Shelter Helps Homeless Get Back on Track

When Leah Bower first heard of the Trudy and Norman Louis Valley Shelter in North Hollywood, she envisioned long lines of people waiting for a bathroom.

“I was terrified the first day I went there,” said Bower, who moved in with her now 10-year-old son, Kory, in the fall of 1992.

Three months later, she moved to a Sherman Oaks apartment with fond memories of a sparse but loving Christmas with shelter staff and fellow residents.

“It was something that taught me a lot about life,” said Bower, who was sleeping in her car before coming to the shelter.

Her initial fears were unfounded, she said. The purpose of the 245-bed facility is to give families a chance to get back on their feet in a structured, clean and safe environment. Each resident is given 90 days to find a job or go to school, and then find a place to live.

“My staff will put out 100% as long as they put out 100%,” said Jeff Farber, director of social services for the L.A. Family Housing Corp., which runs the shelter recently given a Community Partnership Award from the Los Angeles Times Valley Edition.

The shelter is planning to soon launch a new mobile outreach program targeting the pockets of deep poverty in the northeast Valley, although Farber could not give a specific start date. The shelter has also begun a $3-million fund-raising campaign to build a transitional living center for 69 families that would offer more on-site educational and employment programs. It would be located next to the main facility, 7843 Lankershim Blvd.

Medical help, counseling, job search and housing information are offered through the shelter as part of a philosophy to get families off the streets, and keep them from returning to homelessness. Since 1991, only about 5% of families housed at the shelter have come back, Farber said.

But other statistics show the growing problem of homelessness. Four years ago, Bower had to wait three weeks for a spot to open at the shelter; today’s prospective residents can wait as long as six months. Last year 9,600 homeless people were on the Valley streets, about 12% of the total in Los Angeles County, Farber said.

Many of those, Farber said, are Valley natives who still feel they are part of the community, even if they don’t have a permanent address.

“I guess in a sense it makes me angry that there are homeless people,” said Farber, 38, a Los Angeles native who developed his social awareness while a student at UC Berkeley in the 1970s. He later earned a master’s in social work at USC.

“I think everybody, if you look at your life, you have had something traumatic happen to you and you can understand,” Farber said. “Maybe they weren’t homeless, but they went through something that was very emotional.”

Connecting on that level of empathy can motivate people to take meaningful action against poverty, he said.

“Sympathy gives them [the homeless] a quarter,” Farber said. “Empathy gets them a lead on a job. That’s what brought me into this. I have a strong sense of empathy.”

The help goes full circle. Bower, whose son was taught to play chess by a security guard at the shelter, now is on the board of directors and runs food drives for the poor and homeless at Kory’s school. “The most important thing I learned while I was there was what makes the world go around is you have to give back,” she said.

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