Helping Hands : Despite Successes, Project for Homeless Faces Tough Times

The piles of donated clothing in the makeshift Silver Lake office were small, but Bob Suazo could still offer his homeless visitor a few choices.

Jose Soto, a 21-year-old day laborer who sleeps on the ground in Echo Park, picked out some dark slacks, a blue pullover shirt, white socks and some boxer shorts.

Finally, Soto pleaded for new shoes to replace his well-worn, mismatched sneakers. But Suazo shrugged helplessly--his remaining shoes were all three sizes too large. He urged Soto to try again in another week.

“When you get in a bunch of shoes, they go right away,” Suazo, 46, said last Thursday as he prepared to help the next homeless man.

Suazo, who lived on the streets from 1984 through 1988, is now coordinator of the Hollywood Sunset Community Clinic’s Homeless Care Project, a program that, like the people it serves, is facing hard times.

His time on the streets taught him about the indignity and despair that people endure while struggling to find work, food and shelter. But his stint as a social service worker has taught him that there is seldom enough help to go around.

“My first year I tried to save the world,” Suazo recalled. “But I didn’t have enough money. I didn’t have enough time. And there are too many out there. Now I do what I can with the resources I have.”

Yet even these limited resources may soon disappear altogether.

A major grant the clinic had been expecting fell through in May and private foundation funding dried up. The Homeless Care Project could be forced to shut its doors in coming months. “It is genuinely in jeopardy,” said Teresa Padua, executive director of the Hollywood Sunset clinic.

The nonprofit clinic, founded in 1968, provides free health care to low-income residents at its center on Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. It launched the homeless care program in 1988 to bring clothing and health services to people at area shelters.

The program provides clothing, hygiene kits and medical aid to homeless people, such as Jose Soto, in Silver Lake and neighboring communities. Occasionally, it offers meals to day laborers who visit the homeless-care office, situated in a renovated warehouse across the street from the clinic.

Since its inception, the project has provided nearly 2,600 medical checkups and follow-up exams for the homeless.

The Homeless Care Project was initially financed by government grants and private gifts, which underwrote its yearly budget of about $35,000. This year the clinic was banking on a federal Department of Health and Human Services grant that would have provided the homeless program with $113,000 annually for three years. The clinic had even hoped to expand the program.

Last spring the clinic received a letter saying its grant application had been approved, but the funding was exhausted.

To keep the homeless program alive, the clinic plans to seek donations from about 100 Silver Lake-area businesses. Also, it has begun asking residents to bring in bottles and cans to raise money through recycling.

The goal is to raise about $15,000 to fund the homeless program through 1991, Felix Racelis, the clinic’s development director, said. Clinic administrators believe that new public funds will become available Jan. 1 to carry the program through the coming year.

The clinic ultimately hopes to raise enough money to provide even more help to the homeless. Suazo is paid for 17 hours of work per week, but usually puts in twice that.

“Instead of Bob volunteering most of his time, we could pay him to work full time, and we could expand our practice here and our services out in the community,” clinic director Padua said.

The homeless program relies on paid and volunteer medical workers, but Suazo is considered a crucial part of the program because of his four years on the streets.

“From his background, he understands the psychology of the homeless,” Racelis said.

Suazo, a native of northeast Los Angeles, attended Eagle Rock High School and served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam between 1967 and 1971. His war experiences set the stage for his later decline.

“I was already an alcoholic and a drug addict when I came back from the war,” he said.

After his discharge, Suazo worked at various jobs, then opened a mechanic’s shop in Eagle Rock. Substance abuse, financial problems and a divorce took their toll, and by 1984 he was homeless. He lived in cardboard boxes and sleeping bags in the Skid Row section of downtown Los Angeles.

Most people, he soon learned, consider the homeless to be second-class citizens.

“The first thing they think is that we smell,” he said. “When I was homeless, I used to wash in public places and do the birdbath thing. But once you say the word ‘homeless,’ they step back. Then you’re not to be trusted.”

Suazo became involved with Justiceville, a high-profile activist group that took its name from a shanty village built by the homeless and demolished by Los Angeles officials in 1985. The homeless group staged public demonstrations, from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica, to call attention to their plight.

But for Suazo, staying alive on the streets was a continuing challenge.

“It pulls you down and physically drains you and mentally drains you,” he said. “You have the feeling that it’s never going to change.”

His turnaround occurred after friends placed him in the Veterans Administration Hospital in West Los Angeles for treatment and retraining in 1988.

Two years ago, Suazo, who was working for another community organization, learned about the Silver Lake clinic’s homeless program and volunteered his help.

“He started out as a consultant,” recalled Chiyo Maniwa, director of the program at the time. “I would ask him what we should put in the packs” given to the homeless.

Suazo then asked if he could accompany clinic staff members on their visits to homeless shelters. “He started pitching in, and he never stopped,” Maniwa said.

When she left for a new job in April, 1990, Maniwa recommended Suazo for the part-time paid coordinator’s post.

As part of his duties, Suazo accompanies the clinic’s medical aides each week to several homeless shelters and distributes clothing and hygiene kits that contain combs, toothbrushes, disposable razors, soap and deodorant. He also hands out condoms to help curb the spread of AIDS.

His jobs with the Silver Lake clinic and another social service organization, Covenant House in Hollywood, provide enough income for Suazo to live in a Burbank apartment.

In his work, he encounters homeless people with drug and alcohol problems similar to the ones that he conquered. “I can never force anyone to take recovery,” he said. “But I say, ‘If you ever want to talk to me about it, I have an option for you.’ ”

His co-workers say Suazo often dips into his own pocket to give homeless people bus fare. “He pays for his place to live, but a lot of his money goes back out to the homeless,” Padua said. His memories of the street never leave him. That’s why he is struggling, along with other staff members at the clinic, to raise money to keep the homeless program alive.

“It’s something that has to be done,” Suazo explained. “I think of it as giving something back.”