Mean Streets Get Meaner : Homelessness: Scores of people, many of them mentally ill, fall through the holes in a rapidly deteriorating safety net. A private agency struggles against budget cuts to offer meals and other help.

“I’m willin’ to work,” the aging homeless man said, fighting back tears.

Broke, hungry and chronically depressed, he sat alone at a picnic table, staring at a paper plate of hot lasagna, a lifetime of hard work and sadness etched on his face.

After a long pause, the former construction worker said, “I don’t like being here,” and slowly took a bite of his food.

The man, who declined to give his name, is among scores of mentally ill homeless people served by Harbor Gateway Clubhouse, a private mental health project operated largely with public funds. Twice a week, Clubhouse staff enters two South Bay parks to offer meals and other assistance.

Housed in an old church building on 165th Place just off Vermont Avenue in Harbor Gateway, the group helps mentally ill homeless people find health care, shelter and the prescribed medications many of them need to make it through the day.

With government social spending on the decline, organizations such as Clubhouse are relying on fewer and fewer resources to confront an ever-growing population of homeless with problems ranging from chronic depression to psychosis. In South Bay parks, where many of the homeless congregate, the challenge is painfully clear.

“It’s sad to see this in the richest country in the world, but it’s true and it’s getting worse,” said Sam Jones, spokesman for the county parks department.

Of the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 homeless believed to wander the South Bay and Long Beach, officials say roughly a third are mentally ill--and many also suffer from alcoholism and drug addiction.

For the Clubhouse, responding to such problems becomes harder with each passing budget cut. As Los Angeles County mental health spending shrinks year by year, the organization loses more resources and staff.

The Clubhouse is funded by the 50-year-old Didi Hirsch Mental Health Center, a $5.5-million-a-year program that provides both residential and outpatient care throughout West Los Angeles and the South Bay. Most of the Hirsch center’s funds come from the county Mental Health Department, officials say.

No one is sure how much the Clubhouse might lose in the current round of budget cuts being considered by the county. However, the Clubhouse’s struggle to stay open offers a dramatic look at the difficulties involved in helping society’s most vulnerable people amid hard economic times.

For instance, the van the Clubhouse used to carry the homeless has broken down and there is no money for repairs. And because of budget cuts, the Clubhouse no longer has the use of two six-bed residential facilities and has lost the services of its only psychiatrist.

Clubhouse Executive Director Marco Pech said he is down to four case managers to run the day programs and supervise 60 to 80 cases. Said Pech: “With the budget cuts we are very limited in what we can do.”

The results are often frustrating. Pech points to the plight of a homeless man who walked into the center several months ago, suffering from severe depression.

With the help of a caseworker, the 42-year-old got medical care and qualified for federal disability aid, but the $630-a-month government check he received was not enough to cover rent and food.

Although a Clubhouse-sponsored work program offered him the chance to make ends meet, that option was soon doomed by budget cuts.

Clubhouse staff had found several banks, real estate offices and other businesses willing to contract with the nonprofit group for janitorial services, provided the workers were supervised. The jobs would pay minimum wages, providing incomes to help members find housing and a stable life.

However, the employment program had to be dropped because the Hirsch center had no money to hire the staff person needed to supervise the workers, Pech said. And the 42-year-old man, like many others who could have benefited from the work program, is still on the street.

Currently, the Clubhouse serves about 60 people, called members, offering day and evening classes in independent living skills and other subjects intended to help them find permanent jobs and housing.

It is a small effort that “nowhere near meets the needs” of the homeless mentally ill in the South Bay, said Adrienne Sheff, a spokeswoman for the Hirsch center.

And those needs, experts say, are on the rise.

The mentally ill were once locked away in state institutions. Then the word deinstitutionalization came into vogue and care of the mentally ill became “community-based.” However, in the past dozen years, budget cuts and hard times have decimated community mental health programs.

With nowhere to place them, the severely mentally ill are locked up in jails or overcrowded hospitals, Clubhouse caseworker Gary Rivera said. Once released, they inhabit such places as back alleys and parks, fearful of authorities.

Rivera spends much of his time in the parks trying to make contact with them. He and the staff take hot meals into Alondra Park, near El Camino College and Lennox Park, just off Imperial Highway. The food helps them gain the trust of the homeless, he said.

On a recent day, for instance, he found Charles, 43, sitting at a picnic table in Alondra Park sipping from a quart of beer and playing chess with another homeless man. Both agreed to talk, as long as they weren’t identified.

“I live by my wits,” Charles said, quickly adding, “but I don’t rob anyone.” A veteran who suffers chronic depression, he said he can’t get help from the Veterans Administration, for reasons he doesn’t understand. Unemployed and homeless since 1987, he lives in an old van parked at the curb in Alondra Park.

There are dozens of others living in old cars and vans around the 84-acre county park. The gas tanks are near empty, and their tires flat. By day these homeless people fan out on foot, some pushing shopping carts, collecting discarded cans and bottles to sell to recycling centers and getting a free meal from a church or the Clubhouse crew.

They drift back into the park during the day, gathering at a particular picnic table or shady spot. Part of a rootless community, they help each other when they can, Rivera said. Most are painfully aware they are outcasts.

“The stigma of being homeless is worse than (having) leprosy; nobody wants to be near you,” said one, an aging, unemployed machinist who has heart trouble but no health care. Even with a $102 a month food stamp allotment, his $341 a month welfare check isn’t enough to get by and pay rent, he says, so he lives in his car.

Rivera estimates that there are nearly 100 homeless mentally ill people who spend time in Alondra Park, and nearly that many more in Lennox Park. Some are delusional, severely disoriented and need professional help but have nowhere to turn, he said.

Clubhouse strategy is to come into each park with a hot lunch one day a week. The meals are free and so are the services the staff offers.

The homeless are invited to come to the Clubhouse at 812 W. 165th Place. There, trained caseworkers can enroll them in programs and help them try to get the assistance they need.

Some severely disturbed people are in need of residential care, but finding a slot in a special home or institution is extremely difficult, experts say.

A homeless young woman who is psychotic and living in Alondra Park has been beaten up, raped and robbed several times, Pech said. Desperate, she asked her Clubhouse caseworker to keep her disability check and give her a monthly allowance so thieves would not steal all her money.

“The number of places that take people is very limited,” Pech said, pointing out that it can take up to six months to find beds for mentally ill alcoholics who also use drugs.

Because of such shortages, places like Alondra Park become ad-hoc, open-air institutions. County park officials acknowledge that this is happening, although they try to make sure no one stays in the parks overnight.

Alondra is cleared at 10 p.m. and the gates are closed. The homeless park their vans and cars on nearby streets. When the gates open again at 6 a.m., they drive their vehicles back into the park. Those who have no cars sneak into the park late at night and sleep hidden in the bushes.

Jones, the county parks spokesman, said: “Some of these people really need to be in some kind of shelter care.”