Trailer Offering Homeless Aid Is Parked in Hollywood Until July 6

A city-funded mobile trailer that takes a variety of government and private services to the homeless has set up shop in Hollywood.

The Los Angeles City Mobile Ombudsman Program, which ferries a group of care providers around the city in a trailer, will be at 4759 Hollywood Blvd., in a parking lot behind the Hollywood Mental Health Program until July 6, when it will move to another location.

In the trailer, a mix of federal, state and local officials and private care providers try to link the homeless with a wide range of services they might need, such as access to veterans benefits, employment development and Social Security funds, legal services, health and mental health care, and drug abuse and AIDS counseling.

The ombudsman program, using $110,000 in city funds, tries to nudge the homeless off the streets by finding them aid and programs that can help them get their lives back in order and find jobs and housing, according to Patricia Huff, a senior management analyst for the Community Development Department who coordinates the program.

“We basically have every social service that is needed right inside the trailer and we bring it directly to the homeless instead of waiting for them to come to us,” Huff said.

“We can expedite services, so they don’t have to wait in welfare lines, and, in fact, can reasonably walk away with shelter and food stamps in one visit,” Huff said. “It is like one-stop shopping.”

The staff of about 10 employees and some volunteers greets the men and women that come to the trailer and guides them through the otherwise tedious and confusing process of traveling from aid office to office and line to line to determine what services they need, what they are eligible for and where they can obtain help.

Program employees use city vans to shuttle the homeless to and from the trailer to job interviews, welfare appointments, hospital appointments and other errands, and to take homeless people to the trailer itself for aid.

“It deals with one of the most obvious social problems in Hollywood,” said City Councilman Michael Woo, who represents Hollywood, an area frequented by transients and the homeless.

“It is a great example of getting bureaucracies to work together, and for those (homeless) willing to help themselves, it is a real godsend.”

The trailer has served the homeless in Venice, Wilmington, Van Nuys and other sites.