Home at Last : ‘Beyond Shelter’ Program Wages War on Homelessness by Providing Families Long-Range Housing Alternatives

Sometimes, late at night--in the quiet, in the dark--Maria Ortega would sit outside her family’s desert home in Michoacan, Mexico, and dream of a better life in El Norte with her husband, Federico. The dream was to have a house with a shiny new kitchen, carpeted floors and, the most important luxury, real beds with box springs and clean sheets.

But eight years later, the Ortegas’ life was anything but a dream. They lived in a cardboard shack barely five feet high, with no gas or running water, a single dangling light bulb above a small refrigerator and a mattress shared by her five children while she and Federico slept on a concrete floor.

The Ortegas, legal residents who immigrated to the United States in 1982, paid a monthly rent of $100 for that nightmare. They spent one-third of their income from Federico’s job as a warehouse employee in downtown Los Angeles to live in an East Los Angeles chicken coop.

Today the Ortegas live in a spacious three-story, four-bedroom, two-bathroom Whittier townhouse for $221 a month. The fulfillment of their dream--the subsidized rent, the stainless steel sinks, beds for all the children, the security and the dignity--is a result of a concerned social worker who heard about their living conditions and sent them to Beyond Shelter.

The nonprofit social service agency secured move-in money--first- and last-month’s rent, plus a security deposit--and enrolled the Ortegas in a government subsidy program that allows low-income tenants to pay rent on a sliding scale.

Beyond Shelter is a new twist in the war against homelessness. While more than 160 shelters and programs throughout Los Angeles County offer temporary relief from two weeks to two months, Beyond Shelter founder Tanya Tull says she wanted to focus on permanent housing. By tapping into existing housing funds offered by state and local governments, Beyond Shelter aims to do just what its name implies.

Tull says her 18-month-old agency has placed 105 families, including 300 children, in permanent housing across Los Angeles. The apartments range from townhomes in upper middle-class neighborhoods to units in government-subsidized buildings. Depending on a family’s income and the requirements for several rental programs, rent ranges from $160 for a family of two to $650 for a family of five or larger.

About 75% of Beyond Shelter’s families are single mothers with three or more children who have an average monthly income of $800. Because many mothers cannot afford child care, they do not work and they receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps and supplemental government assistance. About 20% of Beyond Shelter’s clients are employed; the majority receive minimum wage.

A former Los Angeles County social worker, Tull, 47, is president of Para Los Ninos (For the Children), a Skid Row social service agency she founded in 1979 that now has an annual budget of $1.4 million. Four years later, Tull co-founded the nonprofit Los Angeles Family Housing Corp., which develops low-cost housing for families with children. She also helped start two temporary shelters for the homeless, the Gramercy Place Shelter in 1986 and Chernow House two years later.

After a private donor contributed $50,000 in start-up money, Beyond Shelter opened its doors at 4032 Wilshire Blvd. With a staff of 11 people and a budget of $310,000 for its first operational year, the agency is still developing support and awareness of its work “to inform people, especially interested landlords, that there are solutions to homelessness,” says Tull, who adds that she is also seeking financial support from several foundations, corporations and private individuals.

The screening procedures for families take several weeks. “We will only work with families who want to work with us,” Tull says. “We lay out all the cards on the table, everything about their family history, their problems and what they want for their future.”

Apartments are secured from landlords “empathetic, not sympathetic to the homeless,” Tull explains, and clients’ move-in costs--which can be as much as $2,500--are paid from government resources including the state’s Homeless Assistance Program, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and foundations and social service agencies such as On Your Feet. Homeless families, Tull says, are usually unaware of these resources.

Nicole Pagourgis, co-founder and director of On Your Feet, says her program has provided almost $80,000 for rental assistance, furnishings and for getting utilities turned on for 85 Beyond Shelter families.

