Out in the Cold : Poverty: Homeless people get less help coping with winter’s chill this year as their numbers soar and public funding for shelters dwindles.

As temperatures drop and a winter rain begins, Randy Stanley seeks shelter from the cold in an all-night movie theater. Wendell Darby crawls down next to a heating vent in the underbelly of a plush downtown hotel. John M., recovering from a long bout of pneumonia, reinforces his shack with extra layers of cardboard and blankets--the bare necessities of life on the streets.

Every winter tests the survival skills of Los Angeles’ poor and homeless. But this year, with welfare payments slashed for single adults and families, and unemployment levels in Los Angeles at levels significantly higher than the rest of the country, the numbers of homeless people are growing at alarming rates, according to homeless advocates and some public officials.

A trend by several Southland cities to ban sleeping on public property and less government funding for emergency shelter beds in Los Angeles this winter has made the forecast for the indigent as chilling as it has been in recent memory, they say.

“We think it will be an all-time high this year in terms of demand,” said Patricia Huff, homeless services coordinator for the city of Los Angeles who oversees its cold and wet weather emergency shelter program.

“We are alarmed by it, but it’s not a surprise. We know it’s based on the plant closings, families being displaced due to loss of employment. We also know that we do not have the financial resources to address those needs.”

Last year, the city’s winter shelter program financed up to 1,500 shelter beds a night; this year, the city has money for only 1,300 beds, Huff said. The county will fund about 700 additional shelter beds in National Guard armories throughout the county.

In the 1990-91 fiscal year, 38,000 to 68,000 people were homeless every night in Los Angeles County--a 16% increase from the year before--according to a study by Shelter Partnership that city officials say contains the most authoritative figures. Of the 8,000 privately run shelter beds available in the county, 95% were occupied nightly, according to a survey last September by the Countywide Coalition to End Homelessness, a group that acts as advocates for the homeless.

“The cold weather program was set up so people wouldn’t freeze to death,” said attorney Richard Novak of Public Counsel, noting that one South Los Angeles shelter in the winter of 1991 turned away an average of 109 people a night. “If we have to turn more people away, people will freeze.”

In 1990, 12 people died of exposure, according to county health officials, although it is not known how many were homeless.

John M.--who did not want to use his last name for fear his family would discover that he was homeless--came down with pneumonia last fall and ended up in the hospital for six weeks. The frail, gaunt-faced man is diabetic, which makes him more prone to infection. He says he understands that another bout of pneumonia--or a simple winter flu--could kill him. But the 53-year-old former accountant flatly says that worrying about his health is not a luxury he can afford.

“If I worry about my health, I won’t survive,” he said, sitting on a couch that is the centerpiece of a shelter built with layers of blankets, cardboard and plastic balanced on a stack of tires.

“Survival is the main thing around here. You don’t know if you are going to wake up in the morning. You don’t know if you’re going to eat. Out here you can’t worry about much. You’ve got to just take it day by day.”

With continuing joblessness, rising housing costs and welfare cuts, experts say the problem of homelessness will not ease up anytime soon.

Los Angeles had an unemployment rate of 9.8% in December, compared to 7.3% nationally. Although housing costs in the county have fallen in recent years, they remain among the highest of any metropolitan area in the country. A typical household living below the federal poverty line in Los Angeles County spends more than 75% of its monthly income on rent and almost a quarter of poor households live in overcrowded conditions, according to the Washington-based Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

State-funded welfare benefits for families--Aid to Families With Dependent Children--have been slashed three times in the last 15 months, although they still remain higher than the grants given in some other states. During that time, a mother with two children has lost more than 10% of her income, said attorney Clare Pastore of the Western Center on Law and Poverty. In December, the state reduced the maximum grant for a family of three from $633 to $625 a month--less than what the family would have received in 1988.

For single adults, the forecast is equally grim. Two days before Thanksgiving, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors cut general relief welfare payments from $341 to $293 a month, plus a $9-a-month clothing allowance.

At the Harbor Interfaith Shelter in San Pedro, more than 200 families have signed up for 17 studio apartments.

“We are seeing more two-parent families than ever before, and more families with work backgrounds who have exhausted their unemployment benefits,” shelter staff worker Joe Thompson said. “We used to refer them to other shelters but now every shelter has a waiting list.”

Even at the old grant of $341, Anthony Greene found himself rotating from shelter to street. “You get a room in a motel for maybe three weeks and then you’re out on the streets, or you bounce around from (homeless) shelter to shelter,” said Greene, who has been homeless for four years. “You just have to use your check as wisely as you can.”

In an encampment in the shadow of the Harbor Freeway downtown, Erica Johnston has built her own shelter, a tidy makeshift house fashioned from scraps of wood, cardboard and a bright blue tarp.

It is the 36-year-old former paralegal’s first winter on the streets and already the longer, colder nights have tested skills that she thought she never had. “I keep a knife on me so I don’t have to put up with no crap,” she said.

Under pressure from homeless advocates who argued that people were freezing to death on the streets, the city and county of Los Angeles launched a winter emergency shelter program in 1988. This year, from mid-December to Feb. 11, the city and county program will fund private shelters that will provide beds, hot meals and some social services to a little more than 2,000 homeless people nightly, city officials said.

After Feb. 11 and through March 31, the emergency shelters will open only when temperatures drop below 40 degrees or when it rains and the thermometer hits 50 degrees. The homeless can call a toll free number (1-800-548-6047) to find out if shelters will be open.

While services in Los Angeles are being stretched to capacity by the city’s own homeless residents, some officials worry about the added burden of homeless people from adjacent cities where encampments have been banned. Fullerton, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Orange, Santa Ana, Santa Monica and West Hollywood have all recently passed laws that ban sleeping for extended periods on public property.

However, the laws in many of these cities are being challenged in a class action suit by homeless advocates and are not being enforced in many places.

Long Beach Councilman Doug Drummond, an advocate of the city’s homeless ordinance, argues that the camping ban is necessary because Long Beach has long been a dumping ground for nearby bedroom communities where the homeless are not tolerated.

He says that although the encampment ban “places a burden on any city that tries to extend some kind of limited generosity and help . . . it’s not possible for us to do nothing.”

It is virtually impossible to measure exactly where homeless people in those cities have turned. Nonetheless, Huff worries about the impact on Los Angeles.

“Criminalizing homeless people in those cities is going to push a lot of people into Los Angeles,” she said. “If they can’t sleep in (cities like) West Hollywood or Santa Monica, they will come right to L.A.. And that would put a tremendous burden on the city’s already limited resources.”

But Jim Miller, who runs several Orange County shelters, argues that Los Angeles will not necessarily be burdened by encampment bans in nearby cities, particularly those in Orange County.

“Many of the homeless have their roots here in Orange County,” Miller said. “They have lived here and it’s what they are familiar with. I don’t see many people going to L.A.. They just move through (the area).”

The trend toward banning homeless encampments reflects a long-brewing frustration about the problem, said Jennifer Wolch, professor of geography at USC and co-author of a study of homelessness downtown. People simply want a quick fix, she said.

“Vocal elements of the public . . . are not aware of the circumstances that cause homelessness, nor the inadequacy of public and nonprofit support for the homeless,” she said. “They see homeless people as the classical stranger and not part of the community.”