Smiles, Patience Replace Medications, Theories and Straps : Troubled Homeless Find Different Home

To Esperanza Pedestrian, it comes down to something as simple as a warm bed, regular meals and friendly faces.

To John Sobiech, it’s freedom--from home, from Mom and Dad . . . a stopping point on the rough ride back from a mental collapse.

To Hobie Hawthorne, it’s psychologically liberating, a new kind of mental-health adventure in which smiles and patience take the place of medications, theories and straps on hard beds.

Skills as opposed to straitjackets.

New Vistas, 734 10th Avenue downtown, is a home to San Diego’s homeless mentally ill. Hawthorne, the executive director of New Vistas, calls it “one of a kind” in the county--a home for the homeless that isn’t a hospital and in no way resembles San Quentin. The only bars here are Hersheys.

It offers victims of the street shelter from the storm, as well as skills en route to a calling of self-reliance and self-esteem. They do their own cooking, make their own beds and prepare each day for life on The Outside, where they’ll eventually make their way in homes of their own, in journeys of their dreams.

Hawthorne calls it a “crisis residential treatment program,” staffed by 25 people, 16 of whom are full-time. Funding is from the county, which allocates $700,000 a year. Since opening in May, New Vistas has treated 124 clients, a mere fraction of the 5,000 rumored to be homeless and roaming the streets of “America’s Finest City.” Of that number, 30% to 70% are said to be mentally ill, “depending on whom you talk to,” Hawthorne said.

Referrals come from hospitals, the police, county mental health, and from the homeless admitting themselves off the street. A handful of referrals come from thexcJoan Kroc St. Vincent de Paul Center, which maintains ongoing contact with New Vistas.

“It’s nice here,” said Pedestrian, a 46-year-old Jamaican who lived on the streets of Los Angeles and San Diego for a year before being admitted to New Vistas. “Nice living accommodations. Friendly, helpful people. And it’s nice to hear ideas that other folks have. That way, you don’t feel so lonely.”

Pedestrian has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Her friend Sobiech, 22, suffered a “psychotic break” and ended up at San Luis Rey Hospital before being assigned to New Vistas. Their companionship is improbable and poignant.

Pedestrian, a black woman with a buttery voice and luminous brown eyes, left her mother and two siblings after they had migrated to America. Sobiech is white, from a family of wealthy Minnesotans. He has pale smooth skin, riveting blue eyes and the sense that both he and his friend are on the freeway to recovery.

“Esperanza is my pal,” he said with a light chuckle. “Getting to know her has been one of the best things about being here.”

Frank Landerville is project director for the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, a coalition between local government and the private sector, appointed by Mayor Maureen O’Connor.

“It’s an excellent program,” Landerville said of New Vistas. “It addresses the fact that in the downtown area you have a few hundred homeless who are mentally disturbed, who rarely come in contact with the services they need. We had advocated a program of this kind for the 2 1/2 years the task force has been in existence. It’s an alternative to hospitalization for the homeless mentally ill. These are people rumbling through severe crises, who need to get back on their feet in a more permanent way.

“There was concern originally about whether the program should be downtown, but I think it’s critical that it is--that’s where the need is. People who use New Vistas live in the downtown area.”

New Vistas dawned in a barn-like building believed to be more than a century old. Situated in the shadows of San Diego’s downtown high-rises, the 14-bed home was picked up and moved to the present site in 1896. The house itself was built before then; no one knows its true age.

Found in Abandoned Home

No one doubts its karma . Pedestrian said the place “saved” her life.

She was found about a year ago living in an abandoned house. She was arrested, detained and ultimately referred to New Vistas. She learned to cook, discovering she has a talent. She now wants a job as a chef and has reasonable hope of getting one.

Most of all, she feels safe. The life of a homeless refugee is “terrible . . . It’s so hard to survive,” she said.

Pedestrian got most of her food from a trash can behind a supermarket. She confiscated fresh fruit and vegetables, yogurt, cottage cheese and ice cream. She marveled at how wasteful Americans are to throw away “perfectly good” food and not care.

She ate enough to get by. She washed her clothes in the ocean; she managed to keep clean. But as days and months went by, she grew more and more fearful--this was no life even for a “troubled woman” who knew no other way.

