Genesis’ First Seven Days : Homeless: Experimental village experiences the same rocky start as other new homes: no utilities and the problems of settling in.

A little more than a week ago, Alma Smith was cooking for herself and other homeless members of a Downtown street encampment where she lived. Today, she is head chef in the geodesic dome village experiment, designed to get street people on their feet.

Smith has everything organized, labeling each drawer in the kitchen dome according to its contents, such as “utensils,” “forks” or “plastic wrap.” Her goal, she said, is to run a cafeteria kitchen.

During the first week of this experiment known as Genesis I, Smith’s main problem has been deciding which of the 23 other residents are capable of serving as her kitchen crew. Potential candidates, in her view, either ignore her signs and open the wrong drawers, track dirt in from outside, or do not work hard enough.

Smith’s quandary came up at a council meeting where residents dealt with some of the start-up problems encountered at the village, located on an old parking lot near the 8th Street off-ramp of the Harbor Freeway.

Smith could not make up her mind, she told the council and Ted Hayes, the homeless activist who conceived the idea of using geodesic domes for homeless people. The message was clear as Smith folded her arms across her chest: No one was good enough.

“You must look at yourself as a teacher, Alma, so people can learn to be as good as you are,” Hayes said softly.

The yearlong pilot project, funded largely through a $250,000 grant from Arco, is believed to be the first transitional housing program of its kind in the country where the homeless govern their own community.

In this experiment, the homeless are given security and food. The hope is that they will learn to work together and handle responsibility, beginning with village chores. Hayes believes that small personal successes lead to bigger ones, and ultimately another way of life.

He plans to eventually connect residents with local social services, and dreams that members of this first village will do so well that they can run other transitional dome villages for the homeless. But for now, Hayes just wants village life to get settled.

“We’re bumping along little by little,” Hayes said at the council meeting. “Hopefully, in the next week, we’ll tighten everything up. We’re going to be getting up earlier. The first call will be at 6 a.m. and the second call will be at 7 so that everyone can get breakfast and be in their positions by 9.”

Residents have been trying to cope with the common frustrations of setting up a new home, such as persuading the Department of Water and Power to show up. The electricity was not hooked up; there was no hot water and no heat.

At the meeting, residents removed Ralph Ochoa from his job as chief toilet cleaner because he had not been doing the work. Eddy Georges, the former second-string cleaner, ascended to the top spot and he reported that toilets had gotten stopped up.

The council also discussed “tourists,” as they call outsiders who have read or heard about the village and come to look. Some felt they needed more privacy.

They voted to limit public visiting hours to 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Eri Burns, who panhandled as a homeless person but now is the village office manager, sees irony in the way strangers treat her. “Before I was like a leper,” she said. “Now there’s all this attention.”

Burns, a 38-year-old woman, wears suits or dresses donated to the village. When visitors comment that she does not look homeless, she replies: “What does a homeless person look like?”

The village consists of 18 white fiberglass structures, including residential domes and various community domes for showers, laundry and dining. The residential domes are 20 feet wide and designed for two people. Each is furnished with donated chairs, a bureau, rug and curtains.

In addition to chores, everyone is assigned a two-hour daily guard shift so that there is security 24 hours a day. At nightfall, some watch television in the “community” room, but most are in their own domes by 8 p.m.

Drugs are prohibited in the village, and those who continue to use them outside the compound will be judged on whether they should continue to contribute to the community, Hayes said.

The residents, 18 men and six women, include those who have been living on the streets from a few months to 10 years. Burns had been living in a nearby cul-de-sac for 20 months before she joined Genesis. She had come to Los Angeles with her ex-husband, she said, and ended up homeless after a disastrous business deal.

Burns met her current mate, Bill Mathews, 48, on a blind date. A couple who moved back and forth between the homeless and non-homeless worlds told Mathews they wanted to fix him up with Burns. Mathews, a carpenter-plumber from New York who was not homeless at the time, said he agreed to a date with a homeless woman “out of curiosity.”

“Then, the minute I laid eyes on her I fell in love,” he said.

Soon Mathews ran out of money and he and Burns were living on the street together. Burns said Mathews protected her, helped her get off cocaine and made her believe in herself. “Bill always told me I was strong enough, but I had to pull it out of myself,” she said.

Now she wants to help other people, through Genesis: “I have found my niche.”

While Mathews and Burns hope that their future will be working with the homeless, Debra Edwards is not sure what she wants from Genesis. Edwards, 33, said she liked hanging out on the streets. She has fended for herself “lots of ways,” she said airily, without going into specifics. “I’m not good at panhandling though, because I get mad when people say no.”

Street life is something “I choose to do, not because I have to,” she said one day in the office dome as she searched through a pile of donated clothes. She needed “office clothes,” she explained, because she was assigned to work with Burns.

Edwards took a green silk suit out of the donation pile and set it aside. A child tottered nearby, precariously balancing a glass of water as he tried to grab the green suit.

“Don’t do that!” Edwards said sharply, pushing the child’s hand away. “No!”

“You don’t have to yell,” the child’s father said.

“I’m not yelling, I just talk this way!” Edwards yelled.

Burns said she has been working with Edwards to lower her voice. “I think it’s because she’s so small, she always had to talk loudly to get attention.”

Hayes and others have nicknamed her “Little Bit,” because she’s so short.

Edwards likes being a secretary. “I’m learning to take messages, how to deal with society,” she said.

On opening day, she seemed almost lost among a group of other residents who were all dressed in matching white jumpsuits. Now she was wearing high heels, a lavender two-piece dress, matching hose and a black wig, striding around with unmistakable pride.

“I notice the ladies are fixing themselves up. Men are trimming their mustaches,” Tracey LaMar said as he bounced his 2-year-old, Kacee, on his knee.

“They got a purpose now,” LaMar said of the residents. “Everybody has something to do.”