City Council Reluctantly OKs Shelter for Homeless : Services: The facility would be opened in phases and eventually have 204 apartments. Navy still must approve use of the surplus land.

Like a family faced with a bothersome relative, the City Council reluctantly accepted a plan to set up a shelter for homeless people.

If the U.S. Navy approves the plan, the shelter will be set up in Navy housing that is scheduled to be declared surplus. It will include 204 apartments on 26 acres, making it one of the largest shelters in the area.

The nonprofit organization Christian Outreach Appeal, in partnership with the Los Angeles Mission, would run the shelter at the Navy’s Cabrillo and Savannah housing projects on the west side of Long Beach.

Under the plan, the remaining 109 acres of property would go to the Long Beach Unified School District for new senior and junior high schools, to Cal State Long Beach for a research park and to the city for a job-training program.

Navy officials are expected to approve the plan and transfer title to the property, possibly by the end of the year.

“I can’t give you a 100% guarantee, but if you’re a betting man, put your money on it,” Frederick S. Sterns, acting assistant secretary of the Navy, said Wednesday. “They have done exactly the thing we think is correct. They have reached a local agreement.”

A majority of the City Council and other city officials had tried to nix the homeless shelter on the Navy property. But there was no way to get around it--federal officials said some of the property should be used to benefit the homeless.

So the council gave its blessing Tuesday on a 7-to-0 vote. Vice Mayor Jeffrey A. Kellogg, who opposes the shelter, walked out before the vote. Councilwoman Doris Topsy-Elvord was absent.

Only Councilmen Alan S. Lowenthal and Warren Harwood strongly support the proposed shelter. The other council members voted for the plan halfheartedly.

“I knew we weren’t going to be able to scrape the whole situation away,” said Councilman Ray Grabinski, whose 7th District includes the naval housing.

Kellogg said he opposes the homeless shelter because it will be a drain on the local economy and an undesirable neighbor to the new schools.

“I could not in good conscience vote for that,” Kellogg said. “I do not think we’re doing justice to the future schools.”

Under the plan, the shelter will provide furnished apartments for six months to two years. , to help the homeless who set up camp in city parks and beg for coins at the Civic Center. Officials estimate the Long Beach homeless population at about 5,000, many of whom set up camp in city parks and beg for coins at the Civic Center.

Residents of the shelter will be required to participate in a counseling and training program to learn skills ranging from good work habits to maintaining successful relationships with co-workers, a spokeswoman said.

Christian Outreach Appeal officials said they have not determined how many residents will be in each apartment.

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The plan approved Tuesday was essentially the same one the council rejected in September. There is one key change: Christian Outreach Appeal will open the shelter in three phases instead of all at once.

First it will open 68 of the two- and four-bedroom apartments, Outreach Director Cedric Hinson said. City officials said they will work closely with the homeless organization to ensure that the shelter is running smoothly before the second and third sections of apartments are opened.

City Manager James C. Hankla said the city also will help residents of the shelter get into city job-training and housing programs.

Hinson said Outreach officials were happy with the agreement, even though the organization will get only a portion of the 328 apartments it requested earlier this year. The organization scaled back its proposal in September after council members, area residents and business owners complained.

“The compromise was necessary for all of us,” said Hinson, who does not know when the shelter will open. “Had we not brought some downsizing to the table, I don’t think we would have reached this general compromise.”

Initially, the majority of City Council members were in no mood to compromise. They saw the property as an opportunity to breathe new life into Long Beach’s wobbly economy.

The Navy is vacating the housing projects and most of its other facilities in Long Beach next year to reduce spending in the post-Cold War era.

The pull-out comes at a staggering cost to Long Beach. By the time the Navy closes the Long Beach Naval Station, housing and hospital, the city will have lost about 17,000 military and 1,300 civilian jobs and about $1 billion a year in economic benefits, city officials estimate.

So the City Council initially backed proposals to establish the university-related research park to generate jobs and train workers. It also backed Long Beach Unified’s proposal for new schools as a general benefit to the community.

The proposed homeless shelter would only place a larger burden on city services, the majority reasoned. And they did not like the thought of homeless people begging from researchers and schoolchildren.

But determined Outreach officials, backed by local homeless advocates, went to Washington to press their claim with Sterns, the assistant secretary of the Navy. They reminded Sterns that federal law assigns high priority to providing surplus federal land to agencies that serve the homeless.

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City officials quickly arranged a trip of their own to see the Navy official.

But Sterns told Kellogg and other Long Beach officials to come up with a local plan that included a homeless shelter or Navy officials would do it themselves. That meeting led to Tuesday’s compromise.

Most west Long Beach residents and business owners were set against allowing a homeless shelter in their neighborhood. But they also have come to accept the shelter as inevitable.

Bill Bledsoe, president of the West Long Beach Assn., said his organization’s 125 members would watch the operation to make sure it does not create problems.

“If it has to be here, we’re going to learn to live with it, and we are going to monitor it on a daily basis,” Bledsoe said.