A Place for Beginning Again

Of all the people at a dedication ceremony Thursday praising Los Angeles Family Housing Corp. for its work in getting homeless families off the streets and back on their feet, Mary Cox had perhaps the highest praise.

The 31-year-old single mother said she became homeless after losing her job caring for an elderly patient who died in October 1997.

After living in cramped apartments with a friend in Palmdale and her mother in Panorama City, Cox and her three children moved last month into an efficiency unit at the housing agency’s Sydney M. Irmas Transitional Living Center in North Hollywood.

“This is a place for me to lay my head while I’m trying to get on my feet,” Cox said. “I lost everything. I have to start all over again, but it’s going to be fine. We’re going to be fine.”

Cox’s family and 67 others live in the housing complex on Lankershim Boulevard, which advocates for the homeless say is the largest facility for homeless families in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

The center is named for the late chairman of the board of Los Angeles Family Housing Corp. The lawyer and philanthropist was instrumental in expanding the agency from one that operated a small motel to one that currently oversees 18 properties that house the city’s homeless and poor.

Several federal, state, county and city officials were on hand at the ceremony, including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who praised the center’s staff for its commitment to help homeless families regain their independence.

“This center . . . recognizes the need to diagnose why an individual becomes homeless,” Feinstein told about 300 guests gathered under a tent next to the facility. “It provides different programs to help change a lifestyle before it becomes permanent and recalcitrant.”

Audrey M. Irmas, trustee of the Irmas Family Charitable Foundation, said she and her late husband were committed to improving the lives of homeless families, particularly the children.

“We are losing a generation of children who are living on the streets,” she said. “We have to clothe, feed and educate them.”

In 1992, about 600 to 700 homeless people were sleeping in facilities run by Los Angeles Family Housing Corp., Irmas said. The number has risen to 1,400 this year and she said at least “those are 1,400 people a night who are not sleeping in cars and who are not sleeping in doorways.”

For Jesus and Maria Garcia, the opening of the transitional living center means that they will not be counted among the estimated 84,000 homeless people in the county sleeping on the streets, in shelters or in substandard housing every night.

Jesus Garcia said he became homeless when the company he worked for as a satellite dish installer went bankrupt and did not pay its employees.

Since moving into the shelter, he has found a job as a maintenance worker and is saving money to move into an apartment.

Although Thursday marked the center’s official opening, families began moving into the $3.2-million facility in October, officials said.

Many came from Los Angeles Family Housing Corp.’s Trudy and Norman Louis Valley Shelter just a few doors down on Lankershim, officials said.

At that facility, homeless families were mixed in with single homeless men and women, officials said. In the new facility, the agency will be able to expand its programs to assist families.

The units feature a private bathroom, a sofa bed, bunk beds with a trundle bed, a dinette set, a small refrigerator and a closet.

Additionally, the center has a full kitchen, a dining room, a community room, a clinic, a job resource center, a child care center and a computer lab. A social services component will provide residents with mental health, drug and alcohol counseling as well as help in making applications for welfare, housing, veterans, Social Security and health care benefits.

“The center will be a fantastic opportunity for families . . . to reestablish their stability and return to the community,” said Nat Hutton, executive director of Los Angeles Family Housing Corp.

Mary Cox, the transitional housing tenant, agreed.

“My caseworker has really pushed me to get on my feet,” she said, adding that she is in a job training program to become a licensed vocational nurse.

“Without this place,” Cox said, “I would be in my mother’s house with a lot of other people, in a shelter or on the streets.”