Help for the Homeless

Irony at its worst is for California to be the nation’s leader in housing construction and sales and yet have very little to show for housing the area’s homeless.

But there’s a little more than hope in the offing.

In the wake of a national conference in Washington of various groups and agencies concerned seriously over the homeless crisis, local attendees have returned home determined to “really do something about it.”

They were among some 700 representatives of public interest groups, housing industry leaders, activists and advocates of housing and elected officials who met in mid-November to discuss the nation’s condition of homelessness.

The two-day meeting, sponsored by the Home Builders Institute, educational affiliate of the National Assn. of Home Builders, and the Urban Land Institute, was entitled “Builders Examine the Many Faces of Homelessness: Laying a Foundation for Action.”

Locally, George H. Lightner, president of Rancho Cucamonga-based Lightner Development, and secretary-treasurer of the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, has vowed to get the show on the road, and Dick Bunce, of Stephen Daniels Commercial Brokerage, also from Rancho Cucamonga, has suggested a novel plan for needed funding, a plan to get the public directly involved.

Lightner, working with Ken Willis, executive director of the BIA, hopes to round up a number of key figures among home builders and industry leaders to serve on an action committee and task force.

To date, they have lined up Ira Norris, president of Inco Homes; Mel Wynn, president of Glenfed Development Corp.; Dennis Douglas, Chicago Title Co. vice president/sales manager, and Dan Hanson, Directors Mortgage Loan Corp. senior vice president.

Major players in this grass-roots type program will be volunteers from the Coro Foundation, which has supplied a five-member team of semi-retired and retired men and women executives who are charged with three missions:

--Identify the organizations currently offering shelter to the homeless in Los Angeles.

--Determine the nature of sheltering services they provide and how they determine success, given their mission statement.

--Develop a criteria and recommendations for involvement in this area by the BIA.

Willis, a Coro graduate himself, will coordinate the work of the senior volunteers in the foundation’s Reinvest Program. The volunteer team’s first deadline is Jan. 3, when its members offer their respective work schemes to accomplish their group’s assigned task. By Jan. 30, they are to present final recommendations--with no minority report--to the BIA.

Bunce explains the proposed funding plan, now under consideration and somewhat akin to paycheck donations to United Way, in this fashion:

“The idea came to me a few months back as I was attempting to figure out some ways we can put a bridge between average citizens who want to help alleviate the problem and typical frontline outreach programs that do good work, but are badly underfunded.

“Mortgage lending institutions mail compelling information about homeless men, women and children to client homeowners. The owners are invited to check a number and that number--2, 3, 4, 5, etc.--is the amount of dollars that is added to the monthly house payment bill. Many would pay on a pre-authorized, impound basis.

“This approach to fund raising, practiced for a long time on a broad scale, can raise major dollars and channel those dollars where the need is huge. Our aim is to keep overhead low and accountability first rate. Funds would be tabulated and allocated to homeless response programs pre-selected according to an approved set of criteria.”

The details of the program are being studied by an ad-hoc committee and there is “a lot of support within the banking and housing industries,” he added. He hopes that start-up costs can be underwritten by the builder/developers and other related industries and foundations.

“We’re so new we don’t even have a name. Call us for now ‘Homeowners for the Homeless.’ This gets at what we’re trying to do. Many of the ‘haves’ are ready and willing to be there for the ‘have not.’ We want to help that to happen.”