Official Strives for Year-Round Homeless Shelter in the Valley

Nat Hutton, 52, has been executive director of the North Hollywood-based Los Angeles Family Housing Corp. for a year and a half. The organization operates two family shelters, the Trudy and Norman Louis Valley Shelter in North Hollywood and the Chernow House in Boyle Heights. The organization also has developed 56 units of permanent housing for the formerly homeless and 19 apartments where families live while preparing themselves to be self-supporting. He spoke with Times staff writer Richard Lee Colvin about homelessness in the San Fernando Valley.

Question: How big is the homeless population of the San Fernando Valley and is the number increasing?

Answer: We don’t have any really good data on the San Fernando Valley, but it’s been projected at anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000. City and countywide, a study by the Los Angeles Shelter Partnership indicated a 13.2% increase in the past year. We’re finding the increase is coming predominantly in the area of families with young kids and single parents who are becoming homeless.

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Q. We’ve had a number of confrontations recently involving homeless people. There was the misunderstanding that led to a Canoga Park man shooting two homeless people who were in his house, killing one and wounding one. A group of churches met last week with police to learn about how to deal with transients from a security point of view. A homeless encampment in Reseda was cleaned up a couple weeks ago. And earlier this year, Studio City businesses began handing out an informational brochure to homeless panhandlers instead of money. Are we seeing a hardening of attitudes toward the homeless?

A. I don’t think it’s a hardening of attitudes. I think it’s just that people are becoming more aware of what’s happening around them. We try to shy away from the fact that there are people out there who don’t have places to live, to get a decent meal, to take a shower. But since there’s more of them it’s harder not to see them.

I think it’s going to require some insight and some caring and some innovation from the respective communities as to what they can do to eradicate this problem. But it’s going to require more than a community solution. It’s got to be a worldwide resolution, trickling down from the Clinton Administration to the states to the cities.

About 94% of the people on the street want jobs so they can maintain themselves. That is the No. 1 thing we are lacking. They want to work. They’re not that different from you and I.

People want their own environment and they want to be around the things that they want in their lives and that’s why there are encampments. It’s not the best place to live and we surely don’t want them popping up all over the city. I think, personally, we shouldn’t have them. We should have structures, nice places for these people to come in and shower and eat and stay for the night and be housed like human beings . . . and not encampments, these little villages of existence.

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Q. There are homeless advocates who say those who don’t want to come in off the street shouldn’t have to. Is that something we as a society should accept?

A. It’s always nicer to come in off the streets. In the past we have always had . . . a small group of people who did enjoy living on the street and we used to call them hobos. But, for God’s sake, we don’t want the large numbers we have presently and we should try to persuade the larger population to come in off the street and have some decent place to call home if in fact they want that.

I’m just concerned about the changing attitudes among the people that are out there. Because some do enjoy being out there, I think that, in some way, we’re going to have to change that attitude. But I don’t think that’s the majority. I think that’s just a very few. But they definitely should come in.

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Q. Are we responding appropriately to our growing awareness of the homeless among us?

A. I’m not sure we are responding appropriately. I think we are doing all that we can with the resources that we have. President Clinton, in May, issued an executive order directing the Council on Homelessness to come up with some type of recommendations for this problem. I think we are trying to do things . . . but it is such an enormous problem that it is going to take time and effort from the Clinton Administration on down to resolve the problem.

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Q. Are you upbeat about what you’ve seen so far on this issue from the Riordan Administration?

A. I’m not really that upbeat about it. I sit on the homeless steering committee for the city, and the mayor has a representative there. I’ve not seen a policy yet. They are concerned . . . but I’m not sure they know which direction to take. They truly are concerned . . . and the evidence is that, although the budget has been very, very tight, we are going to do the cold weather program again this year in the city and the county. And they’ve added another element to it where they will have a 24-hour shelter. That’s going to be running for a 70- to 90-day period. In the past we have just had the program where it was initiated just by the weather.

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Q. Will there be one in the San Fernando Valley?

A. I’m not sure. We are, as an organization, trying to put together something that we can do for homeless people in the San Fernando Valley, a year-round, 24-hour shelter.

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Q. What services are we still in most need of for the homeless.

A. Sheltering. Food. Decent meals. A decent shower. Some form of employment service once they are clothed and clean and can go out and do something. Medical services are badly needed. And some kind of case management where they can get some kind of direction.

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Q. That is essentially the comprehensive approach to serving the homeless that you take at your shelters. Does it work?

A. Yes. We have about a 80% success ratio here. They start here on the 90-day program and complete that and go to transitional housing and from transitional they go on to permanent housing, and back into the mainstream of society again, which is the goal. And the doors are always open so they can come back for any services that they need, in case they have some problems, and they do.