Opportunity Center Organizes on the Run

Amid the handful of shops scattered through Compton’s half-vacant transit mall, one storefront holds the federal government’s latest hope for combatting the urban ills that erupted into last spring’s civil unrest.

A small sign in the window reads “Neighborhood Opportunity Center.” Inside, brochures and pamphlets describing federal aid programs cover a few battered tables. A VISTA volunteer--the only worker in sight--sits at a desk marked “Receptionist,” waiting patiently for a citizen in need of help.

Maybe 20 have shown up in the week since the NOC opened--most of them job-seekers who had to be turned away.

“I have to give them a different number to call,” said the volunteer, Marty Siewert.

This is the first such neighborhood center to open under the aegis of the Presidential Task Force on Los Angeles Recovery, and the most basic details of the program remain unsettled.

There is no funding for administrative help at the centers. There is no money to pay rent for office space. And without publicity, few know of the Compton NOC’s existence.

Still, the task force hopes to scatter such centers throughout Los Angeles County, with each designed to meet its community’s specific needs, Executive Director David Beightol said. The next center is scheduled to open in Koreatown later this month.

“We want each community to define what it needs,” Beightol said. “We don’t want to be heavy-handed about this, telling people what they need, like they did after Watts in ’65.”

In Compton, where the city offers rent-free office space, the focus is on helping businesses start up or rebuild. In the first week of operation, the most popular days were Monday and Friday, when a representative of the Small Business Administration was present, Siewert said.

The neighborhood centers are based loosely on the disaster application centers that opened shortly after the riots. The last of these closed Wednesday in the Crenshaw district. The disaster aid centers house representatives of a variety of government agencies who help residents through the maze of application requirements for federal assistance.

The SBA, the Commerce Department and the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service will be represented a few hours each week at the Compton center. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Personnel Management should be setting up shop soon, Beightol said.

In between visits, some kind of administrative help is needed to keep the office open. Most of the time, the Compton center has Siewert--on loan from Volunteers in Service to America for a few weeks--though on Wednesday Eleanor Sanchez of the task force staff filled in. In the longer run, the task force hopes that the state’s Economic Development Department--which is arranging temporary employment for some who lost jobs in the riots--will provide a receptionist.

“All of this is really new,” said Adrienne Loughlin, a task force official on loan from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “We’re defining it as we go.”