Shelters Often Turn Away Spanish-Speakers, Homeless Aides Say

Although there were empty beds at a Union Rescue Mission shelter last week, a homeless woman and her three children were turned away at the door. They spoke only Spanish and there was no one at the facility who could communicate with them.

Workers at a downtown community center who sent the family to the shelter said this was not the first time that a Spanish-speaking family was refused help there. And others who work with the homeless say that, unfortunately for the Spanish-speaking, this is not an uncommon occurence in Los Angeles.

While services are woefully inadequate for the growing homeless population in general, they are in even shorter supply for the Spanish-speaking segment, which appears to be growing at an even faster pace, specialists say.

Linda Lewis, director of INFO LINE, a 24-hour social services referral hot line, estimated that it is five to 10 times harder to find shelter for Spanish-speaking callers than for the English-speaking. She said that only a handful of the 65 or so shelters that she refers the homeless to routinely accept Spanish-speaking families. The rest do so depending on whether there is someone, such as a child or another client or staff person, available to interpret for them, she said.

Not only do most shelters lack bilingual staff members, Lewis said, but many do not admit undocumented immigrants. Since illegal immigrants are not always eligible for public assistance, it is more difficult to help them get on their feet, she explained.

“To really be effective and to meet minimum standards, shelters should be able to provide emergency assistance to anyone who comes to them,” Lewis said. Instead, she said, because shelters are not regulated and generally operate under their own rules--especially those that are privately funded, like the Rescue Mission--”they can take who they want and not take who they don’t want.”

Lewis cautioned, however, that “we should be careful about condemning” charitable programs that are doing what they can to offer a helping hand.

“A lot of shelters are trying to do the best job they can with limited staff and resources,” said Nancy Berlin, director of the House of Ruth in East Los Angeles, a women’s shelter that offers services to the Spanish-speaking.

“Still,” she added, “as we develop our programs, we have to be conscious of Los Angeles’ large Spanish-speaking community. . . . It would be a tragedy, especially during this holiday season, to have people on the streets, when beds are available, just because the shelter can’t communicate with them.”

Spokesmen for several coordinating organizations that work with the homeless, including the city and county’s homeless programs, said they were unaware of any complaints over the issue. Robert Vilmur, homeless projects coordinator for the city, said that about two-thirds of about 20 city-funded shelters have someone on the staff who is bilingual and that the program’s “general philosophy is to encourage this (bilingual capability) as much as possible.”

Vilmur said he could not explain the apparent discrepancy with INFO LINE’s experience in referring Spanish-speaking homeless to shelters.

Government-funded programs are prohibited from discriminating against any group and would be subject to sanctions if they did, said the Rev. Eugene Boutilier, operations manager for the Los Angeles Emergency Food and Shelter Program, a coalition of government and private charitable agencies that administer federal funds for the homeless.

Increase in Spanish-Speakers

Boutilier added that the coalition “hasn’t focused on the issue (of serving the Spanish-speaking) in the past, but is about to.” He said that among the most critical issues illustrating “the changing dynamics of the homeless population,” are the increases in the number of homeless families and recent immigrants, largely Spanish-speaking.

Although a 1986 United Way survey found that only about 7% of those using shelters in the county were Spanish-speakers, Boutilier said he has long suspected that the Spanish-speaking have been underserved by programs for the homeless. And he pointed out that the plight of recent immigrants has steadily worsened--particularly for those who were ineligible for amnesty under the immigration reform law and now find it harder than ever to support themselves because of the law’s sanctions against employers who hire them.

Boutilier said that among about 30 new programs funded by the coalition for the homeless this year, about a third are geared to Latinos. And he said the coalition is searching out additional bilingual programs.

Bilingual Staff

The Salvation Army’s family services in Los Angeles made a “conscious decision” about three years ago to improve its services by developing a bilingual staff, director Carol Taylor said. “We had Spanish-speaking clients and there was nobody available to assist them,” she recalled.

Today, as many as 40% of those served at the center are Latinos, and about half of them speak only Spanish, shelter director Ardelle Burrell said. “Other shelters say they they can’t serve them because they don’t have a Spanish-speaking staff,” she said. “We get people who have tried other places and have nowhere else to go.”

Burrell said the shelter also accepts the undocumented. “Somebody has to help them. . . . You got to be willing to serve the people out there who are in need,” she said.

Jan McDougall, director of Bethel Haven, the Echo Park shelter for women that turned the Spanish-speaking family away last week, said the practice is more of a pragmatic necessity than a rule. Spanish-speaking women are allowed to stay at the shelter when there are bilingual clients already there to ease the communication gap, she said.

Unfortunately, she added, the day the Spanish-speaking family arrived at the shelter’s door, there was no one who could communicate with them. Shelter workers referred the family to INFO LINE.

The family spent the night at a motel, with help from Las Familias del Pueblo, a downtown community center for needy families, and was subsequently placed at a shelter for battered women in Whittier.

In defense of her organization, McDougall said the Union Rescue Mission, which operates a downtown shelter for men as well as the Echo Park women’s shelter, provides “two of the main (drug and alcohol rehabilitation) programs” for Latino men on Skid Row.

“Our dream would be to help everybody,” she said. “But we’re already so busy and so stressed just trying to keep body and soul together . . . there may be times when we make mistakes.”