A Light on Skid Row : Poverty: LAMP Lodge, a renovated slum, reopens as new housing for the mentally ill homeless.

A renovated slum on Skid Row reopened as new housing for mentally ill homeless people Thursday, and Joe Clark, its new manager, hurried to make everything “picture perfect,” with last-minute cleaning, setting out chairs and blowing up balloons.

For Clark, LAMP Lodge was a new beginning, a world away from the time he wandered the streets of Skid Row, confused and disoriented.

“I don’t know how to feel,” the quiet 35-year-old said when asked how he felt about his new post. “All I’ve done until now is kind of live my life. I am still chronically mentally ill, a schizophrenic--a paranoid schizophrenic. I’ve just learned ways of managing it.”

Clark’s ability to live in safe housing and maintain a steady job is what LAMP Village--the nonprofit agency that refurbished the Stanford Street building with $2 million in city, state and private funds--is all about.

Since 1985, LAMP has run a day center and crisis shelter for Skid Row’s mentally ill, who comprise about one-third of the homeless population. The agency later expanded to build a shelter and open three businesses--a coin laundry, laundry service, and public showers--that employ the mentally ill.

LAMP worked to develop housing, director Mollie Lowery said, “out of a need for permanent, safe and affordable housing. We see our place as having an impact on Skid Row, making a better environment.”

In past years, some businessmen fought expansions of LAMP, fearing that growing concentrations of homeless people would negatively affect commercial ventures that have moved into the area during the last decade.

Mayor Tom Bradley and other city officials interceded to help the agency, at the same time agreeing to create a specific plan for the area, and give merchants a stronger say in zoning and development matters.

Charles Woo, president of the Central City East Assn., a local merchants’ group, said Thursday that he was not against the new residence because “LAMP does good work. At the same time I am sorry they could not find housing outside the area. Other communities should do their fair share.”

Woo was not at the opening ceremonies, attended by Bradley and other dignitaries in the parking lot next to the two-story red-brick building. But the presence of nearby businesses could be felt in the occasional smell of fish from a nearby processing plant, and a pepper-like odor from a spice factory.

Standing at the edge of the gathering, Clark smiled as various officials praised the agency and its efforts.

“This is my family,” he said of LAMP’s staff and “guests,” as clients are called. “That’s how I see it.”

He listened passively to the remarks until LAMP board member Sylvia Ruiz announced a new “lifetime achievement award” that was to be given out. She said it was going to someone who was once “bedraggled, talking to voices that no one hears. It’s hard to imagine this person was ever, ever in that place.”

Ruiz described how the winner of this award “grew like you would not believe” after he came to LAMP, and became “a caring individual. . . .

“Joe Clark.”

Clearly stunned, Clark slowly walked to the microphone, cleared his throat a few times, and spoke: “If it wasn’t for someone showing me I could do something, I wouldn’t be here. Thank you.”