Fanfare, Fear Surround New Shelter

Convenient and comfortable? Or concentration camp?

A debate that has swirled for five years over plans for a city-developed homeless drop-in center continued Thursday as the place finally opened its doors to skid row transients.

City leaders who gathered in the center’s Mediterranean-style courtyard to admire the new $1.2-million project predicted it will attract street people who are afraid or unwilling to visit conventional downtown homeless shelters.

But a veteran advocate for the homeless warned that the 24-hour center will become a dumping ground for those who will soon to be caught up in a city crackdown on loiterers and panhandlers.

“The police will use this place as an excuse to empty the sidewalks of homeless people,” asserted Alice Callaghan as she stood outside 628 S. San Julian St. holding a huge banner that labeled the center a “Skid Row Internment Camp.”

Police denied that sidewalk sweeps are coming, however. “Absolutely not,” said Deputy Police Chief Gregory Berg, who was on hand for Thursday’s opening. Added Capt. Stuart Maislin, commander of the downtown area’s Central division: “We’re not doing anything of the sort. Alice and I have spoken and I’ve assured her this won’t happen.”

Built with federal and local funds under the coordination of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the 30-bed center is designed to serve 200 homeless people a day by letting them sleep in shifts inside, relax on a grassy lawn outside, wash their clothes and receive mail in their own postal boxes.

The one-story, 8,500-square-foot center is designed to appeal to street people who are wary of the closely controlled environments of downtown operated by missions and other private groups.

Development of the center was first proposed in 1994 by downtown business leaders and supported by Mayor Richard Riordan. Its original concept called for a $4 million urban campground serving as many as 800 homeless people on a fenced-in lot.

As part of that plan, outreach vans would circulate through downtown streets and social services workers would invite transients to ride with them to the center. But the city scaled back its proposal after critics such as the Los Angeles Coalition to End Homelessness blasted the plan as “a first step on a slippery slope down to concentration camps in rural areas for homeless people.”

The project was delayed further when it was decided that an effort to convert a 1920s dairy building into the drop-in center was not feasible. Workers eventually had to remove a series of underground dairy tanks before construction could take place.

“Now we have an oasis” in the middle of the downtown’s desert of concrete, William Powers, chairman of the homeless authority commission, told about 100 people gathered in the courtyard.

City Councilwoman Rita Walters praised the center as “a place of softness, a place of respite, a place people will feel comfortable in coming.” Those in the crowd who have been homeless in the past agreed.

“A lot of people are just down on their luck and this place is for them,” said Roosevelt Sadler, who was homeless for four years. Mary Balli, a resident of a San Julian Street hotel, was puzzled by Callaghan’s “internment camp” banner. “This place is going to help a lot of people, including myself,” Balli said.

Callaghan’s protest rankled many on hand for the opening. “We have no gates here. I’ve never heard of an internment camp with no gates,” said Bud Hayes, head of the SRO Housing Corp, which developed the center for the homeless services authority.

“I don’t honestly understand her criticism,” added Mayor Riordan. “We’re allies 80% of the time. But I disagree with her on this.”

Callaghan, head of a skid row social services center called Las Familias del Pueblo, did not waiver, however.

“We already have evidence that police plan to enforce an ordinance against sleeping or sitting on the sidewalk when this opens,” she said. “People are already being told this will happen. ‘Internment camp’ is exactly what this will be.”