Homeless in Style : 30 Women Living at Santa Ana YWCA Are Given Fur Coats

The murmurs of expectation grew to a roar as the furs--jackets and full-length coats, minks and rabbit skin, black and brown and even purple--were rolled across the hardwood basketball floor at the local YWCA Monday evening.

“They’re here!” one recently homeless woman whispered, putting aside her holiday dinner. Food could wait. This, as one woman put it, was a “once in a lifetime chance”--free fur coats for the homeless.

Tired of talk of giving millions to “the Russians,” furrier Ted Bizakis of Anaheim said he wanted to do something to help the homeless here in Southern California, so he and his wife donated to the YWCA more than 30 used coats that had been traded in by customers.

Animal rights activists blasted the “great fur giveaway” as a cheap publicity stunt for an industry that has been hurt by public protests. But fur recipients and YWCA officials--in the midst of a large drop in donations because of the recession--weren’t questioning the motives behind the unusual benefit.

“We can’t bring the animals back to life,” said Mary Douglas, executive director of the Santa Ana YWCA, “and if it helps keep them warm, that’s the important thing. . . . It’s absolutely wonderful to have people thinking about those in need.”

Added Dianne Russell, the YWCA hotel manager: “This certainly puts a new twist on being homeless for the holidays.”

About 30 women living at the YWCA--many of them recently homeless, displaced from jobs and families and recovering from drug or alcohol problems--received coats. When they showed up for a holiday dinner Monday evening, many said they were not even aware of the giveaway.

But by the time the rack of furs was rolled out, the word had spread. The women waited eagerly--some clapping their hands and stamping their feet--as volunteers passed around an envelope with individually numbered slips of paper inside. The numbers would determine the order in which the women could choose their unexpected Christmas presents.

“Oh my God, I’m No. 1!” screamed Simone Leon, who said she had been living in a park in Garden Grove for several months after breaking up with her boyfriend and losing her job as a manager at a Malibu restaurant.

“This is unbelievable! . . . I don’t know where to start,” she said as she eyed the rack. She picked out a $450 reddish-brown, full-length mink and tried it on. Declaring it delightfully “snug,” she walked toward the crowd and showed it off for admirers, with all the aplomb of a high fashion model.

“I don’t even have a winter coat, so I’ll sure get great use out of it. It’s always been a fantasy to have a fur coat,” Leon said. “It’s just glamorous. It makes you feel special.”

Bettie Williams, 52, a former home aide in Los Angeles who has lived at the YWCA for 10 weeks while battling alcohol problems, placed 19th in the fur lottery, but she didn’t mind. She still came away with a full-length brown fur.

“This kind of gives me a sense of worth,” Williams said as she wrapped herself in her new coat. “It makes me feel kind of important, and I needed that.”

Bizakis, the furrier, said he and his wife, Maria, were moved by the increasing numbers of homeless people they see through the media. Bizakis said the recession has hurt business at the couple’s shop, but the used coats--valued at more than $9,000--wouldn’t have made up the difference.

“Everybody needs help,” he said, “and this was our way of helping.”

Animal rights activists said they had never heard of such a move by a furrier, and they had mixed reactions.

“We don’t want to see any furs at all,” said Eileen Pinder, manager of the Huntington Beach Humane Society, “but at least they’re being put to good use, with people who have come off the streets. . . . These people are using them for warmth, not as a status thing, to be able to say, ‘I’ve got the money to wear dead animals on my back.’ ”

Less impressed was Chris DeRose, president of a Los Angeles group called Last Chance for Animals.

Lambasting the move as an “unethical” way to get publicity, DeRose said: “I’ve never heard of anything like this. The cause of helping the homeless is certainly important, but I can’t condone this way of doing it. . . . They probably can’t get rid of the coats for one thing, and they’re trying to build up a better image for themselves.”

Women at the YWCA said they were aware of concerns from animal rights activist, but few seemed fazed. Indeed, the risk of losing the coats to thieves who prey on the homeless seemed more of a worry for some.

“To each his own,” one woman said of critics.

One woman refused to take a coat, but she would not say why. Another grimaced when told that she was wearing a rabbit fur, but she kept it anyway.

Shirley Wright, 29, a recovering drug addict, said she considers herself a “humanist” and an animal lover but said, “I definitely don’t have a guilty conscience” about her black fur jacket.

“I don’t know what the future holds for me,” she said. “But at least wherever I’m going, I’m going in style, and I’ll be warm, even if I’m sleeping on a park bench somewhere.”