Started 19 months ago, the privately funded On Your Feet is designed to “get people back into housing,” Pagourgis says. “There are a lot of good programs in the city and we work with those programs, but the neat thing about Beyond Shelter is that it shares our philosophy. We both feel that emergency assistance is not enough. The whole goal of what we are doing collaboratively is to break the cycle of homelessness. You do that by getting people back into permanent housing and you do everything possible to keep them there.”

While Pagourgis, Tull and others agree that temporary shelters cannot solve the homeless problem, they agree that the shelters are crucial.

Ruth Schwartz, executive director of Shelter Partnership, which in the last two years has distributed almost $5 million in food and goods to the homeless in Los Angeles County--estimated at 160,000--says that she and Tull visited a Washington-based agency that focuses on permanent housing before Beyond Shelter opened.

“We’ve been so busy with building emergency shelters and getting people the emergency food, it’s only now that communities are catching their breath and asking ‘What is missing from the system?’

“Many shelters just don’t have the time to find permanent housing. Some have very good housing referral programs, but any time you specialize you get to use all your talents, which is why Beyond Shelter is special. It devotes all of its resources to permanent housing,” Schwartz says.

“There is a great need for the shelter system,” Pagourgis adds. “But it isn’t complete. The road from homelessness to self-sufficiency is a difficult one. It takes customized, financial services, follow-up time and all this is a very expensive thing to do.”

In order for a family to receive help from Beyond Shelter the head of the household must sign a one-year contract agreeing to work with the organization in meeting goals toward becoming self-sufficient. Families must agree to pay the monthly rent, not damage the apartment, get counseling for family problems as well as learn how to budget a welfare check.

The contract, although not legally binding, “helps establish trust, commitment and dignity between the family and Beyond Shelter,” Tull says.

All families are counseled on their rights as tenants as well as their responsibilities to their landlords. With a family case worker at their side, the family reviews a “Survival Skills” handbook--written in English and Spanish for Beyond Shelter clients--that is filled with information about money management, budgeting, housekeeping, telephone numbers of social services and other resources in their area as well as maps of the neighborhood.

Beyond Shelter case workers are in contact with families at least once a week, often concluding visits with information about health benefits or where to go for literacy classes.

So far, only 10 families have been dropped from the program because they didn’t pay their rent; they damaged the property, or they were housing additional occupants in their apartment. Four of the families returned to shelters. The others moved in with relatives or left the state.

Next year, Tull plans to link with agencies that will provide job training and development for its clients.

She also is working on the first apartment building to be owned by the agency, Columbia House, a 41-unit complex that will have on-site services for formerly homeless and at-risk families. Beyond Shelter has received $3.9 million--primarily government funds--to purchase and renovate the building located near MacArthur Park.

Jan Scott, vice president of Envoy Property, a management company in West Los Angeles, oversees 1,000 apartment units throughout the city. She says several property owners have agreed to work with Beyond Shelter because they wanted to do something to take care of the homeless, including tenants who are formerly abused women, mothers with disabled teen-agers and drug addicts undergoing rehabilitation.

“And Beyond Shelter doesn’t let the tenant get away with anything,” Scott says, adding if a tenant is late in paying the rent, Beyond Shelter intervenes with counsel--not cash--to help the family and landlord resolve the problem. But such instances are rare, Scott adds.

Adele Elliott, occupancy supervisor for American Development Corp., a property management company with 1,300 apartment units, says, “So far we are batting 100%” with Beyond Shelter clients.

“I really do think that is due to the support and assistance the families get with that agency. They are told and shown how they need to manage from this point on. They aren’t just shoved into an apartment and forgotten. Beyond Shelter is there from the beginning to end. I need that,” she says.

Says Tull: “I have been in the middle of the homeless and housing problem for a long time. When I started out in this work, the problems seemed so simple because we always had housing back then. If they were on welfare, the welfare they received was enough. If they worked, their income was enough to afford a place to live. But that just does not exist anymore.

“Society has dug deep pits for homeless people and we have taken away the ladder. I have watched us create a sub-class called ‘homeless people’ and we think that their needs are different than ours. They’re not. They want a roof over their heads, too.”

