L.A. Rolls Out Oasis of Hope for Homeless

Homeless and jobless people from the San Fernando Valley were transported in vans from parks and shelters Tuesday to a one-stop shopping selection of services, pulled together for the first time inside a roving trailer by the city of Los Angeles.

Parked near the Van Nuys Salvation Army office until Sept. 16, the trailer offers services connected with welfare, veterans, Social Security, shelters, mental health and employment--all in a row.

“It’s too bad it can’t always be like this,” said Connie Gonzales, job interviewer with the Employment Development Department. “Usually we have to refer people all over the universe.”

For Carlton Crayton, a father raising three young children alone, the new city program, called the Mobile Ombudsman Program, provided immediate help and a leg up on other aid. For Arlene Burns, laid off from her job a month ago, it offered tips on where to look for work.

New Site Next Month

The trailer and several yellow and white-striped tents will move on next month to another Los Angeles location, not yet announced. Its performance will be assessed before it continues to travel around the city.

The program is being touted by city officials as a model approach toward the myriad problems of the urban homeless, and criticized by Van Nuys neighbors who fear it will make the area a magnet for the homeless.

Stan Welbourn is among the nearby residents who worry that the homeless would not be transported out of the area at the end of the day. On Tuesday, Welbourn said that had not yet proved a problem.

“We didn’t particularly see anybody hanging around,” Welbourn said, “but then I wouldn’t necessarily have expected to today--not with all the TV stations around and so on.”

Like many of the 70 adults and 12 children who participated in the program’s first day, Crayton has not been homeless for long. He said he and his children, ages 6 months, 3 years and 8 years, had stayed in motels during the four months since his wife left him for another man.

A few days ago his savings ran out, and he took to the streets.

“We had nowhere to go last night,” he said. “We walked the streets until about 2:30 a.m. At night like that my baby can catch colds.”

On Tuesday, priorities for Crayton were basic survival: The Salvation Army gave him and his children free lunches of sandwiches and iced tea. Chrissa Cummings, shelter coordinator for Better Valley Services, helped them find a place to stay for a few days.

‘Pulling a Few Strings’

Jim Davis, a social worker with the Los Angeles County Department of Social Services, referred Crayton to a social worker at the Van Nuys regional office who would try to straighten out his welfare application and maybe provide emergency food money.

“They’re really pulling a few strings for me today,” Crayton said as he boarded a city van that would take him to the welfare office and then on to a shelter or motel.

Once he gets his “feet back on the ground,” Crayton said, he hopes to hire a baby-sitter and find work. He had held down a steady job in shipping and receiving, he said, until he quit work to care for his children.

Next to shelter and food, employment was the greatest preoccupation among those who partook of the services Tuesday.

Burns, for instance, is not yet homeless, but she is on the verge of being thrown out of her mother’s house a month after being laid off from her secretarial job.

“I just want to go back to work,” Burns said. “I don’t want any money from anybody.”

Burns bypassed the sandwiches and the services for shelter and welfare and headed for Marty Gish, a coordinator of training and job development with the city’s Community Development Department. Gish gave her a list of Valley job training programs and told her to come back later in the week to report on her progress.

“I think this is great. I think this is absolutely wonderful,” Gish said as she left the parking lot.

For the homeless who have been out of the job market longer, a job-preparedness workshop will be held every morning. Program Director Kevin Anthony, who runs the workshop through a Los Angeles Private Industry Council grant, drew the interest of 15 people Tuesday morning.

“I told them to come back again tomorrow,” Anthony said. “I gave them assignments, too--to establish their goals.”

Anthony, who has worked with the homeless downtown and in Venice, said that he has no trouble finding them jobs but that getting them to stick with the jobs is the hard part.

“The trick is getting them into the right job,” he said.