Giving Shelter : Needy Find Food, a Warm Bed and Hope in Simi Valley

Last spring, pregnant and penniless, Paula Palos camped out in a tent with her 2-year-old daughter in the hills above Simi Valley.

Then she discovered PADS--Public Action to Deliver Shelter--a coalition of Simi Valley churches that provides shelter and assistance to the homeless.

With their help, Palos, 29, was able to apply for government aid and move into a modest, two-bedroom apartment in Simi Valley.

In winter, the 4-year-old PADS program offers up to two dozen residents a warm, safe place to sleep each night, serving as many as 300 homeless people between November and March.

Organizers say the program also gives people who find themselves suddenly without a home a chance to apply for government assistance or to save enough money to pay a security deposit on an apartment.

And next spring, organizers of the PADS program will open the Samaritan Center, Simi Valley’s first drop-in facility for the homeless.

Situated in the old St. Francis of Assisi Church on Royal Avenue near Madera Road, the center will provide storage space, mail service, voice mail, a jobs board, laundry facilities and showers for the homeless.

“It’s incredible how easy to is to lose your job, your last dollar, and become homeless,” said Ken Constable, an accountant who volunteers for PADS. “These services that we’re finally going to be able to offer are things most people take for granted, things you need in order to function in this society.”

Palos said she is planning to take nursing classes in the spring. She still depends on church charity to feed herself and her two young daughters, but she credits PADS with helping her get off the streets.

“PADS is a stepping ground,” Palos said. “It helped me get out of being homeless, which is the first step toward getting off welfare and living like everybody else.”

The Samaritan Center is scheduled to open at the end of March, when the shelter program closes for the summer. A companion meals program, however, operates year-round.

Started nine years ago as a way to pool community resources to feed the hungry, the volunteer-driven meals program operates seven nights a week, rotating among six churches around Simi Valley.

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On a recent evening, about 100 people crowded into the community room at Grace Brethren Church for fried chicken, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie.

Volunteer Doris Lembeck said many of those who come to the meals program are the formerly homeless who cannot afford to feed themselves and their families.

“We don’t just feed the homeless,” she said. “We feed the homeless and the needy, and nobody goes away hungry.”

As she sat at a long, cafeteria-style table drinking coffee and eating pie, Lexie Troupe, 44, said she has been coming in for a free meal each day for the past year and a half.

Troupe, a soft-spoken woman with a ready smile, said she has acute cirrhosis of the liver and lives on disability income, which barely pays her rent.

“It’s been rough going for me,” she said. “But it makes it easier to get through, knowing I can come here each day, see people I know, and fill my stomach with something good.”

Lifelong Simi Valley resident Steve Latham, 42, agreed. “Three years ago I hit the bottom,” said Latham. “Now I’m ready to get back on my feet.”

Latham said he is training to be a computer technician. “If it wasn’t for PADS and the meals program, I don’t think I could do it.”

Another man said he turned to PADS after leaving home several weeks ago because of family problems. He said he appreciated the supportive environment created by volunteers and program participants.

“Nobody here judges you or looks down on you,” he said. “They treat you with dignity, not like you’re a failure.”

The 19-year-old man, who said he works with disabled people, asked that his name not be used because he feared that if his employer found out he was homeless he would lose his job.

Wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a tweed blazer and blue Oxford shirt, the man looked more like a college student than a homeless wanderer who spent Christmas day at the park with the ducks.

“People have all these ideas about what homeless people are like,” he said. “They don’t know that anybody without a lot of friends or family support can become homeless.”

As the diners finished their meal, most left the church and headed home, laden with extra peanut butter sandwiches and apple pie donated by a local bakery for the holidays.

Two dozen people remained at the church, lining up at a card table to sign up for shelter for the night. PADS employee Geoffrey Kasule registered participants with the courtesy of a desk clerk at a fine hotel.

‘Are you sleeping with us tonight?” he asked. “You must be tired. Let me put you down here, so you can rest your head.”

New participants were given an application to fill out and a contract to sign, asking them to agree not to fight, use drugs or alcohol, or leave the shelter during the night.

They also received a mini-lecture from Kasule about using the shelter: “Please, I request, don’t get hooked on it.”

Then, Kasule reached into a tattered straw bag with “Mexico” woven on the side and pulled out the three items each shelter user would need: a pink index card that serves as a shelter pass, a map to the site for the evening and a bus pass to get them there.

“We eat in one place and sleep in another,” Kasule said. “It’s very cumbersome, especially on Sundays when the buses don’t run.”

PADS organizers say there are no plans to build a permanent homeless shelter and dining facility in Simi Valley. But they are trying to find someone willing to donate a van to the program, which would simplify the task of getting the needy from the food site to the shelter.

Shelter passes in hand, the two dozen homeless people scrambled to hitch a ride or catch a bus across town to St. Francis of Assisi, the shelter host for the night.

Shelter veterans knew the first ones arriving at the site would get the warmest sleeping bags and the best spots on the linoleum-covered concrete floor--the semiprivate nooks and crannies in the church’s community room.

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The sleeping room was cozy and homelike. A piano occupied one corner, next to a stack of brightly colored plastic children’s chairs. A pot of steaming coffee brewed on a table by the door as a small group gathered around the television set to watch a football game.

Some of the shelter seekers immediately turned in for the night. But most gathered and socialized until the lights went out at 10:30 p.m.

On this night, the shelter would be monitored by volunteer Kevin Bett, a Simi Valley resident who is an auto theft detective for the Los Angeles Police Department.

“The homeless here are different from some of the ones I see in L.A.,” Bett said. “We have a few chronic street people here, but most are seasonal laborers who can’t make ends meet in the down times.”

Bett said that, as shelter monitor, he would sleep alongside the homeless on a flimsy cot covered with a sleeping bag.

“You ought to be here at night for the chorus of snores,” he said. “One really has to be tired to sleep through that.”