HUNTINGTON BEACH : New Shelter to Give Youths Place to Stay

The Huntington Youth Shelter, designed to be a safe place for runaways in Huntington Beach and surrounding cities, is scheduled to officially open this week.

Community leaders will participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday at 12:45 p.m. at the 18-bed facility, located in Central Park just east of the Central Library.

The Marine View School musical choral group will entertain, and Huntington Beach High School students will conduct tours until 5 p.m.

Although the shelter will be able to accommodate nine boys and nine girls, it is expected to start with about four youths before gradually increasing to a full complement in about six months, a spokeswoman said.

The young people will stay a maximum of two weeks. They will receive counseling, and officials will try to reunite them with their families.

The shelter building was initially constructed in the 1930s for the Chevron oil company, officials said. Volunteers did major remodeling and doubled the size of the old home to 4,000 square feet.

The building, on an acre site, was leased to Huntington Youth Shelter officials by the city for $10 a year for 20 years.

Carol Kanode, a nurse in the Huntington Beach Union High School District, co-founder of the shelter and member of its board of directors, said the shelter is the largest of its kind for runaways in the Huntington Beach area.

Kanode said she got the idea for the shelter in 1987 when a student told her that she had turned to prostitution and drug dealing to support herself because she had been abandoned by her mother and had no place to live.

The shelter, at 7291 Talbert Ave., is designed for youths of ages 11 through 17.