VAN NUYS : Businesses Direct Homeless to Services

In an effort to help homeless people who discourage customers from shopping along Sepulveda Boulevard, businesses have begun distributing information cards that direct the disadvantaged to health, food and emergency housing services.

The laminated cards, called Homeless Emergency Help Cards, are printed in English and Spanish and offer telephone numbers for more than a dozen social-services agencies.

“We’re encouraging people to hand these to the homeless instead of money,” said Flip Smith, president of the 75-member Sepulveda Boulevard Business Watch. “If they keep giving them money, they won’t go away.

“They are a deterrent to business,” Smith said.

The cost of printing the 5,000 cards was taken on by Gordon O’Rourke, co-owner of a coin and jewelry shop on Sepulveda Boulevard. The information was collected by the San Fernando Valley Homeless Coalition and the ARCO Foundation.

“I think that a lot of times the homeless don’t know where to go,” said Theresa Burks, regional coordinator of Loaves and Fishes, a nonprofit Catholic charity in Van Nuys. “Any information that might be able to help them out and show them where they can get services is a good thing.”