Food became more scarce, hygiene more of an embarrassing concern, danger more present and starkly visible.

“I quit going out in the daytime,” she said, “just so people wouldn’t see me. I traveled at night, like an animal, so the darkness could hide my filth, my shame. . . . Then, the danger increased. I was beaten, and humiliated.”

She was sleeping on a patch of land near Lindbergh Field, a small spot she calls “the triangle.” Once, a man happened by, and ultimately, demanded she share her patch of ground--he demanded they have sex.

“But we aren’t married,” she said. “I can only do that if we are married.”

So, under the soft light of an autumn moon, with no witnesses, they were married. With no minister on hand to perform the ceremony, they “spoke to God” and united themselves in nighttime matrimony.

Beaten at Each Encounter

She saw the man several times after that, and each time he beat her. He kicked her and cut her face, spit in her eyes and pummeled her with dirt. Then suddenly, he disappeared.

“Even so,” she said sadly, “I kept his name. His last name was Pedestrian.”

Now, she has hope for a life beyond fear and shame. She and Sobiech share lives in the balance, tempered by the knowledge that with the help of good-hearted people they can survive.

Sobiech grew up in Fridley, Minn., but after graduating from high school ended up in Coronado as activities director in a home for senior citizens. After his breakdown and release from his job, he returned to Minnesota, and to his parents, who committed him to a hospital for the mentally ill.

He admitted to feeling uncomfortable talking about the hospital or his parents. He abandoned both after his release and returned to San Diego, without a job or a home and apparently with prospects for neither. He soon found himself at the county mental health hospital in Hillcrest. He moved to New Vistas shortly after it opened.

“It’s positive here, caring and hopeful,” he said. “They give us goals, alternatives. It’s highly structured but in a good way. We have group therapy and one-on-one counseling. We’re each assigned chores. I’d say we carry them out happily.”

Is it happier than a hospital?

“Yes!” he said. “This is more of a home. Hospitals are impersonal and bureaucratic . . . lifeless . . . scary.”

Pedestrian wants a home of her own; Sobiech, too, wants his own place but mainly his own job. He dreams about going back to work--with the elderly. He feels a bond with oldtimers and believes he can help, making the last of their days sweet and productive.

Hawthorne shares and celebrates such dreams.

Helping, Not Healing

“We’re not healing anybody,” he said. “We’re not curing. We’re helping. We provide a loving space, a means to an end. We want these people to learn the ability to function.”

Since its opening, only five have had to be transferred from New Vistas to private or county hospitals for more serious treatment. Hawthorne said “eight to 10” headed back to the streets. The rest have been released to apartments, hotels, families, lives of self-reliance, with balance and esteem.

New Vistas is the 12th such program that Hawthorne has established. It’s affiliated with the Vista Hill Foundation, one of five mental-health programs overseen by the parent group. It’s the only one earmarked for homeless.

Hawthorne’s goal is “to keep people out of hospitals,” to keep even one from flying over the cuckoo’s nests that he says are conventional homes for the mentally ill.

“Among the homeless, you’re not talking about merely nervous or anxious people afraid of heights or crowds,” he said. “You’re talking major mental disorders--schizophrenia, bipolar crises (such as manic depression). These conditions, particularly schizophrenia, have a downward social mobility, one reason so many of the homeless have it and can’t escape it. These are people with problems in interpersonal relationships, problems staying employed, competing in the job market. . . . It’s a pathology that doesn’t lend itself well to high levels of functioning.”

Cost Is Considerably Less

Some residents enter New Vistas showing signs of violence, dangers of “acting out.” Hawthorne believes they can be better served in a freer environment, minus the constraints of straitjackets and straps and an us-and-them, doctor-and-patient attitude.

New Vistas is less expensive. It costs about $135 per day per patient, a cost borne by the county. Private mental hospitals, by his calculations, run about $400 a day.

“The treatment here is a common-sense kind of thing,” he said. “We just asked ourselves how we would want to be treated. If I were mentally ill and longing for help, I would want somebody to care about what I did, what I became.

“I would want to emerge more skilled than scarred.”