Homeless Have No Friend in Antonovich

“We’ll take this all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to,” Andy Bales was telling me as we toured Hope Gardens several days ago in the hills near Sylmar.

Bales, who runs the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles, was in a defiant mood amid speculation that county planners might try to derail his pet project. The mission bought this beautifully landscaped abandoned retirement facility for $7.5 million last fall, hoping to move more than 200 older women, mothers and children out here to start new lives.

As Bales and I walked under a giant California oak, with shady groves, flowers and birds all around, it sure seemed a long way from skid row.

And that’s just the problem.

Around Los Angeles County, people seem to be fine with the idea of skid row as a human landfill. It keeps other communities from having to shoulder a fair share of the burden.

“I think it’s a great thing, but I don’t think this is the place to have it,” a Kagel Canyon resident told The Times earlier this year when asked why she opposed Hope Gardens. “We don’t want L.A. right here in our backyard. I think it’s a recipe for disaster.”

People who think that way have a champion. His name is Mike Antonovich.

The L.A. County supervisor cast a lone vote against a plan that would have scattered homeless services across several communities, and he hasn’t committed one way or another on Hope Gardens. But his staff has cited the concerns of Kagel Canyon residents and said Antonovich was still making up his mind.

Union Rescue Mission thought it had found a perfect location for its Hope Gardens project. Not only was it in the middle of nowhere, but the property already had the necessary permits to operate as a senior facility. Bales hoped he’d have no problem winning approval to bring families out too, someday.

But then Kagel Canyon residents started screaming, and county officials began to raise questions about whether the plan for Hope Gardens was within the scope of the permit.

It should be noted, once again, that Kagel Canyon and Hope Gardens are not exactly side by side. In fact, they’re about two miles apart and invisible to each other because of the hilly terrain between them. So this isn’t a case of Not In My Backyard; it’s more like Not In My ZIP Code.

“I don’t think we’re dealing with race,” Kagel resident Randy Drew said of the mostly white homeowners who sided against the predominantly black and Latino residents of the mission. “It’s people genuinely concerned with the safety of their families and their property values.”

Drew, a Realtor, was in favor of Hope Gardens. He resigned his post on the Kagel homeowners association when his neighbors voted to oppose Hope by a 4-to-1 ratio, a count that Bales contends was misleading because rabble-rousers rallied opposition with a campaign of fear and misinformation.

So why did Drew buck the trend?

“I felt like it was a greater-good issue,” he said. “Another thing that was important was that in my opinion, everything we asked for, they were very accommodating, and I felt they were going to be good neighborhood partners.”

On Tuesday, I tried to find out if Antonovich has finished making up his mind, but he doesn’t rush to the phone anymore when I call. I’m wondering if part of the problem is that Hope Gardens is on Lopez Canyon Road, and he just doesn’t like anything with the name Lopez in it.

I do know that Paul Novak, Antonovich’s planning deputy, has been kept abreast of efforts by the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning to hold up the rescue mission’s move to Hope Gardens by questioning whether the plan for the facility is in compliance with the existing permit.

“Please be advised that with this letter, we are requesting that no persons be moved into the Lopez Canyon facility until the issues discussed below have been resolved to the satisfaction of this department,” said a Monday notice to Charles Moore, the rescue mission’s attorney.

“Too late,” said Bales, who moved six women to Hope Gardens last week on advice from Moore. His attorney argued that once the women were on site, the use permit would be validated and the legal argument to keep them there would be stronger. What kind of ogre would evict a bunch of grandmas who’d finally found a home?

The county sees it differently, finding one issue after another to nitpick.

A playground was added to the site without county permission. The presence of a guard shack was not previously noted. And “certain oak tree violations” had not been addressed, a reference to Bales’ allegedly unauthorized plan to trim some trees.

Nice to know the county is out there counting ladybugs while, at the Union Rescue Mission, about 100 children are stuck on skid row, where they step over bodies and around drug addicts and dealers to get to and from school.

The more substantive concern at the planning department is whether the tenants have to be 65 or older. A whole new round of negotiations would have to begin before any children were allowed to move out there.

If Bales jumped the gun, it was to get the upper hand in an anticipated political battle that begins with Antonovich and may end up before the entire L.A. County Board of Supervisors, which could downsize or even torpedo the project.

“I’m hoping Mike will show up some day and cut the ribbon for this and take credit for it, but that’s not what’s happening right now,” said Bales.

So the lobbying effort to sway other supervisors has already begun, with Bales hoping he can line up three votes in favor and win the day, even if Antonovich turns thumbs down.

If there were any courage on that board, someone would already have stood up publicly and said that any vote against the full use of Hope Gardens by women and children would be a dereliction.

Late Tuesday, Antonovich press secretary Tony Bell e-mailed me to say his boss will make a recommendation only if and when the matter comes before supervisors. But the e-mail seemed to tip Antonovich’s hand against Hope, if I’m reading correctly between the lines of the following gibberish:

“While shelter facilities are vital, without fundamental reform of the state’s mental health laws, the homeless are locked in a broken system of warehousing without healing. The long-term solution requires state legislation to end the ‘revolving door’ system that denies necessary medical treatment or rehabilitation to recover from mental illness and/or drug and alcohol addiction.”

I read that to Bales, who made the obvious point.

“We’re not talking about warehousing. We’re talking about putting people on their feet, self-sufficient, and we’ve worked with the community like no other mission has. We’re not talking about shelter, we’re talking about people having their own living units, being treated with dignity and surrounded with support services.”

I’ve been to the downtown mission, where I’ve met the elderly women who have suffered for years and also the children and their mothers. In most cases, the moms and kids were abandoned, and the mothers couldn’t afford housing and ended up on skid row.

While living temporarily at Hope Gardens, they would attend college while their kids are at a charter school, eventually moving out on their own. If there’s a down side to any of this, I don’t know what it is.

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Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at www.latimes.com/lopez.