Huntington Beach Youth Shelter Set for Partial Opening in January : Facility: Initially, it will offer counseling and outreach services for runaways and young homeless, an official says. When fully operational, it will provide temporary housing for up to 18 people.

After running into recession-related delays, Orange County’s newest shelter for runaways and other homeless youths is scheduled for partial opening in January, officials announced this week.

The exterior work on the Huntington Youth Shelter, situated at the edge of Huntington Central Park, will be completed in January, said Ron Shenkman, board president for the charitable organization that will operate the shelter. Some interior work also is needed for the shelter, which will offer homeless youths help in finding beds and meals.

The shelter was scheduled to open in the summer of 1991. But since its construction depended upon volunteer labor and donations, the recession drastically affected the timetable, officials said.

The remodeled building is a historic 1920s-era caretaker house, located near Talbert Avenue and Gothard Street. The home once was used by oil-field caretakers during Huntington Beach’s petroleum boom days. Renovation of the house has included doubling its size--to a total of about 4,000 square feet--to make it usable as a youth shelter supervised by adult staff.

“We expect to be in the shelter and using it in January,” Shenkman said. “We’ll be initially using the building for counseling and outreach (services for homeless youths). We’ll probably be able to take young people into the shelter (for overnight care) about March. We’ll start with just a few children, not the entire capacity.”

When fully operational, the new youth shelter will provide temporary housing for 18 young people. Child welfare experts in the county say the new facility is badly needed because the county has only five shelters for young people, with a total of 38 beds. By contrast, an estimated 2,500 to 10,000 adolescents annually roam the streets of the county, according to child welfare officials.

Many of the street children have been thrown out of their homes by alcoholic or abusive parents. Child welfare workers often call these “throwaway children.” The recession has taken its toll on troubled families and increased the number of runaway or forced-out children, according to some welfare experts.

“The need for a new shelter has certainly increased,” said Carol Kanode, who launched the idea for such a facility in Huntington Beach. “The problem is getting worse. I see it all the time.”

Kanode, a nurse at Huntington Beach and Ocean View high schools, started the move for a youth shelter after seeing a tragic case at Ocean View High in 1987. In that instance, a teen-age girl was abandoned by her mother, a single parent. The girl had no place to go and turned to prostitution, Kanode said. Kanode said she vowed, as a result of that case, to try to build a shelter that could save other homeless teens.

The nurse, who is also president of the Ocean View School District Board of Trustees, said Friday that plans are underway for an outreach program for homeless youths in downtown Huntington Beach. Shelter officials “have an office in the police substation downtown, and we want to use that office as a place where we can also provide help and counseling to kids,” Kanode said.

The downtown counseling site would be in addition to the youth shelter itself, she noted.

Huntington Beach’s pier and downtown areas have historically been magnets for teen-age runaways. Some of the homeless children sleep on the beach or in nearby parks.

Huntington Beach police “have been tremendous in helping us with the shelter,” Kanode said. She added that police would also be helpful in referring homeless children to the counseling sites.

However, until it can take in youths for overnight care, the shelter’s adult workers would be helping homeless youths to find temporary housing elsewhere in the county, Kanode said.