Emergency Shelters Close Doors as Cold Air Moves In

Every morning since mid-November, hundreds of homeless men and women have emerged from the Glendale armory, rested and fed to make it through another day.

But today there will be a major change in their routine: They will have to find another place to stay because, as luck would have it, the county has shut down its 24 emergency shelters for the season just as the weather has turned unseasonably cold.

Funding from the county allows the facilities to open every night between Nov. 18 and Feb. 28, and extend operations during especially cold or rainy weather through March 31. Shelters only open in March when temperatures drop below 40 degrees or there is a greater than 50% chance of rain.

“If they could extend [the shelter] for two more weeks it would benefit the community by keeping people off the street,” said Charles, 47, who planned to look for shelter in a church doorway.

“El Nino has got people sick, and they go to the hospital and that costs taxpayers money. They should be able to stay in a warm bed.”

Temperatures across the Los Angeles Basin hovered in the mid-50s Tuesday following overnight lows in the upper 30s to mid-40s, about 10 degrees lower than normal, forecasters said.

Today, after another chilly night, scattered showers are predicted along with temperatures ranging from the mid-50s to low 60s, Kevin Stenson, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc.

Sunshine is expected to break through on Thursday and temperatures will most likely rise to the low to mid-60s, Stenson said, before yet another storm moves in from the Pacific over the weekend.

Tuesday’s unexpected weather also wreaked havoc with the official start of baseball season, prompting the postponement of more than two dozen high school baseball games and about the same number of high school softball games in the Valley and Ventura County. A full schedule of junior college baseball games, plus high school tennis and golf matches, were also rained out.

At Dixie Canyon Avenue elementary in Sherman Oaks, students spent recess playing board games in the school library and lunch in their homerooms rather than at picnic tables in the schoolyard.

“These rainy days are difficult on the children because they have to be cooped up inside,” Principal Melanie Deutsch said.

But what’s torture for schoolchildren seemed a luxury to the single men and women about to be forced from the county’s 2,500 beds.

Outside the Lord’s Kitchen, a soup kitchen run by the Salvation Army in Glendale, several homeless men and women stood in the rain, trying to figure out where they were going to stay tonight.

Allan, 24, said he will look for shelter tonight under a covered walkway at a church. “There should be a permanent shelter where the homeless can pay an association fee, like 10 bucks a year,” he said. “That way the permanent homeless will always have a place to stay.”

Craig, 40, said he planned to get a motel room in Los Angeles and will stay there until his money runs out. He placed blame for the plight of the state’s homeless population at the feet of Gov. Pete Wilson: “Who would elect someone who would build prisons and not provide shelter for the homeless?,” he asked rhetorically.

A spokesman for the governor said the emergency shelter program at National Guard armories was actually supposed to have ended in 1997. Wilson extended the program through this year because of the predicted wet weather, he added, saying it was now up to the counties to find funding.

Paul Rossi, program manager for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority for the city and county, said winter shelters in March operated for two more nights than they had been budgeted for, and that no funds were available to extend the program into April.

“It would be our desire to be able to keep this thing going as long as possible,” Rossi said, “but based on the information we have to date, we’ve determined it’s not feasible.”

So Sheral, 35, said she planned to stay with friends until she can afford to share a motel room.

“I get $212 a month from general assistance,” she said. “I try to find day-labor jobs, like cleaning houses, sweeping parking lots and recycling cans, to get by.”

But Robert, 70, did not seem fazed by the shelter closure.

Huddled against the rain and cold in a doorway across from the Glendale Service Center, a social service agency that helps the city’s homeless and poor, he said, “I’ve been on the street long enough to know how to get by.”

Workers at the New Image homeless shelter, in a former textile warehouse just east of downtown Los Angeles, prepared chicken and vegetables Tuesday for the 200 homeless men and women expected for a last night of shelter from the rain and cold.

“When it rains there’s a lot of people sleeping on cardboard boxes that have to come up off the streets,” said Willie Banks, 38, a homeless man who both works and sleeps at New Image. “They catch pneumonia out there in weather like this.”

Karima A. Haynes is a Times staff writer and Sue McAllister is a correspondent.