COVERS STORY : ‘Crisis Situation’ : Long Beach Grapples With a Homeless Dilemma

“Placing the blame is pointless. Developing solutions is urgent.”

Chairwoman’s introduction, Long Beach task force on the homeless, November, 1987

No one said it would be easy. But even today, after many years of struggling to get Long Beach to help its homeless, Elizabeth Moore can’t believe the state’s fifth-largest city offers so little to those whose address is the streets.

“I am shocked. I thought by now we would be running, and sometimes I feel we are still crawling,” says Moore, head of the mayor’s advisory committee on homelessness.

After all, Moore says, this isn’t an issue that cropped up overnight. Seven years ago, city officials saw enough of a problem to convene a citizens’ task force to assess the extent of homelessness in Long Beach and recommend solutions.

Nor is the problem of people without shelter insignificant--by many accounts, on any given day there are about 3,000 homeless in Long Beach, and the number could be 5,000 or more.

But even with such numbers, many contend that Long Beach has done little to reduce the ranks of its homeless or--at minimum--make them as comfortable as possible with temporary shelters, meals and other services.

“(Long Beach) treats its homeless residents poorly because we tend to respond to crisis situations,” says City Councilman Alan S. Lowenthal. “And although there is a kind of chronic homeless problem in the city, it is not boiling over to the point where people are feeling compelled to do something.”

Or as Moore put it: “We have a problem, but our city doesn’t recognize it.”

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Some officials, of course, dispute that charge. “I don’t believe any city in America can take care of the problem of the homeless. The best they can do is put a Band-Aid on it,” says City Manager James C. Hankla.

Like many other Long Beach officials, Hankla says dealing with homelessness is primarily the duty of federal, state and county governments. “I think the city is doing everything it is charged with under the law,” he says.

Even if that is true, it is not enough, Moore and others contend.

“I think they (city officials) could do far more if they wanted to, far more than what they’re doing,” Moore says. “They talk about it. They may come to (community) meetings, make some promises. But as far as really doing something . . . they are not doing it.”

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Tommy Edwards’ body, like his clothing, is crunched together as he panhandles--cup in hand--outside Long Beach City Hall. The Civic Center is where he spends his days. The nearby parks, his nights. Those nights when he isn’t in jail.

“I was sleeping outside the courthouse and they ran me off. They said I couldn’t sleep there,” he says. “But if you’re homeless you gotta sleep somewhere. . . . I can’t walk all night.”

Neither can Jerry Adams, who says Long Beach authorities routinely sweep the homeless from parks to the streets. “They let you get comfortable in a spot for a couple weeks. Then as soon as everybody is (comfortable), they sweep you out,” Adams says. “They tell you they have a curfew . . ., (but) I think I have rights, don’t I? I’m 40 years old. They don’t have curfews for 40-year-olds, do they?”

Adams’ remark is typical of the banter in and outside the Christian Outreach Appeal hall, a nonprofit downtown way station for the homeless. It is, those at the hall say, the only place in town where they can get a shower. And it is one of the few locations--another is the nonprofit ALPHA Project--that do what they can to help homeless people find food, shelter, employment and other services.

“A lot of cities, a lot of them smaller than Long Beach, have a lot better programs,” says Donald Sims, a homeless activist who over the years has repeatedly challenged the city’s policies in council sessions and the courts.

“Long Beach has a history, as well as a current policy, of hostility toward the homeless,” charges Dennis Rockway, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation.

The criticism of Long Beach’s efforts, of course, is not universal.

In a 1993 report for the Los Angeles Homelessness Project, based in the geography department at the University of Southern California, professors Robin M. Law and Jennifer R. Wolch credited Long Beach with being one of only three cities in Southern California to develop specific “Homelessness Policy” statements and one of only four to spend any significant amount on programs and services for the homeless.

And Sheila Pagnani, the widely praised former director of Long Beach’s homeless program, insists that criticism of the city’s commitment is unfair.

“I am very proud of . . . the city of Long Beach,” said Pagnani, who is credited even by the city’s critics with pushing Long Beach to at least acknowledge its homeless.

