Special Report: Moving to the Valley : NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Homeless Man Says He Has Found Hope

Drug dealers do not harass Terrell Jones anymore. Police no longer stop and question him. And he can wear any color he desires without fear of attracting a gang member’s wrath.

About the only thing that worries the 40-year-old Jones since he left the mean streets of Los Angeles last year is where he is going to sleep this month.

But even as he struggles with homelessness by surviving day-by-day at a local shelter in North Hollywood, he knows his chances are better in the San Fernando Valley than they were back in L.A.

“They have more opportunities out here,” said Jones, who has been living at the Trudy and Norman Louis Valley Shelter in North Hollywood since November. “It’s looking a lot better now.”

Such was not the case in April, 1992, when Jones found himself in the middle of the Los Angeles riots.

Although he was not harmed, the then-assembly-line worker said the burning of nearby apartment buildings and businesses near Pico and Crenshaw boulevards forced him to flee to the safety of a friend’s house in the San Fernando Valley.

From there, he watched his neighborhood burn on television and decided it was time for a change.

“I was just mentally affected,” Jones said of the experience. “I decided I would move here to the Valley because it was much more of a low-key atmosphere than South-Central L.A.”

But moving to a better life in the Valley would not be so easy. Within a few months of returning to his home in Los Angeles to finish out his year-long lease on his apartment, Jones was laid off from his job at a dyed foods plant.

For a while, he lived on unemployment benefits. When they ran out last July, he moved to a girlfriend’s Van Nuys apartment.

He managed to get his own apartment after applying for general relief in September, but lost his home two months later because his rent was overdue. Evicted and jobless, Jones contacted the North Hollywood shelter and joined the ranks of the homeless.

Despite the hard times, Jones said the move to the Valley was the right one to make. Although he has only been here for six months, he said he already feels safer, more hopeful and better about himself than he did in Los Angeles.

“It’s a much better atmosphere out here,” he said from the shelter, where he lives in one of 80 one-bedroom apartment units. “There’s not as much stress and strain and pressure.”

Just getting dressed for the day is no longer a game of life and death, he said.

“You can wear any color you want without worrying that certain things are gonna happen from gang members,” he said.

And since drug dealers no longer sell drugs on every corner of his neighborhood, as they did in Los Angeles, Jones said he can walk freely down the streets without fear of being approached by pushers or police.

“When I would go to the store, the police would take it for granted that I was buying some drugs,” Jones said. “They would flash the lights on you. But by me not being into drugs, I would always be able to go free.”

In fact, Jones said, he likes the police in the Valley better than their city counterparts.

“They know how to deal with the citizens a lot better,” he said, recalling a domestic dispute he witnessed at his old Van Nuys apartment.

Overall, Jones said, he is hopeful that the Valley will offer him a second chance.