Husband-and-Wife Architects Help the Homeless by Design

The children who swing and shout in the front yard of a converted motel that was a notorious hangout for drug peddlers and hookers may seem misplaced.

But the families living in the Valley Shelter for the Homeless on busy Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood are the fortunate ones. They are the beneficiaries of the social concern and dedication of a pair of San Fernando Valley architects.

Based in Woodland Hills, the husband-and-wife architectural team of Arnold and Michelle Stalk designed and supervised the conversion of the old San Fernando Fiesta Motel into a temporary shelter for homeless families in 1986.

“Architects have special skills to offer in helping to house the homeless,” Arnold said. “Designers know how to create pleasant environments that are also cheap to build. They have the experience and the expertise to understand that shelter can be simple yet humane.

“Sad to say, few architects bring their professional talents to bear to aid the many poor families and single people struggling to find a place to live in our increasingly crowded and expensive city. Few designers embrace their social responsibility to succor less fortunate citizens.”

Arnold is director of development for the nonprofit Los Angeles Family Housing Corp., an organization dedicated to providing affordable housing for low-income families. He founded LAFHC in 1983 in collaboration with Tanya Tull, director of Para Los Ninos, a downtown L.A. Skid Row child-care and family-crisis center.

22 Projects

To date, LAFHC has completed or has initiated 22 low-income housing and shelter projects all over the city. (Arnold drives the streets to find potential locations for LAFHC developments. He also has several real estate brokers on permanent alert for properties the corporation might purchase.)

“We realized from the start that it wasn’t good enough just to provide physical space for displaced families, couples or singles,” Michelle said. “You also have to develop a support system, help them find jobs, get counseling for disturbed or unhappy kids, and generally restore the confidence of people down on their luck.

“As architects we can’t just draw a line and say, ‘We’ve done our job in providing the walls and roof, now let others take over.’ You have to follow through all the way.”

Opened in 1986 as the Valley Interfaith Shelter, the North Hollywood facility got off to a rocky start. There were problems with security, maintenance, staffing and funding. Since January, 1987, with a new name and administration, the shelter has seen a gradual but steady improvement in its condition, director Nancy Bianconi said.

“The shelter’s a lot better now,” Bianconi said. “Management, security and social services are in good order. A majority of our short-stay residents find jobs while they’re with us.”

The shelter was bought for $2.2 million with a low-cost loan from the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. The $300,000 needed to renovate and convert the run-down motel was raised from private sources.

The building was in a sad state when the Stalks began to plan its revival. Floorboards were rotten, roaches roamed the rooms, patches of stucco had fallen off the walls and ceilings.

Today new bathrooms and kitchenettes, gallons of fresh paint, a communal restaurant, a playground and a row of cypresses provide a pleasant environment for about 170 people in 77 units. A staff of 15, backed by volunteer helpers, provides support to those in need of temporary roofs while they struggle to rebuild shattered lives.

Shelter guests may stay up to 30 days, their accommodation financed by vouchers issued by the county. During that respite, the residents hunt for jobs and try to save money for first and last month’s rent--if they find housing they can afford.

“The homeless population in the Valley has a different composition from that of downtown L.A. or the Eastside,” Arnold said. “There’s a greater proportion of the working poor here--people who have lost jobs through plant closings, or whose income has sunk below the level at which they can afford to pay for market-value accommodation. In other areas of the city, there’s a higher percentage of the chronically displaced--the incurable mental patients and people who’ve never had a job.

“I am more and more convinced that the greater need is for permanent affordable housing rather than temporary shelter. That’s where our architectural skills should be best applied.”

A successful example of low-cost housing built by LAFHC is the corporation’s first project, on East Adams Boulevard in South-Central L.A.

Completed in 1984, the two-story, eight-unit complex is planned in a traditional Los Angeles manner, facing onto a communal courtyard where children can play in safety and mothers can keep an eye on them. Each two-bedroom apartment rents for $225 a month. Construction cost of the Adams Boulevard complex was an economical $50 a square foot.

Adams Boulevard mothers are trained in day care, and several are paid by the city to supervise the children while other women are out at work supplementing the family income. The feeling is intensely communal, with each family vying to develop the best little garden on the small private yards that open off the shared central space.

“The design works well for both social and architectural reasons,” Michelle said. “On a social level, we considered the family interactions and support systems in determining the layout of the units. Architecturally, we took into account the character of the neighborhood and tried to make the design fit in. We put in a lot of hours for our fee, but it’s been well worth the extra effort.” (The standard architectural fee set by governmental agencies for the design of low-income housing ranges between 3.5% and 4.5% of the construction cost. Given the many hours an architect must spend dealing with bureaucracies, plus the rock-bottom budgets imposed by legislation, few designers make a profit on this type of work; most lose money.)

The Stalks feel strongly that small is best when it comes to low-income housing. They consider that about 20 units in any one complex is a maximum if a feeling of community is to be established among the residents.

“If the complex gets too large, people lose their sense of identity,” Arnold said. “The housing takes on the aspect of a ‘project,’ with all the stigma and sense of failure that word implies. After five years of designing low-cost housing I’m firmly convinced that pride in one’s living space is firmly related to the scale of the place.”

Arnold cites the problem-plagued 200-unit San Fernando Gardens project on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima as an example of too many units in one project. “It’s just too big and too poorly planned to give people a sense of pride,” he said.

The Stalks support their unprofitable homeless habit with a private practice called Designers Plus that draws most of its income from the construction of custom houses in the Valley and the Westside. (The house the Stalks designed for Barry and Lori Klein on Alhama Drive in Woodland Hills, not far from their own combined house and office, is a prominent example of the boldly Cubist character of their domestic architecture.) Arnold also has a part-time post as a professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) in Santa Monica.

Arnold and Michelle, both graduates of SCI-ARC, grew up together in Culver City. With two young children and a busy practice, they often both work a 70-hour week.

“That’s why we have built our home and our office under one roof,” Michelle said. “That way I can have dinner with the babies and still carry my workload.”

A major complication in designing low-income housing is the necessity of having to deal with numerous governmental bureaucracies.

“On any one project we may have to negotiate the red tape of the federal Housing and Urban Development agency, the state Emergency Shelter program, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Community Redevelopment Agency and the County of Los Angeles,” Arnold said. “Then there are the private agencies that also have their requirements. That’s the part I enjoy least.”

Major Benefactor

Stalk points to the increasing participation of the private sector in providing funds for low-cost housing. Sydney Irmas, chairman of the LAFHC board and head of the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Housing, has been a major benefactor of the housing corporation (he gave $100,000 for the Valley Shelter).

“Since Sydney came on board we’ve taken a great leap forward,” Arnold said. “It’s so much easier to work out of the private sector, but non-governmental funding sources just aren’t sufficient at present.

“The need is enormous. The Valley Shelter has to turn away 10 times the number of applicants it can handle. Although conditions in the Valley aren’t yet quite as desperate as they are in other parts of Los Angeles, we’ll soon catch up, I fear. Only a strong collaboration between public- and private-sector sources, with the hopeful participation of many architectural talents, will make any kind of dent in the disaster.”