Students Get Unexpected Lesson in Homelessness

About 30 Pacoima young people on a cleanup mission discovered in a trash-strewn railroad track right-of-away the makeshift dwellings of a group of homeless men, bringing them face to face with a usually hidden social issue.

The students from Pacoima and Maclay junior high schools were participating in Saturday’s Pride in Pacoima Day, in which 250 volunteers from a number of community groups scrubbed graffiti from walls and picked up trash.

But no one was prepared to find about 20 men living in a trailer and a number of plastic sheeting lean-tos camouflaged by oleander bushes in the 10700 block of San Fernando Road.

“The kids were kind of shocked,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who was participating in the cleanup day. “It was kind of pathetic. That’s what it amounted to.”

Search for More Camps

Bernardi called the shelters “condominiums” and said city officials would explore the thick oleander bushes all along San Fernando Road--planted years ago to beautify the area by concealing the railroad tracks--to determine whether there were other encampments. He said police had discovered the camp Wednesday after receiving complaints from businesses in the commercial and industrial area.

“No question the oleanders are an asset, but if it’s going to create all these problems . . . then we’re going to have to take care of it,” he said.

Los Angeles Police Officer Dan Mastro, who was called to the makeshift camp, described it as a health hazard, but said no one told the men they had to leave. Most of them left anyway. “I have no idea where they went,” he said.

Volunteers spent several hours trimming bushes and removing the shelters, which were hauled away.

But several of the homeless men had returned by Sunday. Vladimir Sanchez, 20, who said he is a university student from Oaxaca, arrived looking for work 10 days ago--just in time for some of Los Angeles’ coldest weather on record. He said seven men stayed there Saturday night.

Sanchez said in Spanish that he had no money and had had nothing to eat. He said he and a friend, Pablo Maya, 23, came to Los Angeles on a bus because there was little work to be had at home. As they talked, they huddled under an abandoned boxcar near the huts in the oleanders, wearing only thin sweaters against a chill wind, writing letters home.

Another man, who said he had lived in the oleanders for six months, said he should be able to qualify for legal status under the nation’s amnesty program. He said he had been in the United States for more than four years, earning as much as $400 a week doing piecework as a metal polisher at a variety of shops in Burbank, North Hollywood and Pacoima.

But he said was unable to prove that he had been in the country when last year’s deadline passed for amnesty under the federal immigration reform. “I have no papers, no friends, no nothing,” said the man, who added that he was 37 years old, but would not reveal his name.

He said he has managed to find work about one day a week, earning between $40 and $50 for a day’s labor in construction, landscaping or painting.

When the police came Saturday, he said, he told them he lived in the bushes. “I told them I don’t have any other house,” he said in English.

A number of the young people were reportedly upset by seeing how the homeless live, relieving themselves in the open and sleeping on wrecked couches and mattresses, covered with grimy, torn blankets.

Others were bothered when adult volunteers began removing the shelters, said James Brown, a group leader for the city’s Clean and Green program, the youth cleanup crew organizers.

Drawing Example

“I told them this is what can happen to you if you don’t stay in school and become a productive citizen,” Brown said Sunday. “I said: ‘We’re not throwing them out. The police are. You have to understand that the police have a job to do . . . and they’ve been getting complaints. If it were next to your house would you want it there?’ ”

Arthur Broadus, executive director of the Pacoima Youth Cultural Center, also was at the scene, counseling some of the youths. “I explained to them that there are places to stay, places where they can get food,” he said of the homeless.

Billie Jean Thomas, an aide to Bernardi who organized the community cleanup day, said the attention paid to the discovery of the homeless camp undercut the positive message the event was intended to convey.

Graffiti on buildings and walls were sandblasted and painted over and hundreds of bags of trash were picked up and removed during the event, she said.

“There are a lot of good and wonderful things happening in Pacoima,” Thomas said. “Something has to be done about the homeless but we don’t need it in the community. I just don’t think the camp should be there.”