Shelter From the Storm : Former Homeless Vet Donates House to Give Others New Direction
Talk about flashbacks.
A group of homeless veterans faced a grimly familiar scene over the summer when the owner of the Mar Vista building the men were using as a halfway house threatened them with eviction.
Then a flashback of another sort saved them.
Investment company owner Stephen J. Murphy--remembering his own days as a homeless Vietnam veteran--purchased the place for $390,000 and donated it to a nonprofit rehabilitation program that is helping the men.
The sprawling four-bedroom house will continue to be used by veterans who are trying to kick drug and alcohol problems and re-enter the civilian work force through an organization called New Directions.
“I’ve been there. I know what they’re going through,” said Murphy, 43, who was living in his car five years ago but now heads a $10-million firm.
“This gives me a chance to balance some of the things I did before with my life with my life now,” he said.
Murphy spent five years in Vietnam, first as an Army infantryman and later as a government procurement coordinator. Like most Americans there, he found the Southeast Asian war to be an unsettling experience.
He returned home with a lot of anxieties and a growing drinking problem. The mounting stress later led to the breakup of his family and the end of careers as a stockbroker for a Los Angeles firm and as a publisher of books on international trade.
When he bottomed out about five years ago, Murphy was out of a job and living out of a soon-to-be-repossessed Corvette. Through another rehabilitation program he met John Keaveney, who now operates New Directions.
New Directions started in 1977 as a 35-bed residential treatment program at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Westwood.
Keaveney took over the program and turned it into an independent organization in 1989 when VA budget cuts ended its funding. These days, it uses the Alcoholics Anonymous concept to deal with substance abuse and rigorous counseling to treat post-traumatic stress syndrome suffered by some veterans.
Since its independence, the program has handled 23 men who have stayed an average of 4 1/2 months in the halfway house. But New Directions has bounced from place to place as Keaveney searched for a residential neighborhood where recovering drug addicts and alcoholics would be welcomed.
The Mar Vista location became New Directions’ fifth rented site when veterans moved in earlier this year. At the time, Keaveney was optimistic because the South Barrington Avenue neighborhood is zoned for use by counseling centers and the house had room for nine men in bedrooms furnished with bunk beds.
Soon, however, the owner of the two-story home was forced into foreclosure and program participants faced eviction.
Murphy’s intervention was “an act of God,” said Keaveney--himself an Army infantry veteran who returned from five tours of duty in Vietnam addicted to heroin. He said he kicked his drug habit after several stints in prison for narcotics-related crimes. He is employed as a maintenance supervisor for the VA in Westwood.
New Directions does not accept government grants and no one involved with the program is paid, Keaveney said. Its $65,000 yearly budget is financed by donations from private firms and local veterans’ groups.
According to Murphy, the veterans will use the house rent-free for the next five years while his company, American Capital Investments Inc., retains ownership for tax purposes. After that, the deed will be handed over to New Directions.
His Marina del Rey-based firm, which purchases foreclosed commercial property from banks, owns and operates 11 office buildings and shopping centers in Florida and California.
“I wish there had been a place like this back when I needed it,” Murphy said. “This is a place to regroup and deal with chemical addiction problems we have. It’s a step beyond a detox center.
“You can go from zero to (doing) something with yourself if you take one step at a time.”
