Job Searching in Circles : West Hollywood Closed the Recycling Site Where Ron Swift Made a Living; Now the City May Hire Him and Reopen It

Efforts by West Hollywood to find a job for a homeless man who helped run a city recycling center for 14 months could end up where people left off.

Officials say they may reopen the Plummer Park collection point and hire Ron Swift to run it.

Swift is the 46-year-old transient who unloaded paper, bottles and aluminium cans from about 100 cars a day at a corner drop-off site until officials closed it two weeks ago.

In exchange, residents gave him some of their bottles and cans to redeem on his own. Swift got off the street by using that profit to rent a $25-a-night Silver Lake motel room and later take on a partner, homeless man Dee Homedale, 47.

Friendly and talkative, Swift is a onetime teacher’s aide and delivery service owner whose life was upended by a drug problem in the mid-1980s. He later worked as a janitor until his employer went out of business.

Hundreds of residents rallied to support Swift when West Hollywood closed the collection site at Fountain Avenue and Vista Street.

“This is Ron’s livelihood,” said Barbara Pallenberg, an art appraiser who traveled weekly from Laurel Canyon to give her recyclables to Swift. “He’s extremely bright and personable, a nice person. This isn’t right.”

Said West Hollywood resident Ben Schwartz, a retired garment worker: “They should have been tickled pink to have him here. People came here to recycle because of him.”

But that was part of the problem, according to local officials. Residents of adjoining Hollywood, who do not have curbside recycling, were using the Plummer Park site.

West Hollywood residents, however, no longer needed the drop-off point because curbside recycling is in effect citywide. Also, officials said, trash dumped at night into recycling bins was costing the city $5,000 a year to haul away.

West Hollywood leaders pledged to help find work for Swift after being inundated with petitions and phone calls on his behalf. Last week, he was offered a job with a contractor involved with the West Hollywood recycling program.

But Swift decided against taking that job for physical reasons. And he has not yet linked up with city officials to discuss alternative work possibilities.

“I found out I’d be lifting big barrels of glass all day. It’s too difficult for a guy my age to lift barrels that outweigh me by 50 pounds,” Swift said. “I didn’t think it would work out, and I didn’t want to start a job with that kind of attitude.”

David Hare, West Hollywood’s environmental services manager, said that he is still willing to hunt for work for Swift, but that city workers failed to locate the volunteer recycler last week.

“I wouldn’t mind driving the guy to work if I had to. But I can’t even reach him to set anything up,” Hare said.

In fact, according to Hare, Swift may find a job right where the saga started. West Hollywood is evaluating reopening the Plummer Park recycling site, primarily as a service to neighboring Los Angeles residents, he said.

A self-sustaining recycling center could be leased to a nonprofit organization or people from the city’s homeless shelter could be hired to run it, Hare said.

Or Swift could be contracted to operate it.

“It would have to be cost-effective to our residents. They can’t be made to pay for it,” Hare said. “We still think there’s a creative solution.”

Swift, who slept under a blanket on the streets for about a year and a half before discovering the Plummer Park recycling site, said he still hopes to be a part of that solution.

“The best thing that could happen is for them to lease it to me,” he said.