Skid Row Tenants Forced Out of Shelter Suddenly

Residents of a Volunteers of America shelter for the homeless on Skid Row suddenly found themselves out on the street with no place to go Monday, when the facility locked its doors in the early afternoon.

No VOA personnel would talk about the shutdown at the 83-bed Women and Couples Shelter. An attorney for several of the residents claimed the closure was related to the organization’s intention to sell the building at 611 E. 5th St. to the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency.

That $800,000 sale is contingent on the building being vacant, a CRA spokesman confirmed.

About 20 residents Monday afternoon piled into the cramped waiting room at Inner City Law Center, the legal aid center on Skid Row, wondering where to go and how they would get their belongings out of the building.

“They won’t let me in to get my medicine,” said Judy King, who returned from an outing to find she could not go back into the room she had been renting for $240 a month for four months. She needs the medicine for a kidney condition, she said.

With the help of Mayor Tom Bradley’s staff, the residents were given free lodging at the nearby Weingart Center for the night.

The VOA shelter has a reputation on Skid Row for being run down. County records for one four-month period last year, for example, listed several violations for cockroach infestations, broken toilets or inoperative showers.

In recent weeks, conditions have been worse than usual, said Debra Niles, 35, a resident since November.

“The elevator doesn’t work. They stopped all mail service. We can’t get toilet tissue. And the telephones are gone,” she said. “They want to put pressure on us to go.”

The pressure, and apparently the lockout, resulted because the residents threatened to thwart the projected sale of the building to the CRA, Tha Win, an attorney with the law center, said late Monday.

Win said shelter residents first appeared in his office in mid-May, after the VOA handed out eviction notices saying everyone had to leave by the end of the month.

“They (VOA) said it was transitory housing. But I’ve had tenants coming in saying they’ve been there more than six months, and paying rent--$240 for women and $480 for couples,” he said.

Win claims such residents under state law deserve 30-day notices and relocation assistance. But his attempts to negotiate with the VOA failed. At least 24 residents did not move.

Before Monday’s lockout, Win said, he attended one meeting during which CRA officials made it clear to VOA personnel that they wanted to buy only a vacant building.

“That put the pressure on VOA,” he said.

CRA spokesman Mark Littman said the redevelopment agency had been planning to buy the five-story shelter in order to turn it over to the Skid Row Housing Trust for renovation and eventual use as low-income apartments.

He added, “We hadn’t opened escrow on the building because the relocation issues weren’t resolved . . . We don’t have money to pay relocation.”