Project a Bridge Out of Homelessness : North Hollywood: Work starts on a complex to help those without permanent housing become self-supporting again.

Robert White just got out of prison.

George Dickinson lived on the streets for a year.

And Ronald Atkins ended up sharing a motel room with his three children after he lost his business and went through a messy divorce.

On Friday, White and Dickinson started building a new home for the Atkins family and new lives for themselves.

At a “wall-raising” ceremony at a North Hollywood lot, they began constructing Gentry Village North, a 30-bed, low-rent apartment complex that will provide transitional housing for once-homeless families that are off the streets but not yet fully self-supporting.

“Poverty is acute and it is making its way into the working class,” said Arnold Stalk of L.A. Family Housing Corp., a nonprofit group that runs homeless shelters and develops low-income housing throughout the city.

Stalk described Gentry Village as a low-cost antidote to that spreading poverty, a step toward self-sufficiency for families such as the Atkinses. Ronald Atkins, who recently found a job driving a tour bus, has not yet saved enough money to move into a conventional apartment. He and his children now live at L.A. Family Housing’s homeless shelter on Lankershim Boulevard, as do White and Dickinson.

The housing complex in the 6800 block of Gentry Avenue, which will consist of five large apartment-style units and will cost $80,000, is expected to be completed by Christmas. The money and land were donated from private sources, enabling the organization to quickly build the project free of bureaucratic red tape associated with government grants and loans, Stalk said.

For example, the contractor only has to provide one parking space per unit rather than the two that would be required in a city-funded project. The hourly skilled-labor wages will be between $15 and $18, rather than the city-mandated prevailing wage of up to $25 an hour, Stalk said.

And the work crew includes residents of the San Fernando Valley shelter such as White and Dickinson, who Stalk said will earn about $6 an hour for cleanup and general labor. These will be their first jobs in a year.

“I wouldn’t care if it was washing dishes; it’s employment,” said Dickinson, 42, a former construction worker. He traces his descent into homelessness to a heart attack a year ago that left him without work and in debt.

“I’m just having to start from scratch,” said White, 26, who is from Burbank. He came to the shelter after his release two weeks ago from the California Institution for Men at Chino, where he served nine months for auto theft.

“My family moved to Oregon while I was gone,” he said. “I decided to stay away from the friends I had before.”

Atkins’ daughters, Antawnette, 6, and Danielle, 4, their hair braided and ribboned for the occasion, played and fidgeted around their father’s legs as he watched the first wall of the building go up. Their 16-year-old brother, embarrassed by the attention, had hurried off as the ceremony began.

Atkins seemed relieved rather than embarrassed. He said he looks forward to paying the $350-a-month rent for a three-bedroom unit as a symbol of regained independence.

He said he is saving money to pay off considerable debts and medical expenses from the asthmatic condition suffered by one of his daughters. He welcomes the social services and counseling that the family will receive at the project.

“We weren’t the typical homeless family,” said Atkins, who has a degree in business. “A degree doesn’t stop you from going down. It doesn’t require a great deal to go down.”