‘New Realism’ Hardens Attitudes Toward Homeless : Communities: Compassion for the destitute isn’t fading, Los Angeles County officials insist. But some areas are adopting the ‘not in my back yard’ syndrome.

In Los Angeles County communities where the homeless congregate, politicians have begun to adopt what one mayor calls a “new realism,” cutting back on municipal programs and placing new limits on the numbers of people served by shelters and soup lines.

Even where programs for the homeless have recently expanded, the operations have often had to endure legal and political battles, workers for the homeless say.

Elected officials insist that compassion for the destitute isn’t fading in “the homeless capital of the United States,” as some refer to Los Angeles County.

“People used to think that by having programs, everyone would be helped, that people would stop being homeless,” explained West Hollywood Mayor Abbe Land. “Now we realize that’s not true.”

But workers for the homeless say that their communities have begun to adopt the NIMBY syndrome--”not in my back yard.” In areas where rumpled street people huddle in doorways or line up for free meals, a new hardened attitude has surfaced, they say. “People want all sorts of things--jails, shelters for the homeless--but they don’t want them next door,” said Sheila Pagnani, homeless services coordinator for Long Beach.

“It’s a principle as old as mankind,” said Robert Vilmur, homeless projects coordinator for Los Angeles. “Some people tend to be more threatened by those who are in need, more suspicious of their motives. Others tend to be more supportive and sympathetic.”

Growing frustration with the street scene has brought some paring down of services for the homeless, particularly in Westside and San Fernando Valley communities. For example:

- West Hollywood, one of the cities most receptive to the homeless, is cutting by more than half the number of people it will house in an auditorium on cold nights. The city is also moving a free-meal program out of Plummer Park.

- Santa Monica, another bastion of tolerance toward the homeless, is reducing by 100 the number of people it will feed in its popular Ocean Park feeding program. Local businessmen there have complained that street people are driving customers away.

- Trailers purchased by Los Angeles as transitional housing for homeless families have been vandalized in Harbor City and Pacoima. Residents and politicians have also successfully fought their placement in the Mar Vista Gardens housing project on the Westside and in a church lot in Pacoima.

- A San Fernando Valley agency was prevented from distributing surplus food to homeless people congregating at the Hansen Dam Recreation Area.

In other communities, the picture is more optimistic, volunteer groups say, though gains have usually been hard-fought.

A coalition of churches just dedicated a new soup kitchen and shelter in Pasadena, but only after a court battle and five years of planning. A shelter in Wilmington overcame homeowner opposition to expand from a 26-bed facility to a 40-bed facility with an 80-seat dining room. A once-beleaguered soup kitchen across the street from City Hall in Lawndale has won the respect of local politicians, as well as permission to build a new two-story facility.

“The miracles have happened,” exulted Sister Michele Morris, director of Lawndale’s House of Yahweh soup kitchen. “When we do our new buildings, the city is going to let us use their facilities for cooking.”

Neighborhood resistance to programs from the homeless often has to do with the visibility of street people.

“I think it’s called ‘limits of tolerance,’ ” said Duane Nightingale, president of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. “It’s just becoming overwhelming. Aggressive panhandling, defecating and urinating in business doorways, scaring customers with drunk and lewd behavior--these are the things we can’t tolerate any more.”

Workers who aid the homeless insist that a few abusers give the rest a bad rap. “Yes, there are homeless people who probably bend the rules,” said Vilmur. “But case after case indicates that the largest proportion of the homeless don’t fall into that category.”

For municipal political leaders, there’s a growing perception that they have been left holding the bill or the responsibility for street-level programs. “Every municipality is overburdened by the issue of homelessness,” said Land.

Both Congress and Gov. George Deukmejian this year have cut programs earmarked for the homeless. At the same time, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took away scheduled cost-of-living increases from 50,000 welfare recipients, increasing the destitution of many of the homeless, critics say.

“It’s disgusting,” said Long Beach’s Pagnani, who says her city has been frustrated in trying to find treatment programs for alcoholics and addicts. “Very often a person who’s addicted suddenly says, ‘I gotta get out of this situation.’ There’s a window of maybe 245 hours when you can get that person into a treatment program. There simply aren’t enough programs to take advantage of that window.”

No one can say exactly how many homeless there are in the county. “There have been estimates as low as 3,000 or 4,000 and as high as 50,000,” said Vilmur. The best estimate for Los Angeles is that, between the mentally ill, the addicted, the runaways and battered women and those who are forced onto the streets because of housing shortages, there are about 33,000 homeless in the city.

The county Department of Mental Health estimates that the countywide figure is 55,000, about a third of them severely or chronically mentally ill.

By most accounts, the homeless population, driven by a shortage of affordable housing, continues to increase, social workers say.

On the other hand, the county’s sprawling network of shelters and soup kitchens is becoming better equipped to serve the homeless, representatives say. There were 6,061 short-term housing beds as of August, according to a directory of shelters put out by Shelter Partnership Inc., a nonprofit group that seeks to improve services for the homeless.

InfoLine, a county referral service to direct indigent people for emergency help, keeps an annual “service gap” tally, indicating the shortfall between services requested and services provided. The gap has been steadily closing in the last three years, says Burt Wallrich, community relations director for the program. In 1986, he said, 42% of those requesting help were turned down. “This year it’s about 30%,” he said.