Congregations to Give Thanks for Shelter that Overcame Odds

Throughout the San Gabriel Valley, perhaps in as many as 200 churches, an identical prayer will be recited in services today .

“We dedicate ourselves this day to caring for the needy of our community and of our world,” the prayer begins.

“Teach us that the beauty of this life and of this world comes nearer to us as we come nearer to our brothers and sisters in need,” it continues.

The prayer represents the spiritual side of a very material accomplishment: the opening of new quarters for Union Station, a soup kitchen and shelter for the homeless. After five years of work, a court battle and heated community opposition, the new building at 412 S. Raymond Ave. will finally open its doors in about a month.

The facility replaces the downtown soup kitchen founded 16 years ago by All Saints Episcopal Church, which still operates it as part of a coalition of church groups.

The prayer also represents a commitment to help people such as Harry Taylor, a 32-year-old ex-Marine from Detroit, who calls Union Station “the oasis.”

“If it wasn’t for this place here, a lot of people would be in a bad way,” Taylor said last week during lunch at the soon-to-be-closed old Union Station.

A trim, athletic-looking man, Taylor said alcohol and drugs reduced him to living on the streets after a fight with a cousin.

“You should have seen me before,” he said. “I was a wreck: beard, hair out to here, smelled like the dogs out on the street, aimless, no direction.”

Now, after counseling at Union Station, Taylor said he is ready to enter a drug rehabilitation program and set his life in order. He owes thanks to the Union Station staff, he said, and hopes to attend the dedication to help out as a volunteer.

More than 1,000 people--church members, public officials and homeless people such as Taylor--are expected to attend the dedication today of the $1.2-million, two-story building.

With its modern, stainless-steel kitchen and sunlit dining hall that seats 105 people, the new Union Station will begin serving meals in another month. It replaces the windowless soup kitchen now run out of a tiny building at the corner of Euclid Avenue and Walnut Street, where the homeless rush to finish their meals in three shifts of 50 each.

The new Union Station will also provide beds and showers for 36 men and women who will be able to launder their clothes in on-premise washing machines and dryers. It will be operated in conjunction with a 20-bed shelter already operating in the basement of the First Congregational Church.

Located in an industrial neighborhood on a lot once occupied by a metal-recycling business, the soup kitchen will dedicate itself to recycling lives, said Union Station Foundation Director Bill Doulos.

Unlike other shelters that simply provide overnight accommodations for the destitute, Union Station screens its clientele to assess how they can be helped. Only highly motivated people hoping to enter mainstream society are allowed to move in. They can stay from two weeks to two months.

The new space will enable the shelter to expand the staff from 15 to 20, Doulos said. Drug counseling, job referrals, health screening and other services will also be provided in the expanded office space, he said.

“People don’t come in with assembly-line problems, and you just don’t fix them and send them on their way,” Doulos said. “Everything (in their lives) is disturbed when they come to us or they wouldn’t be coming to us.”

It is precisely that which upset the shelter’s neighbors-to-be, who rallied against the relocation.

A group of residents headed by former actress Dovie DeVillagran protested the move in hearings before the Board of Directors in 1985. The neighbors feared that the operation would attract transients and crime to the area and that the homeless would sleep on the street when the shelter was full.

The board decided in the shelter’s favor, prompting eight nearby business owners to band together as the Old Pasadena Assn. and file a lawsuit, claiming that environmental concerns had not been addressed. After lower and appellate court decisions against them, the business owners finally gave up their fight.

Mindful of the past opposition, Doulos said he believes the shelter may still have to prove itself to residents, despite restrictions placed on its operation four years ago by the board.

The shelter is limited to serving a maximum of 225 meals daily and providing housing for no more than 40 people. Litter within 500 feet of the shelter must be picked up and a Union Station employee must be available daily to answer community complaints.

In addition, a committee of residents, city staff and Union Station employees will monitor the shelter, Doulos said.

But despite the critical eyes that will be on them, Doulos believes that the new location, with its modern accommodations, will lift the spirit of the homeless and provide even more incentive for people such as Taylor to get back on their feet.

“I’ve learned more here than I’ve learned in the last 32 years on Earth,” Taylor said of Union Station. “I have purpose today.”