‘The Prince and Pauper’ : L.A.’s Homeless Get the Royal Treatment From Prince Edward

Prince Edward, the least troubled member of Queen Elizabeth’s problem-ridden brood, made an appearance Friday afternoon at the most unlikely of venues: the domed homeless village known as Genesis I.

And so, in the dusky late afternoon, in the shadow of a freeway on-ramp, Edward, in natty double-breasted gray suit, sat in a white, fiberglass dome with Ted Hayes, the dreadlock homeless activist and onetime mayoral candidate, for a chat.

“The Prince and the pauper,” said an excited Hayes after Edward had toured the site, going from dome to dome, chatting amiably with some of the 22 residents, whom he left all atwitter as he departed. Because few royal visits are complete without a tree planting, he paused to plant a Japanese flowering plum tree.

Said the prince, playing to the crowd with a shovel full of dirt: “I just want to say if anyone thinks this is easy, it takes years of practice.”

Said the pauper afterward: “The idea that the Royal Family of England would take the time to hang out with us--that is such an esteem-builder. Who wants to hang out with the homeless?”

Well, Prince Edward did--Hayes said later that Edward told him he thought their domed village was a brilliant idea--on a brief tour of Los Angeles.

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In fact, Edward toured only the grittiest of sites. He went from a poor neighborhood in La Puente to a Downtown homeless community. Well, he did take time out for a private lunch at the Hotel Bel Air after arriving at the Burbank airport on an Arco private jet. Arco is a financial supporter of Genesis I.

But even the lunch was to discuss the Duke of Edinburgh’s award program--which recognizes youth volunteers in Britain and is duplicated here with the Congressional Awards. Edward visited the Delhaven Community Center in La Puente, where a number of youth volunteers work. The center functions as a facility for the developmentally disabled as well as a children’s youth center. He was escorted by Rep. Esteban Torres, whose 34th Congressional District boasts a large number of the Congressional Award-winning volunteers.

“He could have gone to any place in the world, and he came to my district because Delhaven is considered a model program for the Congressional Award program,” said Torres, who was at the lunch.

Edward, who has been in the United States all week--New York and Dallas were previous stops--did have one glamorous duty. He was scheduled to attend a dinner Friday night given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts at the Beverly Hilton Hotel to present director Martin Scorcese with the Britannia achievement award.

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If you are fuzzy on the details of Edward’s life, it is probably because he has escaped the more intense media scrutiny saved for his brothers, Charles and Andrew, and his more or less estranged sisters-in-law, Diana and Sarah.

At 29, Edward is Queen Elizabeth’s youngest--and tallest--son. He has never been linked to soft-porn stars or beer heiresses, and he has never been married, which has spared him the embarrassment of the public breakups that his siblings have endured.

Well-behaved in public, he is unlikely to turn the contents of a paint sprayer on the attendant press like his brother Andrew did in Los Angeles in 1984.

At Delhaven, he talked to the folks who administer the local Congressional Awards, listening with folded arms and a furrowed brow of concern. When the Delhaven staff took him through a room of mentally disabled adults, he paused at each table, commenting on what they were making. As he stood over 32-year-old Louis Jordan struggling to work a maze on his personal computer screen, photographers leaned in to capture the scene. “It’s not easy with all those cameras going on at the same time, is it?” the Prince deadpanned to Jordan.

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This was a rare trip to Los Angeles for Edward, and as he left the homeless village he was asked what he thought of the city. He walked to a waiting powder-blue Jaguar, musing over what to say.

“That’s an impossible question to answer,” he said.