Maritza and Simon Lopez, the parents of four boys, ranging from 1 to 13 years, were living in a one-bedroom Van Nuys apartment, struggling to make ends meet, when they were evicted last year. The family couldn’t afford to pay a rent increase. The youngest boy, Simon Jr., was barely 2 months old then.

“They let me go back inside the apartment to get diapers and milk for the baby,” Maritza recalls. Maritza, 29, took her children to a nearby motel where she took a room and called her husband at work.

Two days later, the family was in a North Hollywood shelter because they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Simon, a roofer, depends on contract work, which is sporadic.

“We needed at least $1,200 to move into a place and we just didn’t have that kind of money. Then, we’d need money to turn on the light and gas,” she says. So with the $650 the family was able to save from jobs Simon, 28, had worked, they bought a used Chevy Impala.

“We only had 30 days to stay at the shelter and our time was running out. We thought we’d live in the car until we could figure something out,” she says. Luckily, the family found transitional housing at another shelter for 60 days. Before their time ran out there, they were referred to Beyond Shelter.

This December, the Lopez family--with a monthly income of $800--will complete its yearlong contract with the agency that put them in a three-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath apartment with central heating and air conditioning. Beyond Shelter helped them secure move-in costs of $1,014 and the family hasn’t been delinquent on the monthly $457 rent.

“I can’t tell you how happy my family has been this past year,” Maritza says while showing off a bedroom--decorated in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sheets and “Dick Tracy” curtains--that is shared by brothers, Edwin, 13, and Richard, 7. Jonathan, 5, shares a room with Simon Jr. The furniture, from beds to a dining table and chairs to the living room’s sofa and lamps were provided by the Better Homes and Gardens Foundation.

“All our bills are up to date and my kids aren’t sick like they used to be from all the moving. We feel settled. When we were homeless, my husband and I felt embarrassed of our situation. We isolated ourselves from our family and friends. We dropped out of sight.”

These days Maritza says the children are more focused on school. So is she. Maritza, who dropped out after the 10th grade, wants to earn her General Equivalency Diploma.

“My husband and I want our kids to get a good education. That’s the most important thing. That and having a good, clean place to live. And maybe in the next three to five years, hopefully, we will get a down payment for a house, something to call our own.”

The Ortegas--who once lived in the chicken coop--have similar hopes.

“I remember when my husband first told me about this apartment,” Maria Ortega says, thinking back. Her husband, Federico, instructed her to keep her eyes closed as he escorted her inside the apartment. Standing in the living room, he placed his palms over her eyes.

“When he moved his hands I almost lost my breath,” she says. “Then I cried, then I wrote a letter to my mother. We’ve even sent photos to relatives in Michoacan,” she says excitedly while cradling the youngest of her six children, 7-month-old Maria de Jesus.

Maria points out the kitchen’s generous cabinet space, the shiny stainless steel sink, the linoleum-covered and carpeted floors. She shows off the apartment’s modest furniture her husband has worked hard to obtain. She walks into all of the bedrooms where the children, who all used to sleep on one mattress, now have their own beds.

Throughout the apartment, photos of her children behind paper frames Maria made herself, are tacked on walls. Back in the kitchen Maria reflects on her past and her future.

Just thinking about how she and her children used to live and how they live now, “is the difference between a nightmare and dream come true,” she says.

“We had no money to move into an apartment,” Maria says. “We barely had enough money for food and coats for the children. The children would wash up and bathe with a water hose. My husband and I slept on the floor on top of blankets. Whenever we went to find another place to live, the landlords didn’t want children or they only allowed two or three. And we didn’t have the money.”

Maria turns toward a sliding glass door, the drapes open, sunlight bathes her little girl’s face. She kisses the child and looks skyward.

“Before, the children would ask, ‘Mommy, why don’t we have a regular house like our friends do?’ You know what? They don’t ask anymore. They bring their friends and show them. Finally, we have a place to call home.”