Discomfort and Joy : After a Bumpy Start, Dome Villagers Hope Bickering Will Give Way to Cooperation

A month into the experiment known as Genesis I, the crises started to overwhelm the Downtown Los Angeles village of domes for the homeless.

Bags of donated clothing and food were disappearing. Simple chores--a security watch or dining room cleanup--went undone. And some of the two dozen residents were leaving the cluster of 18 domes on Golden Avenue--a few by choice, but others forced out for drug use or stealing.

What’s more, the self-rule promoted by Genesis I’s charismatic founder, Ted Hayes, as the key to self-help for homeless people was unraveling amid finger-pointing and griping--often targeting Hayes.

So it was that Hayes, the one high-profile figure among Los Angeles’ legions of homeless, finally retreated inside his own dome for a week, daring other residents to run the place without him.

He said: “They were arguing, fussing and complaining. . . . I said, ‘If you want this to survive, you fix it or I’m out of here. I’ll call a news conference and say I’ve failed.’ ”

Hayes has not had to go that far yet. But six weeks after the much-publicized opening of Genesis I, the housing project targeting hard-core homeless people clearly is going through bumpy times.

By this week, eight residents had gone. Those remaining said they were trying to make things better, but that thefts of money and donated goods persist.

“You wonder why someone steals a can of tomato paste when they can get a glass of tomato juice for free,” said Eddy Georges, a 47-year-old Haitian who is one of Hayes’ designated village leaders.

“They take it to the dope man,” another resident said with a sneer. “Then the dope man doesn’t have to buy food.”

“I’m finding crack is an extremely insidious drug,” Hayes said. “It’ll make you lie, cheat, kill your mamma.”

Other habits have proved hard to break as well: Many who were street panhandlers cannot resist hustling for money from visitors to the dome village.

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But as the village prepared for its first Christmas, residents also saw signs of hope. They were not perhaps the overnight miracles that outsiders dream of, or demand, of such projects. But there were small, tangible steps toward normalcy.

For Tracy LaMar, who does the village’s cooking, progress was evident in how residents sit down quietly when he sets out the food in the dining dome. “Now they don’t pounce,” he said.

“We’re learning to become inside people.”

Then there is Bobby Rawls, who at first did not always do his assigned job of cleaning the floor in the community dome. Now he produces a daily journal, listing his accomplishments. The dated entries are usually the same: “Move furniture, water, wash. . . .”

And Hayes finally came out of his dome, soon talking again of his dream of launching several more communities of urban igloos--if this one works. “We have problems, but we’re working through them,” he said this week.

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From the start, Genesis I was different from other programs designed to get homeless people back on their feet, such as those run by local missions or at Weingart Center, the largest service center on Skid Row. Those tend to be highly structured and demand disciplined behavior from participants. Hayes, in contrast, emphasized individual choice and self-rule.

He also focused on people living in makeshift street encampments, a group that experts say is the hardest to reach. “People involved in encampments get out of step, and kind of withdraw, literally,” said Gene R. Jackson, homeless projects coordinator for the city of Los Angeles. “They feel like they don’t have to play by anybody’s rules but their own.”

One recent study found that such homeless people prefer encampments to missions or shelters. “They refuse to go to institutionalized social services,” said Hayes--who thus went to them, looking for recruits.

Hayes’ theory was that inexpensive short-term housing--in the form of the $6,500 domes--could ease them into more positive ways. “People go into a disciplined program, get out and fall apart,” he said, “because they didn’t take responsibility for themselves.”

So Genesis I was set up with “no rules and regulations,” Hayes said. “You’re free to be who you are.”

A drug user or alcoholic can remain an addict, as long as the drugs are not used openly in the village. Residents of Genesis I are not required to have paying jobs or contribute to the village any government relief payments or food stamps they receive.

In Hayes’ parlance, the village is a “tribal social democracy,” with the residents deciding their own discipline, including when to expel troublemakers. Hayes calls himself the “servant director.”

But some residents complain that the structure is increasingly undermined by the leadership of Hayes, who seems more in his element giving interviews than managing. The village council voted to eject at least three more people for stealing or drugs, residents said, only to have Hayes say they could stay. Hayes said he was showing mercy.

The village leader has also declared that there is no need for job training or drug programs at Genesis I. These residents are above that, Hayes insists, because he wants them to become leaders, running his future villages. “These are the trainers who will make the next dome villages work,” he said.

Some say only a few residents so far are capable of leadership, however, and even Hayes added: “We’re still working on getting up in the morning.”

Indeed, even the minimal requirements of the village--mainly that residents do chores a few hours a day--do not sit well with everyone.

“In some ways it’s worse up here than down there,” said Bill Mathews, a 48-year-old former carpenter who lived in a nearby encampment where Hayes recruited the bulk of the residents. “Down there everybody did what they wanted to when they wanted to. Homeless people don’t want to be back in the 9-to-5 culture.”

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Ongoing funding has also become a problem. A $250,000 grant from Arco paid for the village’s construction and land rental, but a spokesman for the oil company said it has not made further contributions. Hayes said Genesis I depends on donations to meet the estimated $4,400 monthly costs, most of which are food and utilities.

Real estate investor David Adams, who was instrumental in obtaining other corporate donations when Genesis I opened, said fund-raising has been hard. “Everybody says, ‘Let’s see what happens,’ ” he said.

Most of the village problems have been played out in private, not generally voiced to the still-frequent media visitors. The village glistened recently, for example, as cameras trailed Britain’s Prince Edward on a tour of Genesis I and a talk with Hayes.

“At first I was kind of nervous,” Hayes said. “But he relaxed, then I relaxed and we talked like old friends.”

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Behind all the smiles for the cameras, residents say they are concerned about Genesis I. “When this started, I had optimism,” one said. “But now I feel I’m in the eye of a hurricane.”

And yet they want it to work.

One recent evening, a group sang carols at their Christmas tree-trimming party. When Hayes asked everyone to share holiday thoughts, 40-year-old Jim Simon spoke up haltingly. “I was out in the rain last year at this time,” said the tall, muscular man in jeans and a work shirt.

“When it was raining the other day I was laying in my dome, thinking about the encampment at 3rd Street and Bixel, how the city just come through and razed their houses.”

The others nodded. The camp at 3rd and Bixel streets was only a few blocks away. Not long ago, they knew only too well what it meant to lose cardboard, wood and tarpaulin coverings to city bulldozers.

“Sometimes we got to stop and think what we got here,” Simon said.