Coalition Keeps Its Food Operation Rolling After Eviction From Park : Homeless: Organizers put setbacks aside. They’re using a van to distribute the meals outside West Hollywood city boundaries.
When the nightly feeding program in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park came to an end Monday, many of the homeless who had come to depend on the food weren’t sure where their next meal would come from.
A barrage of setbacks had seemed enough to put the nonprofit Greater Hollywood Food Coalition out of the business of feeding the hungry, at least temporarily. But it didn’t.
The city had given the group, which has been feeding about 150 destitute people each day in the park, until midnight Monday to pack up and leave the park.
Days earlier, the West Hollywood City Council had cut off funds to the coalition and set up an independent food voucher program designed to feed only about 23 people a day at local fast-food restaurants. And before that the group lost a major food donor when Drexel Burnham Lambert declared bankruptcy.
But on Tuesday, the group was back out on the street dishing out dinners of vegetable soup, ham and cheese sandwiches, and macaroni and cheese. This time, however, the food was being distributed from a van about a mile from the park, across the city line in an industrial area of Los Angeles.
“Welcome to Plummer Park Two,” said a smiling Ted Landreth, a volunteer for the coalition. “This time we think we have an ideal location in an industrial area away from residents.”
The coalition’s food truck was parked at the corner of Sycamore Avenue and Romaine Street, about half a block from the West Hollywood border, less than a mile from the park. There were no park benches or grassy areas, so the homeless gathered at the corner and ate their meals in a vacant parking lot.
Only about 50 homeless people showed up, fewer than usual. Organizers of the feeding program said that the sudden change of location contributed to the low turnout. Also, around the first of the month when relief checks are issued, the numbers are usually down, according to coalition members. Over in Plummer Park, about a dozen homeless people who hadn’t heard of the changes arrived looking for their nightly meal.
“They’ll be back as soon as the word gets out. They’ll be back,” said Larry Parnell, the coordinator of the program. “At least here we won’t have to worry about complaints from homeowners.”
Neighborhood complaints around Plummer Park led the West Hollywood City Council to accept a task force’s recommendation to cut funding for the program and ask it to leave the park. Many residents said they avoided the park because the program was attracting crime and creating sanitation problems.
“No matter where they go, if they set up near residences, they are going to get into trouble,” said Ed Riney, a member of the Eastend Community Action Community that opposed the feeding program in the park. “A program like that does nothing but attract more homeless people into the area. It does nothing to help them solve their problems.”
Under the city’s new program, the Gay and Lesbian Community Service Center will receive a six-month allotment of $15,000, enough money to give roughly 23 people a day a $3.50 meal at a local fast-food restaurant. Vouchers will be issued only to people who are enrolled in another social service program.
The food coalition had planned to temporarily relocate its feeding operation to a closed restaurant owned by hotelier Severyn Ashkenazy at Beverly Place and La Cienega Boulevard, but that option was dropped after residents complained.
Instead, the L’Ermitage Foundation founded by Ashkenazy donated more than $12,000 for the group to purchase a van from which to serve to the homeless. “The van will help us change locations from time to time and avoid complaints,” Landreth said. In addition to the van, the coalition was given the use of a kitchen to prepare the food by the nearby Bethel Lutheran Church. The group has also managed to sign up new food donors to replace Drexel Burnham Lambert, which used to donate the leftovers from its employee meals to the feeding program.
“Things are still a little disorganized now, but somehow things are pulling together,” said Jean Mahaffey, the coalition’s president.
News about the changes in the program spread quickly to the homeless population along Santa Monica Boulevard, and about 50 people were waiting for the truck when it arrived Tuesday, a half-hour later than the scheduled time.
Mark Dellavedova, 30, an unemployed mechanic who moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, didn’t mind waiting. “This is like a picnic,” he said. “In New York, it’s cold and you have to wait on lines for hours to get a decent meal. People here don’t realize how good they have it.”
But for Herbert Bradshaw, who ate his sandwich in the parking lot across the street from a cement factory, the new surroundings were not ideal.
“There is no place to sit here, except on the ground . . . All you can do here is eat and run,” he said on his way back to Santa Monica Boulevard.
