One Woman’s Vision Becomes a Haven for Refugees From the Street : Social work: Private donors and community support in San Pedro help Barbara Mayer open the SHAWL house for homeless women.

While working at a Wilmington center for homeless women, Barbara Mayer got a close-up view of life’s underbelly. There was a young woman, six months pregnant with twins, raped and chain whipped by a man.

And there were other women--homeless, without hope, many of them abused.

At the Wilmington center, Mayer could only offer them comfort, or a meal, but not the beds sought by those needing overnight shelter. She would have to send them back to the street. In the end, Mayer said it made her work seem somewhat futile, and it “crunched the heart.”

But now, thanks to private donors and community support, Mayer is able to offer sanctuary to the homeless women she calls “my kids.” She does it at a new shelter in San Pedro called SHAWL (Support for Harbor Area Women’s Lives), a six-bed center for drug- or alcohol-addicted homeless women that opened last December with $120,000 in seed money from private donors.

For up to six months, the facility accommodates homeless women who cannot adhere to the strict rules of “higher-functioning houses,” where women often attend school or work.

“There are lots of shelters for men and families,” said Mayer, 44, a resident of Long Beach who plans to move to San Pedro. “But there wasn’t much out there for women. In other houses, there are bed checks every night, and if they are not in bed they are written up. They come downstairs for meditation in the morning and we say, ‘Did you shower and brush your teeth?’ Normally, they get written up if they don’t, but we don’t write them up here.”

In the South Bay, there are about 20 overnight shelters for the homeless, including the San Pedro facility. Five shelters are for women only, while the remaining serve women and children only, families, the mentally ill or homeless men. A few accept a general mix of the homeless population. Census Bureau estimates last year found 750 homeless women in the South Bay, but service providers contest that figure, claiming that it’s closer to 1,500.

Mayer said her facility is soliciting donations and grants from corporations and philanthropists to keep the center operating. Some money comes from community churches that have held benefit musical performances and have donated the proceeds to the shelter. The women themselves sign over their county-issued general relief checks to SHAWL.

Mayer’s San Pedro facility operates inconspicuously out of a 1906 colonial-style house nestled in a cradle of recovery houses in a palm-lined residential neighborhood. A sprawling four-bedroom, two-story building with clapboard windows, the exterior and comfortable furnishings, all donated by eight South Bay churches and church-related women’s groups, belie the emotional storms that stir within.

Tempering those rumblings is a web of programs: daily use of the Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-step program, meditation, hygiene classes, trips to the library, group therapy, art classes and optional weekly religious services at a church of their choice. Daily chores such as housecleaning, cooking and laundry are mandatory. Women comply with the program without threat but with gentle encouragement.

“For these women, there’s no self-esteem, no confidence,” Mayer said. “Nothing is left. We try to let them know I’m glad you’re here on this Earth and that you are a special person God put in my life.”

Women who come to SHAWL are recruited from the street by Mayer or other service providers who are familiar with faces that belong to some of the streets’ survivors. Some are referred by other crowded shelters. And some find the facility after they have exhausted other resources, like sleeping on the couches of friends. But all have something in their character that reads as a call for help.

Recently, residents sat around the living room in front of a fireplace with a tank full of goldfish nearby. Talk about feelings came slow. Trust was elusive.

An electrical problem caused the lights to fail the night before and with the darkness came reminders of the streets. All but one of the women, Mayer claimed, was molested as a child or teen-ager. The darkness brought all six into the living room where they slept with candles for illumination. Fresh-scrubbed, composed and attentive, the women, identified only by their first names, talked about their fears.

Cheryl, 44, said she has been living on Wilmington streets for 10 years. She survived by collecting cans and bottles, panhandling and sleeping under cars in junkyards. One night, her dentures were stolen. The shelter provided her with a new set. Her roommate, Jennifer, 18, has been homeless for four years and is the newest resident of the house.

“Jennifer knows what it’s like to have no place to go and so do I,” Cheryl said. “I can handle it being on the street, but I prefer to be inside. I’ve been on the street for so many years that I’m just learning how to get rid of bad habits. Hustling and drinking with a man in a bar. That’s easy (compared to this) . “

Jennifer said she started drinking at 11, took amphetamines and methamphetamine at 13, and ran away from home at 14. Arrested for prostitution at 16, home has been juvenile hall, a drug rehabilitation center or a foster home.

When the 90-minute session was over, the women stood in a circle, recited a prayer together and exchanged long hugs. Therapist Mary Chapman, who is donating her time at the shelter once a week, said this could be the beginning of dealing with problems.

Once they finish their six months at the facility, residents move on to a transitional home like The Flosse Lewis Center in Long Beach, a 15-bed shelter that allows yearlong stays for sober women.

Director Maria Miller Flores, who worked with Mayer at the Wilmington Drop-In Center, said it is “a good two- to three-year process before we send them out in the community. Last year, seven women from Flosse Lewis received Long Beach City College scholarships. We have an alumnae of 24. Sixty percent of those are in school and active in recovery centers.”

Researchers like Jennifer Wolch, a USC professor whose studied homelessness for 10 years, said the San Pedro center addresses the special needs of homeless women.

“Histories of sexual abuse and violence are much higher in the shelter population of women,” Wolch said. “That’s a major trauma they have to deal with before and after they’re homeless, which inevitably leads to substance abuse. One of the main problems is lack of drug-treatment programs and residential programs with the goal of getting women off drugs. In policy recommendations, I advocate small-scale service with relatively long stays. They are essential because it is hard for these folks to get along in bigger houses, with lots of rules and more bureaucracy.”

As for Mayer, she said she sleeps a little better at night knowing that for at least some women, the violence of the streets is less likely.

“With the drop-in center, if they lived through the weekend, you had a good weekend,” she says. “With this, they are all roses. We plant the seeds, watch them grow, blossom and learn to trust.”