Homeless Tell Council Theirs Is a Mean City : Government: The poor ask for restrooms, places to shower and decent housing in a rancorous City Council meeting.

This city’s often silent homeless population brought the stark reality of street life to the City Council this week and forced it to take a look, leaving a list of demands for open restrooms, a place to shower, decent housing and an end to alleged police harassment.

“We’re tired of this city holding homeless people hostage by the gut! I am tired of watching my 16-month-old baby pick crumbs out of the carpet because I pay too much for rent in this city!” Martha Bryson, a formerly homeless mother of three, yelled in a voice broken by tears.

Dragging shopping carts and shouldering mesh sacks, about 20 homeless people and their supporters shattered the council’s usual early-morning decorum Tuesday in a meeting filled with hissing, booing, shouting and a message that the poor of Long Beach are not going to take it anymore.

“I am not eloquent,” William Siebuhr, 41 and homeless, told the council, nervously pushing back his gray hair. “All I can say is: cut the crap. I don’t have a place to go to the bathroom. I can’t take a shower.”

The May Day protest was planned by the Long Beach Homeless Organizing Committee, a union of homeless and poor people that has emerged as a political force in the city since it formed under Bryson six months ago.

It began with an “illegal” breakfast held at a Civic Center park without the city’s permission, then moved to the council chamber, where the reception was less than warm.

On the left side of the room were people such as Angel Varnes, 24 years old and six months pregnant, who washes her hair in the public library restroom, urinates in an alley and has not had access to a shower in a week.

Other spectators in crisp dresses and pressed business suits confined themselves mostly to the right side of the room.

Someone remarked about “smelly people,” and when the homeless demanded access to showers reserved for boat owners and campers at the marina, there were snickers.

“I’m a Vietnam vet, and I’ve seen a lot of sad things,” Nathaniel Williams, a 39-year-old homeless man, told the council. “But the saddest thing I ever saw was a few minutes ago . . . when the people on my right were laughing at the people on my left.”

The demonstrators succeeded, at least, in holding the attention of council members who often wander from their seats when members of the public address them. This time they listened almost raptly to the stream of disheveled speakers lined up for their two minutes at the microphone.

When they had finished, Councilman Wallace Edgerton lectured the homeless people on the evils of panhandling and suggested that they find work.

“It is not us that have the money,” he said. “We represent the citizens of Long Beach, and you are asking the citizens of Long Beach to pay for these things.”

“We are citizens, too,” a homeless person reminded him.

Councilman Ray Grabinski advised them to be grateful for the services they do get, while conceding that they are “never enough.”

Councilman Clarence Smith acknowledged that it is difficult to earn $3.50 an hour and pay $600 a month in rent. He said the city needs more low-income housing.

Long Beach has been loudly criticized by poverty lawyers, social workers and activists for doing too little to help the homeless and the poor, which city officials contend is the county’s problem.

Christian Outreach Appeal, a local charity that feeds up to 400 people a day, has the only unrestricted facilities in town for an estimated 3,000 homeless people--one shower, two toilets, one washer and one dryer, said the group’s director, the Rev. Gary Erb.

The poor complain that those facilities are crowded and dirty and that the meals are not nutritious--mostly Spam and vegetable soup. “Eating Spam every day is enough to kill anybody,” Bryson said.

But Erb said the facilities are cleaned four times a day and that the charity serves whatever food is donated. Even so, he agreed, one shower and two toilets are too little.

“There are not enough facilities in the city of Long Beach for the homeless people to keep themselves clean,” he said. “I would like to see this city have public restroom facilities. I can’t think of many cities that don’t.”

Christian Outreach Appeal asked the city for $28,000 to help place poor people in low-income housing. The city offered $3,000, which the charity refused to accept. “It’s like giving jellybeans to starving men,” Erb said. “It tastes sweet but does nothing to address the malnutrition.”

Bryson planned to deliver a four-page list of demands to each council member, calling for the immediate creation of a drop-in center run by homeless people for homeless people and renovation of city buildings for low-income housing. She also called for increases in boat slip fees and small aircraft fees “and other similar means which might also include our lucrative harbor kicking in monies to improve the quality of life in our community.”

Although homeless people consider the demands as “dignity” issues that are “non-negotiable,” the council did not appear ready to take action any more immediate than sending the matter to a committee for study.

“Long Beach is a mean, mean city,” said an administrator for a local charity.

BACKGROUND The homeless in Long Beach, estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000, were largely silent until six months ago when a welfare mother organized the Homeless Union and gave them a voice. They have since changed their name to the Long Beach Homeless Organizing Committee and have evolved into a political force, speaking out on issues that range from low-income housing to the city’s controversial trash incinerator.