Factory Owner Hopes Homeless Will Dial 800 Number for Jobs : Chatsworth: Frustrated in his attempts to find employees through social service referrals, a millionaire businessman tries a new tactic to reach the down and out for his Fresh Start program.

Homeless people don’t have answering machines.

That obvious but ordinarily irrelevant truth began to matter to Dan Sandel when hundreds of people called his Chatsworth factory eager to take him up on his offer of a job and virtually free place to live.

“It was very frustrating,” Sandel said. “One guy called three times from downtown, and it probably cost him a buck a call. We had no way to reach him, and he finally gave up.”

But Sandel didn’t.

Determined to see his unusual grass-roots welfare effort succeed, the 54-year-old self-made millionaire has resorted to a tool used by savvy business owners and by presidential candidates Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and Ross Perot.

Starting this week, the homeless can dial (800) 303-8555 free of charge to hear a taped message instructing them which buses to take for an interview at Devon Industries, Sandel’s surgical supplies factory.

Interviews for minimum-wage assembly jobs will be conducted on the second and fourth Mondays of every month at 10 a.m. Applicants must be willing to take a drug test, and only men and women without children are eligible because Sandel’s liability insurance for the program does not cover children. Those selected will pay $100 a month to share a two-bedroom apartment for six months with three other people of the same sex.

Sandel, whose 7-month-old Fresh Start program is believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation, has high hopes of attracting drug- and alcohol-free homeless people through the free number. Until now, he has relied largely on social welfare and government agencies to refer clients.

But referrals have barely trickled in, despite a clear need for additional services for Los Angeles County’s 38,420 homeless.

Part of the problem is that the agencies are too busy to make referrals, social workers have said. Others have suggested that Sandel modify his expectations and accept recovering addicts, as he reluctantly did at first.

“One shelter even told us they were afraid we were trying to recruit homeless women for sexual favors,” Sandel said indignantly.

But Sandel, a naturalized American citizen who came to this country from Israel more than 30 years ago to make his fortune, wants to help the recently dispossessed middle class.

Advocates for the homeless praised Sandel’s persistence, but warned that he will need to spend more time screening applicants once word of the 800 number gets around. They also expressed concern that the 800 number Sandel wound up with--303-8555--is difficult to remember.

“What they’re doing is great,” said Jeff Schaffer, executive director of Shelter Partnership, a private nonprofit agency in Los Angeles. “But it’s too bad they couldn’t get a phone number with the word ‘JOBS’ in it.”

It wasn’t for lack of trying.

“I must have submitted 30 numbers,” said Phyllis Horan, a nurse Sandel hired to run the program. “We tried WE NEED U, WE WANT U, 4 U NOW. We sat there with a dictionary, going through FRESH START, JOB NOW, HOME NOW, JOBLESS.

“They were all taken.”

Horan’s first choice, 800-HOMELESS, is held by Steve Parker, a San Diego entrepreneur who pays $15,000 a month in phone bills for the use of it and about 250 other so-called vanity numbers--800 numbers that spell something.

Parker’s spokesman, Tom Herrington, said his boss rents such numbers as 800-CLEANRUGS and 800-SUGARFREE, in the hopes of subleasing them to someone for a share of any subsequent profits.

“If you have the right phone number, you can get your arms around more business,” he said.

Herrington said Parker is willing to allow selected charities to borrow the 800-HOMELESS number either for free or if they pay the resulting phone bill. But when one Massachusetts-based group, Better Homes Foundation, used the number three years ago to raise money, the attempt backfired. Instead of donors eager to fork over cash, the line was flooded with homeless people calling for assistance, Herrington said.

“It broke our hearts,” Herrington said. “One guy was on the corner of 12th and Main somewhere back East begging for help, saying he wanted work.”

That’s just the response Sandel is hoping to get.

“Those people are out there,” he said.