For Some, Home Is Where the Tent Is : Shelter: A privately funded and self-policed encampment fills a need for up to 100 destitute people a night.

Troubled by the plight of homeless people huddled for the holidays in cardboard condominiums on city streets, Glenn Swain decided to take matters into his own hands.

Swain, a supervising tree surgeon for the Department of Water and Power, thought he would rent a tent. Not just any tent. But a 40-by-60-foot circus tent, one big enough to house nearly 100 homeless people a night and one that would be self-policed by its residents.

A pipe dream? Far from it.

More than a month later, Swain’s gleaming white canvas remains standing at the corner of Slauson Avenue and Main Street on a large vacant lot owned by the Mt. Zion Baptist Church. And each night, a wide range of destitute people--including out-of-work trade college graduates as well as hardened veterans of the state prison system--are making the bivouac their home.

Pitched behind a tall wire fence, the impromptu shelter, dubbed by residents “the Lord’s Tent,” has remained relatively trouble-free and low-profile, despite its large size and prominent location directly across the street from the county’s Hubert H. Humphrey Comprehensive Health Center.

Some passers-by mistake the encampment for a curiously quiet old-time revival meeting. And several neighbors in the largely commercial district, rather than protesting, have agreed to provide electricity and water for the temporary encampment, which was set up Dec. 23.

“It’s incumbent on the community to accommodate the homeless in some way or another,” said the Rev. Edward V. Hill, the spiritual leader of Mt. Zion. “Of course we’ve had some complaints from the community, but not that many. . . . We believe the tent has served a good purpose.”

Los Angeles police community relations officers said that, as far as they know, the encampment has caused no significant problems.

Swain, who says he is paying most of the expenses out of his own pocket, has provided nightly meals, as well as portable toilets and the tent itself, for which he owes $1,000 monthly rent on Tuesday. Swain and his wife, Sandra, longtime citizen activists, estimate that they already have spent more than $4,000 of their own money for food, heat and toilets at the site.

“The statement this makes is that there is something wrong if we need a tent like this for housing,” said Swain, who, with his wife, started the nonprofit Concerned Citizens for Community Improvement. “It’s a lot of work, but not that much because I feel like someone has to do it.

“The potential for problems is here,” Swain, 52, added. “I’m dealing with convicts, prostitutes, low-life people. But by treating them with respect, they respond to that. . . . They’ve come here and become a family.”

Residents of the tent--from 75 to 100 show up each night--say it has provided a much-needed alternative to camping under trees or in private and government-assisted shelters along the even meaner streets of Skid Row.

“Down here, you don’t have to worry about people jumping you when you sleep,” said Kevin Green, 33. “During the summer, I don’t mind sleeping outside, but when it’s rainy and cold, you need someplace to get out of the weather.”

Green, who says he has been sleeping on the steps of the nearby Brotherhood Crusade building, came across Swain’s tent as it was being set up. He remained to serve as one of seven volunteer “staffers,” who wear orange fluorescent vests and are assigned to keep order on the site.

“We get along,” Green said, “but there will always be a few little arguments.”

Another staffer is Mustache, who said he was recently paroled after serving eight years in state prison on a homicide conviction. “I’m here 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I only leave to wash up,” said the thickly bearded man, who did not reveal his full name.

During the day, everyone except the security staffers must leave the site, and they are encouraged to seek employment. At night they return, camping out in front of the centrally situated TV--cop shows and Cosby are the favorite fare--or falling asleep on their closely spaced cots.

While most of the tent dwellers are down on their luck, several insisted they are far from being down and out.

Michael Brice, 34, said he recently spent several days in jail for stealing a sandwich to ease his hunger pangs. On Tuesday afternoon, he sat on his cot, filling out an application for a lighting technician’s position at a nearby firm.

“I want a job, a family, a house,” Brice said. “I’ll take anything, even below minimum wage.”

Tony James, 42, has a part-time job as a computer key punch operator. But James, garbed in a sports jacket as he huddled by a bonfire outside, said he doesn’t have enough cash for a security deposit on an apartment. By living in the tent, he said, he hopes to save enough money to find permanent shelter.

Elsewhere on the site, Franklin James, a victim of severe rheumatoid arthritis, sat in the driver’s seat of his beat-up Cadillac--which doubles as his bedroom. James, 53, (no relation to Tony James) was recently forced to move the windowless vehicle from the front yard of a run-down home on East 47th Place that was knocked down by the city under one of its broad-scale demolition programs.

“This is a good place--the people are friendly,” James said. “And at least I’m off the street.”

This week, under the glare of publicity, the City Council applied the brakes to one of the city’s controversial housing demolition programs that has rendered an unknown number of squatters and others homeless. While government officials review the consequences of Operation Knockdown and other such programs, Swain said he plans to continue indefinitely with what might be termed his own Operation Buildup.

“We call this a simple solution to a complex problem,” he said. “I’m not advocating tents for the homeless. But until we get a better solution, first we have to get them off the streets. . . . The city has a responsibility--they can’t allow homeless people to dehumanize themselves.”

By helping run the shelter themselves, Swain said, the residents are being given responsibility for their own fates, and they have responded favorably.

If he can keep the co-ed tent open for a few more weeks, Swain said, he hopes to provide on-site job counseling and interviews. He and his wife are also planning to pay travel expenses to send five homeless teen-agers to college in Knoxville, Tenn.

The extraordinary volunteer effort is nothing new for the deeply religious Swains, who have sponsored a succession of grass-roots charity programs for the needy.

Since the late 1970s, the Rancho Cucamonga couple have distributed millions of pounds of free groceries to people in South Central Los Angeles through government surplus food programs and food banks and through a community kitchen they established.

In the winter of 1987, when Skid Row activists formed a tent city downtown, the Swains helped donate and cook 600 to 900 hot meals daily. They have also provided free housing for scores of destitute families in a South Central Los Angeles apartment house they own.

In December, when Swain won the East 50th Street church’s permission to erect his tent, Hill, the minister, volunteered to pay for the first month’s rent. Church members, who currently serve meals to the needy at a kitchen a block south of the tent, hope to someday use the vacant land to build a church.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross has provided cots, the county’s Department of Community and Senior Citizens Services contributed blankets and donors, including Los Angeles seafood broker David Yudovin, have helped supply food.

Hill said this week his church would be willing to pay for the tent for another month--and to explore the cost of building a bathhouse. But Swain said he would prefer not to further burden the same congregation. Rather, Swain said, he hopes that new donations will spring up from other sectors of the religious community.

The tent will not be folded, Swain said, as long as he can hold out financially.

“We operate on faith. It’s up to the Lord how long the tent stays up. . . . So far, no one has approached me and said the tent must come down.”