent de Paul center. Monday through Saturday, between 400 and 700 lunches are served daily by the volunteer organization Catholic Worker to anyone wanting a free meal, while on Sunday Temple Beth Israel provides brunch there for between 700 and 900 people.

In addition, the center provides free haircuts, showers and shaving supplies, along with medical care through a staff doctor and nurse and the volunteer assistance of other, non-staff physicians.

When weather turns particularly sour and even hardened street people look for shelter, cots are set up for emergency overnight shelter in the dining hall. The shelter is manned by St. Vincent de Paul’s own residents.

But the primary mission of the St. Vincent de Paul center is to provide not only room and board but job guidance and housing assistance for those who are temporarily on hard times but who have no intention of wallowing in it.

Indeed, not just anyone is admitted to the center. Any given night there may be empty beds inside the center while street people huddle under blankets at the center’s very front door.

Screening Process

Short stays of two or three days are offered to persons who are waiting for a paycheck or a bus ticket back home, Leslie said. But applicants for long-term stay are screened first by one of any number of social service agencies in town--Catholic Community Services, Jewish Family Services, Episcopal Community Services, the Presbyterian Crisis Center and Battered Woman Services to name a few. Their counselors and case workers interview the person, evaluate his situation, determine his future options and decide whether admission to the St. Vincent de Paul center is an integral part of his recovery.

The mere requirement of meeting with a social worker filters out many persons not seriously interested in bettering their lives, Leslie said. If the social worker is unconvinced the person is intent on changing his situation, he won’t be given a referral for admission to the center.

“But we don’t turn anyone away empty-handed,” Leslie said. If nothing else, the person will be given a list of other emergency shelters, social agencies and--if the person seems destined to spend the night on the streets--such basic survival advice as what parts of Balboa Park are safest for overnight sleeping and the suggestion that the person also consider church courtyards, bridge underpasses and rooftops versus building alcoves for safekeeping.

The St. Vincent de Paul center--built at a cost of $11.8 million, including a $3-million donation from philanthropist Joan Kroc--has 97 four-, five- and six-bed rooms, enough to comfortably handle 72 single men, 58 single women, 23 families of up to six members, two married couples and a number of single mothers with children.

It operates as a private, nonprofit corporation under the auspices of the Catholic Diocese of San Diego, but relies primarily on private donations--the large numbers of which are due to the hustling prowess of Father Joe Carroll, president of the center--and offers its services to persons without regard to religious background.

House Rules

Residents must agree to abide by any number of rules, including a 10 p.m. curfew, a ban on liquor and drug use within or outside the center, and the pledge of at least six hours of volunteer work around the center each week, ranging from building maintenance to yard work to help in the kitchen or laundry.

Persons who violate a house rule are given a “red dot” and three dots means eviction the following day. It’s a firm policy designed to keep out deadbeats and recalcitrants, and current guests know of any number of occupants who were asked to leave.

Residents are expected to immediately start sorting out their lives by hunting for jobs and searching for permanent housing with the help of the center’s resource office. To assist in that end, a separate incoming telephone line to the St. Vincent de Paul center is answered only by a simple “hello” so the fact that the job or housing applicant is temporarily homeless will not be telegraphed to a landlord or employer.

“There is a certain built-in bias in a lot of people towards the homeless, and if they think they’re calling a shelter, that sets off certain alarms in their mind that maybe this person won’t be a good employee or a good tenant. We don’t want our people labeled that way,” said Leslie.

After a two-week stay, the person is evaluated to see what progress he is making in finding a job and housing. Depending on circumstances, persons can stay up to nine or 10 months in 30-day increments.

Long-Term Guests

These long-term guests live on the third floor of the facility--and by a separate set of rules and guidelines. They are, for instance, exclusively and entirely responsible for the housekeeping chores of the third floor.

Perhaps the hardest caveat of third-floor living is agreeing to live by a budget administered by the center staff in which the resident must set aside a percentage of his income for future housing expenses, and account for literally every penny spent by turning in receipts.

Purpose of the budget is to teach the necessity of careful financial planning, but it’s not without its critics. Some men say they have purposely avoided “promotion” to the third floor because they don’t want to live under a staff person’s financial scrutiny. One second-floor resident said that he specifically could not tolerate third-floor living because he was told coffee was an unpermitted expense at his workplace because he could drink coffee for free at the center, and his wife complained that she didn’t want to have to account for every piece of bubble gum she purchased.

Willing to ‘Knuckle Under’

But Elizabeth Lewis, who came to the center with her three sons on Nov. 10 and now lives in a third-floor room, said she doesn’t mind having to knuckle under financially. “It’s hard, but I’ll do what I have to in order to get to where I want to go,” she said.

Lewis had worked as a security manager for 15 years for a large store in the Los Angeles area when she had to take a medical leave. But her benefits checks didn’t arrive quickly enough, she fell behind on her rent and she ended up moving to San Diego to live with her brother and his family.

That situation didn’t work out, however, and Lewis was referred by a social worker to St. Vincent de Paul, where she was accepted for what may become a stay of three months or longer as she regains her health and looks for new work.

She and her sons, aged 9, 11 and 15, share a single, large room with two bunks, a double bed, a closet, a small round table and a small desk. Two dim ceiling lights illuminate the room; two windows open onto the interior courtyard.

“This is more like a home than a shelter,” she said as her sons played on the floor with Christmas presents they received earlier in the day as donations to the center.

“I wasn’t sure what to expect when I was told to come here, but when I saw the place, I said, ‘Wow, this is nice!’ ”

William and Wanda Rodgers are staying at the center with their two children, 12-year-old Shannon and 9-year-old Ronald, after having lived for two years in a 12-foot travel trailer, bouncing from one county campground to another. Rodgers was a house painter in Arkansas and came to California in search of better work, but found none.

The couple receives $753 a month in welfare, and by staying for free at the St. Vincent de Paul center, are trying to save enough money to rent their own apartment.

Toll on Pride

Rodgers said it took a toll on his pride to turn to the center for help. “But the times were getting hard and sometimes you got to do things you don’t want to,” he said. The decision to seek help was softened, his wife added, “because everyone here’s in the same boat.”

Shannon said she likes the place because “there’s a school across the street, there are activities after school and you don’t have to walk a mile to the bathroom.”

Thirty-three-year-old Robert O’Day, a professional truck driver who hopped a freight for San Diego after his employer shut down a few weeks ago in Florida, said he has “adopted myself to this place.”

O’Day, who is waiting to take a test next month to be licensed by the California Highway Patrol as a school bus driver, said, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here, but I’ll never forget it, either. The people here are all determined to make it. They want to show they can get off the streets.”