Center Helps ‘Make People’s Lives a Little Easier’

Tears welled up in Carol Carter’s eyes as she gazed at a pair of checks bearing her name. The $1,390 was enough for Carter and her 9-year-old daughter to end a year homeless, shuttling among motels, shelters and the street.

“That’s my deposit and first month of rent,” said Carter, 45, sitting inside St. Margaret’s Center, a storefront community center near Los Angeles International Airport. “I can’t believe it. After all this time, I’m going to have an apartment, a place for my daughter and myself to lay our heads in peace.”

Carter is one of thousands of people who each year get help from St. Margaret’s, a nonsectarian program of Catholic Charities of Los Angeles.

St. Margaret’s helped Carter by using money from a federal housing assistance program for residents of Hawthorne and Inglewood. For Carter’s part, she had to prove that she was in dire need, and would be able to hold a job and pay rent.

Housing aid is just a part of the mission at St. Margaret’s.

From two small buildings on Hawthorne Boulevard, St. Margaret’s also runs a clothing thrift shop, a food bank that serves more than 800 families a month, English classes for its predominantly Latino clientele and counseling services that help steer people through the welfare system.

“We try to provide whatever help we can to make people’s lives a little easier,” said Mary Agnes Erlandson, St. Margaret’s director since it opened in 1987. “Whatever it takes to help.... The thing is, it seems like there’s more and more people in need of our help.”

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks put a dent in air travel and resulted in mass layoffs at the airport, St. Margaret’s saw the number of people it serves rise by nearly 50% because so many people living in the area lost their jobs. St. Margaret’s helped about 14,000 people last year. Most were Latino immigrants looking for a way out of poverty.

Erlandson understands their plight. She once worked as a waitress at an airport restaurant, and decided to devote her life to helping others after seeing how difficult life was for the many newly arrived immigrants who staffed the airport’s low-wage jobs.

Erlandson said her goal is to see that people in need be treated with the “dignity and respect that all people deserve.”

To better do that, and to handle an ever increasing caseload, St. Margaret’s hopes to raise $500,000 in a campaign to buy a 10,000-square-foot building in the area. That would more than double its current space, which is overflowing with people on most days.

“Whatever they need, I hope they accomplish it,” Carter said as she waited for her rent checks. “I didn’t know where to turn before I heard about this place. Now I’m about to have a place to live again, and fighting back tears because I just can’t believe it. This place makes a difference in people’s lives.”

Last year, through Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, St. Margaret’s Center received $10,000 from the Times Holiday Campaign, which raises money for nonprofit agencies in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

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