Making Spirits Warm

Richard West knows what it’s like to be exposed to the cold and rain.

The 33-year-old said he was forced to find shelter under highway overpasses and building overhangs for two years while he was homeless.

But he found housing a week ago at a shelter run by the nonprofit Los Angeles Family Housing Corp. And Saturday he received one of the 2,800 blankets donated to the needy as part of the San Fernando Valley Bar Assn.’s fourth annual Blanket the Homeless project.

“I can’t get over how nice it was to get the blankets,” said West, a former construction worker who said he has no family to take him in.

Liz Post, executive director of the bar association, said the group raised more than $17,000 to purchase the blankets.

The program was started in an effort to make sure that everyone who needed a blanket would get one, said Fred Gaines, the association’s president.

“We felt that it was important to recognize those in need in the community,” Gaines said. “This is stuff people who feel themselves down and out in the holidays can use.”

On Saturday, representatives of 11 nonprofit organizations that help homeless people and battered women in the Valley loaded supplies in trucks in the housing corporation’s parking lot at 7843 Lankershim Blvd.

Robert McAlpine and Alonzo Gomez, outreach workers with Hillview Mental Health Center Inc. in Lake View Terrace, picked up about 500 blankets that they planned to distribute later. McAlpine said the supplies are especially needed by people living on the streets.

“Sometimes [homeless people] can’t get housing. They have to have some protection from the elements,” he said.

Diana Boehmer, donations pick-up chairwoman with Pacoima-based Meet Each Need with Dignity was also delighted with the blankets. She loaded 230 into her truck. She said her organization, which serves 1,200 poor families, needed the blankets, both for people who don’t have any, and for families who don’t have enough.

“The blankets are a godsend,” Boehmer said.

For Emma Erevia, 28, receiving the blankets will help take away some of the chill she has experienced recently.

Erevia, a resident at the Los Angeles Family Housing Corp. shelter, said she needed a blanket because the heater in her room wasn’t working. She said she found herself homeless two months ago when her former husband threw her out of the house after an argument. She had been staying with friends before moving into the shelter last week.

“It’s a lot harder for a woman being homeless,” she said.