Specifically, Pagnani says, the city’s department heads deserve credit for trying to reconcile the needs of the homeless with the realities of City Hall, including its budget. “They understand very clearly the need to provide programs for the homeless and at the same time understand the problems the city has (financially). . . . You just can’t turn things around that quickly.”

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But attorney Rockway and others who have monitored homeless programs statewide say Long Beach has provided lip service rather than real programs.

Rockway notes that San Jose and Long Beach both appointed citizen task forces in January, 1987, to study the problem of homelessness. Since then, he says, Long Beach has hired a homeless coordinator and discussed various steps but has yet to set aside local funds for a shelter.

By contrast, San Jose has spent more than $7 million to assist five new shelters, its Redevelopment Agency has contributed another $11.6 million to relocate a rescue mission, and a $1.9-million fund has been established for various housing and homeless services.

Long Beach officials say they do not know how much they spend annually on services for the homeless. The USC report estimated $288,000 in 1992 but said most of it was federal money.

Says San Jose Housing Director Alex Sanchez: “We’ve been able to manage our problem. We don’t have the resources to solve homelessness . . . (but) we have accepted our responsibility.”

In its defense, Long Beach does not have as large a problem as San Jose, where estimates of the homeless population have reached as high as 18,000. Nor does it have the tax base of San Jose, which is part of Santa Clara County, the nation’s second highest in median household income.

Still, critics of Long Beach say it is not just a matter of numbers. It is, they say, a matter of tackling a problem with far-reaching consequences, many of them economic.

As the homeless move along the city’s streets, clustering in parks or older neighborhoods just outside the central business district, they are a constant reminder of the problem, activists say.

“It’s almost a disgrace. We don’t even know the number on the streets,” Moore says. “Before, it used to be a handful (of homeless) here and handful there. Now it’s all over.”

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Without specifically commenting on the approach of Long Beach or other cities, San Jose’s Sanchez says his city confronted the homeless problem because there was no way to escape it. “The homeless problem was concentrated downtown and was a very visible situation,” he said.

Eventually, he said, the city’s business leaders joined with local agencies when it became clear that the homeless problem would not disappear. “They wanted to secure their buildings. They had fires. They had human waste. So they wanted to do something, and they knew it was more than just calling the police,” Sanchez said.

Such a coordinated approach is something that has been discussed countless times over the years in Long Beach. But, to date, little has been done, according to the city’s own figures and those of people who have monitored the problem. Consider the following:

* Worried about attracting clusters of homeless to the civic center, Long Beach officials have blocked proposals to allow new single-room occupancy hotels, particularly downtown, despite the success of such hotels in providing at least temporary housing in San Diego, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

* More than five years of discussion over building a multi-service center have yet to produce a facility where homeless people can receive food and housing vouchers, job counseling and other services. And although pending federal Housing and Urban Development funds may finally result in such a facility, city officials intend to locate it on Terminal Island--a remote, industrial site--because council members want it far from residential and commercial areas.

* After city officials reportedly tried to block the transfer of 208 units of former Navy housing for temporary shelter, the plan is now up in the air for a different reason: internal bickering among nonprofit agencies negotiating for the site with the federal government. “Our fear is that one of the keystone pieces of service to the homeless may become lost,” says the Rev. Kit Wilkie, associate pastor of the First Congregational Church and chairman of the Long Beach Area Homeless Coalition.

“The city was very reluctant to admit the homeless even had a right to apply for that . . . housing,” adds Joanne O’Byrne, president of Long Beach Area Citizens Involved.

Over the years, the city’s reluctance to act has been apparent to many, including its own homeless task force.

“What is clear is that other large cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, spend many more times the funds than does Long Beach for the provision of direct emergency services to the homeless. Even Santa Monica, with a population of approximately one-quarter the size of Long Beach, currently spends over four times as much for direct, emergency services to the homeless as does Long Beach,” the homeless committee wrote back in 1987, a finding that many say is still accurate.

