Donated Motel to Serve as Shelter for Homeless : Philanthropy: A nonprofit group in South Los Angeles will turn developer’s 22-room gift into apartments for mentally disabled people.

Developer Mort LaKretz wanted to give something back to the community, something that would benefit a group that helps the homeless. So he donated a $1-million motel, complete with a pool.

LaKretz donated the 22-room Sky Terrace Motel, at Normandie Avenue and Washington Boulevard in South Los Angeles, to the Mental Health Assn. in Los Angeles County, a nonprofit organization that plans to renovate the rooms and turn them into apartments for homeless people who are disabled by mental illness.

“I have been considering it for a long time,” said LaKretz, who owns and manages several properties, including Hollywood’s landmark Cross Roads of the World office and shopping complex.

Converting the motel rooms to apartments “is a perfect use for that property, a good marriage,” he said. “It will be a halfway house for someone seeking to move up.”

LaKretz, who built the Sky Terrace in 1960, said the motel has no permanent residents, and rooms rent on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.

“A lot of people may be somewhat disappointed that it is no longer there,” he said jokingly. Although the hotel has not attracted problems over the years, LaKretz said nearby residents will not mind the change.

The motel will even keep the pool, said Martha Sherwood, an association spokeswoman.

“I would assume it would stay there and be available for the tenants,” she said. “We have been joking around the office that now suddenly our members are going to have a pool, and no one on our staff has a pool.”

As part of the deal, the mental health agency will receive a portion of a $3.7-million Shelter Plus Care grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to subsidize rents. The funds are being shared by seven agencies and will enable the city to help more than 100 people find permanent housing.

“With the establishment of this award, these people will be able to regain housing and regain their dignity while returning to the mainstream of society,” said Mayor Tom Bradley at a news conference Monday at the motel.

The city of Los Angeles and Shelter Partnership, a nonprofit agency that helps the homeless, competed for the federal grant. “There are between 20,000 and 30,000 people who are homeless” in Los Angeles, said Ruth Schwartz, executive director of Shelter Partnership. “The need is substantial.”

In addition to the Mental Health Assn., shelter funds will be distributed to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Hollywood Community Housing Corp., the Salvation Army, Los Angeles Men’s Place, Valley Housing Corporation/Hillview Mental Health Center, and Venice Community Housing Corp. The subsidized housing will be part of an overall program that also provides counseling and job training.

Ann Stone, an associate director of the Mental Health Assn., said the aim of the program is to help mentally disabled people live independently. The federal subsidy will allow tenants to spend no more than a third of their income on rent.

Stone said that some homeless people do not manage well in shelters or group homes, but are able to make the transition to independent living in their own apartments.

“The shelters are often too crowded, and the only thing that will work for them is their own apartment,” she said.

Pearl Johnson, a 62-year-old mentally disabled woman who has lived on the streets with the sky as her roof more times than she cares to remember, has her eye on one of the units in the motel.

Just recently, Johnson said she was almost forced back to the street when she was unable to stretch her monthly check of $645 to cover rent in her Baldwin Village apartment complex.

“When they start taking down the list of people, I want my name to be first,” she said.