Shelter Experiment a Big Success

An experiment to keep city-funded emergency shelters open year-round instead of just during winter is exceeding expectations and attracting hundreds of Los Angeles’ most chronic homeless men and women during summer, officials say.

All seven shelters -- located downtown, in South Los Angeles and in the San Fernando Valley -- report being at full capacity and forced to turn away dozens of people nightly.

The program’s success, those involved say, represents a new aggressiveness in tackling a vexing problem and suggests that a sizable number of street people previously thought to be resistant to services except in the worst weather will use shelters if they are made available.

The emergency shelters for use in cold and wet weather in the past were usually open Dec. 1 through March 15. But with $4.5 million from the city of Los Angeles, some shelters in the program were extended for the first time through summer and fall. Officials are working to secure money to make the project permanent and expand it to other areas of Los Angeles County.

One of the largest facilities, the New Image Shelter for the Homeless on South Broadway, has been housing an average of 430 people each night, despite an official capacity of 365.

The shelter buses in homeless people from pickup points in downtown’s skid row and Hollywood in the afternoon, said Brenda S. Wilson, the executive director.

“We never thought in the summer months we’d even reach 365, let alone exceed it,” she said recently, standing in the 33,000-square-foot former warehouse that was renovated for the shelter program.

A savory aroma from the kitchen wafted through the vast space filled with green cots. Residents get a hot meal each night (on this occasion barbecued chicken, macaroni and cheese and asparagus) and breakfast the next morning before they are bused back to their pickup points. They also can shower and store their belongings.

New Image Shelter has 11 case managers, who try to help get people back on their feet with referrals for job training, treatment for substance abuse and housing.

Craig Bradley, 40, said he came to New Image for relief from the heat, a place to shower and a meal. He has been homeless for about three months, staying on the beach in Santa Monica, after losing his father and his construction job. He said he was grateful for a place to store his belongings while looking for work.

“You can’t keep appointments carrying all of your life’s belongings. That keeps a lot of people from getting on with their lives,” said Bradley, who is about to start a new job as an apartment manager.

Bradley said he spends most evening on his cot reading spiritual magazines until lights go out about 10 p.m. But there also is a big-screen television available until midnight (1 a.m. on weekends), and a few dozen folding chairs and tables for cards, chess and other games.

Felicia Valentine, who is six months pregnant, said she was glad to have a cot to sleep on during the summer months, rather than a cardboard box on the street.

“Everything we need, they get it,” she said as women swarmed through the gated doors at New Image Shelter. “It’s hard being pregnant on the street, but you find out you got to survive.”

The response to the summer program suggests that the majority of the homeless would choose to get off the streets if enough shelters were available, said Mitchell Netburn, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the city-county agency that administers the program.

“This summer program is a real breakthrough,” he said. “It’s a dream a lot of people have had for a long time, but there’s been no political will until now.”

Civic Leaders Pleased

Downtown business and civic leaders said they were pleased that the program has left fewer homeless people on the streets during the night.

“We usually see a huge increase during summer months,” said Tracey Lovejoy, executive director of the Central City East Assn., which represents downtown business interests. “We call it the Mardi Gras effect. It’s warm and they have boom boxes and cook chicken and are usually much more noticeable.”

Sheriff Lee Baca, who has been active in trying to reduce homelessness in the county, said he was lobbying for state support for more shelter beds.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said he would ask the Board of Supervisors to earmark $2.5 million to open one or more year-round emergency shelters elsewhere in the county as a pilot project. Yaroslavsky said he also would seek funds from such cities as Glendale, Long Beach and Pasadena.

Given the budget climate, “it’s an awkward time to invest in a social program, but then it’s always an awkward time,” Yaroslavsky said. “The city has stepped up, and I give them credit for what they’re doing. Their experience has been useful and promising.”

Netburn, however, has been vocal in pointing out that the city and county of Los Angeles spend far less of local revenues on services for the homeless than some other big urban centers, such as New York City. But now, he said, the summer shelters are one of several new initiatives.

The county Department of Health Services is creating a new position to improve health care for homeless people and will, for the first time, begin collecting information about the health needs of those in shelters. The county also will begin surveying patients who use county health facilities to determine if they need housing assistance, said Dr. Thomas L. Garthwaite, health services director.

And starting Dec. 1, homeless people using the 19 cold and wet weather emergency shelters around the county will be able to get health care from mobile vans through a $600,000, two-year grant from the California Endowment, said Netburn, of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

The shelter expansion and other new programs are in part prodded by federal demands that communities show measurable progress in reducing homelessness in exchange for more funds.

A task force of the Los Angeles region’s top elected officials will be meeting later this month to begin devising a 10-year plan seeking to reduce the number -- as high as 84,000 -- of people who officials estimate are homeless on any given night in the county. Increasing numbers of those are women and children, officials said.

As downtown Los Angeles attempts to revive itself, the problem of homelessness is rubbing against such high-profile projects as the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Walt Disney Concert Hall and hundreds of expensive new residential lofts.

One response has been a crackdown on so-called quality of life crimes, with police sweeps aimed at clearing people off the sidewalks and lawsuits seeking to block them.

Another response is to find a permanent funding source for emergency shelter beds, said Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes much of downtown’s homeless population.

“It is clear that people need and desperately want somewhere to have a safe and clean bed, and the safety to talk to someone about support services, to have a shower and a meal,” she said.

Valley Shelter Busy

But the need is not just in downtown.

The summer emergency shelter run by La Family Housing on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood is the only one operating outside of downtown and South Los Angeles, and people come from points north and west to get one of its 125 beds, said Jeffrey S. Farber, the chief operating officer.

Vans make pickups in Van Nuys and Pacoima, and people also walk from Burbank and Glendale, he said. Quite a few of the people work but cannot afford a place to stay, while others have been homeless for years and won’t use the missions and other shelter programs because they are more restrictive, he said.

“One of the biggest successes of the program is that people keep coming back and you can begin to keep track of them,” Farber said. “They get used to a routine and they start learning how to follow rules.”

Montry Spears, a 50-year-old Air Force veteran, had been sleeping in a park, perched atop a children’s slide so no one would hassle him, when he learned that the North Hollywood shelter would be open during summer. He had used other shelters in the past, but said he couldn’t cope with all of the rules and regulations.

Spears said he immediately felt welcome at the North Hollywood shelter, and used its services to focus his life. He is now employed at the shelter, helping with security and setting up cots. “I’m getting back in the work force and feeling good about myself,” he said. “When you’re homeless, you lose your self-esteem, your hygiene. I was picking up cigarette butts off the ground and eating after people. But the summer program has helped so many people.”