From the Archives: It’s a Fiesta: Shelter for homeless is unveiled

A jubilant crowd of leaders of the San Fernando Valley’s social services organizations persevered under a wilting sun Thursday morning to celebrate the conversion of a North Hollywood motel to a shelter for the homeless.

Just two weeks after its purchase by the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council, the former Fiesta Motel, once a dreary truck stop, was reintroduced Thursday with a $142,000 face lift that included new carpets, drapes and bedspreads, and a pastel blue and gray exterior.

Most significantly, a bar that used to snuggle up to the motel on the corner of the property has become a dining hall.

The 77-unit shelter will open Tuesday.

“We’ll be filled the first day,” said project director Nancy Bianconi, head of Better Valley Services, the agency that will screen applicants for temporary housing.

Bianconi said the shelter will house and feed about 50 single people and couples, and 27 families for up to 30 days.

During their stays, residents will receive help in getting employment, public assistance, legal and health services and permanent housing, she said.

Plans for the shelter grew out of a city-funded program that allowed the Interfaith Council to lease 25 units in the motel for the homeless last year. That grant ran out last May.

In September, the Interfaith Council began negotiations to buy the motel.

The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency and Community Development Department each offered the agency $200,000 in loans, which do not have to be repaid as long as the motel is used for the homeless.

Other grants included $195,000 from the California Department of Housing and Community Development and $50,000 from the United Way.

The Interfaith Council still has to find donors to sustain the shelter’s operating cost of $25,000 a month, said Rabbi Steven Reuben, chairman of the Interfaith Council’s advisory committee for the shelter.

The effort to purchase the Fiesta survived opposition from neighbors who feared the shelter would cause further decay of the depressed area along Lankershim Boulevard.

“You want to turn this dump into an even bigger dump,” businessman Mike Winkler, who runs a store across the street from the motel, shouted at one protest meeting.

On Thursday, Winkler said he liked the improvements but still fears that the motel will create a Skid Row atmosphere.

“What we feel is going to happen is you’re going to have derelicts hanging around,” Winkler said. “If we can prevent that from happening, we might be on the right road.”

For organizers, however, Thursday was not an occasion for discussing pros and cons. It was a time for unabashed self-congratulation.

A handful of politicians and more than 100 representatives of agencies and groups as diverse as the Salvation Army and the Prince of Peace Coalition filled the motel’s courtyard for the 1 1/2-hour ceremony.

“Coming here reminds me what is so valuable about this government,” Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) told them. “I am able to go back to Washington with my batteries recharged.”

James Wood, chairman of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, said the shelter will be a model to the nation.

“We’re going to do more of this,” Wood said. “Your project is going to make that possible.

Then Wood excused himself to go downtown, where, he said, he was going to knock down a bar with a sledgehammer to help free a downtown redevelopment project from a blight that breeds crime and indifference.

It went without saying that the Interfaith Council had eliminated its bar without a sledgehammer.