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Most significantly, critics say, Long Beach has lacked an agenda, progressive or otherwise.

City officials “walk a fine line between doing something and doing nothing,” says Bob Erlenbusch,director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Homelessness, a nonprofit public education and advocacy coalition. The city “doesn’t have a reputation . . . of being a community aggressively trying to find solutions to homeless problems. But they also haven’t gone down the road of punitive and vindictive measures as other communities have.”

True enough. Santa Monica may once have been dubbed “the home of the homeless,” but today it has taken as hard a view on homelessness as any city around. Closing public parks at night is only one of several get-tough measures enacted by its council.

Long Beach, by contrast, has never been as tough as some other cities, though some critics say that is only because officials have been blocked from enacting punitive measures. “I think they would have liked to, but the (homeless advocacy) agencies have probably kept the city from overreacting,” says Jack Jinsen, a longtime homeless advocate and former director of Christian Outreach Appeal.

Jinsen is one of many homeless advocates in Long Beach who have seen programs with support suddenly wither, the victims of political forces as relentless as trade winds in this seaside city.

Sometimes it is residents who don’t want programs or shelters in their midst. Other times it is business leaders who remind the city that companies--and tourists--aren’t likely to come to a city where the homeless roam the streets.

Whatever the forces at any given time, they have combined over the years to quash many a program and frustrate activists inside and outside City Hall.

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And that was to be expected, said Pam Briley, a local real estate broker who has sought to bring a reality check to discussions of the homeless problem.

“The two groups we need to have here are the business groups and community organizations,” Briley said during a recent meeting of homeless advocates. The homeowner groups, she said, must be shown that providing certain programs will help get some of the homeless off the streets. And businesses, Briley said, cannot be expected to take it on faith that their contributions of time and money will help commerce as well as the homeless.

“Business people have to have a reason to do anything,” she says.

With a new mayor, Beverly O’Neill, some advocates for the homeless think Long Beach may finally move toward more assistance, if not significant new programs. “I do feel we have the ear of our newly elected mayor,” said Moore, the homeless advisory committee chairwoman.

But some city officials continue to point out that the time and money spent tackling the problem of homelessness could divert attention from other programs and services that are more directly a city’s responsibility.

“I don’t believe any city in America can take care of the problem of the homeless,” says City Manager Hankla. “And from my perspective, we are doing more and more and more of the work of other government (entities),” such as the state and federal governments.

“The problem of the homeless is a problem of the economy, and I believe the federal government needs to be more responsible,” Hankla says. “I also believe the problem of homeless (with) mental illness is a state problem, and the decision by the state to close mental hospitals has been a disaster.”

Former homeless director Pagnani says that attacking the city’s problem will take more money, but that funding alone is not the answer. “This is not a problem that is going to be solved with money, because there has been a lot of money poured into it (nationally),” she says.

And although emergency shelters and cold-weather shelters do save lives, Pagnani says: “They are Band-Aids. They just keep human misery from being more miserable.”

In Long Beach, homeless advocates say, a commitment to reduce misery--rather than just hoping it will go away--would be progress.

“The homeless people have to go somewhere,” Rockway says.

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Johnny Van Lofton, 31, has spent the past year moving from New York to Chicago and now to Long Beach. This town is friendlier than Chicago, he says, but it doesn’t offer the food, shelter or other services--such as public transit--that New York does. “There’s a whole lot more to eat there. . . . All the leftovers from restaurants are found in separate bins,” for the homeless, Van Lofton says.

In Long Beach, he says, you never find those sorts of acknowledgments that the homeless are part of the landscape. And if you venture outside the poorer areas of town, as Van Lofton and others without shelter sometimes do, you are sure to get stopped, he says.

“The police here will follow you. You walk around Belmont Shore or some place like that and you will get dogged. They will sweat you,” he says.

As if doing so, he says, will somehow erase the problem.

“The more they want to hide from it, it just seems there are more homeless,” Van Lofton says. “I don’t know what causes that, but I think the more that people don’t want to deal with a problem, the worse it gets.”