Struggles Begin To
Shelter Homeless

By Steve Irsay
Staff Writer

With overnight temperatures beginning to drop, the search for a location for a temporary winter homeless shelter is heating up.

Grant applications for the countywide Los Angeles Winter Shelter Program, which runs from Dec. 1 to March 15, were due Friday, Sept. 23. For the past 16 years, nonprofit contractor New Image Emergency Shelter has operated the Long Beach area overnight shelter. But that run nearly ended this year.

Following increasing difficulty finding a Long Beach site — last year the shelter opened nearly two months late in San Pedro after a protracted search — New Image planned not to apply for the grant, said Executive Director Brenda Wilson. The application was submitted only when no other providers stepped forward, she added.

“It is such a fight every year and we’re tired of getting beat up,” Wilson said. “We know the need is there, but the need, so far, has not exceeded the opposition.”

Last season, in the midst of record-setting rainfall, the shelter opened three weeks late in a temporary home at First Congregational Church of Long Beach on Cedar Avenue.

After six weeks, the 200-bed shelter moved to a San Pedro church on Jan. 25, which was in the midst of renovations and therefore able to offer the space temporarily. Those improvements have since been completed.

Between both sites, the winter shelter was open 89 nights, serving a total of 1,016 unduplicated clients, including 38 families with 73 children, according to New Image. Of those people, 346 them moved into transitional and permanent housing.

On a given day, there are an estimated 4,475 people living on the streets and in temporary shelters in Long Beach, according to the city’s 2005 Homeless Census, a point-in-time count conducted on Jan. 27.

Wilson said New Image has located a potential winter shelter site in a church on Junipero Avenue and Anaheim Street, although they are continuing to look at other potential sites in Long Beach and surrounding areas like Harbor City, Carson and Wilmington.

New Image also operates both a year-round shelter and a temporary winter shelter in downtown Los Angeles.

Local site troubles come amidst problems in the countywide Los Angeles Winter Shelter program, which provides roughly 2,000 beds.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), a city-county joint organization, administers the federally-funded program.

A July audit by Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick found “serious accounting issues” and other problems at LAHSA, including millions of dollars owed to service providers like New Image.

A team of Los Angeles city officials and private auditors has since been assigned to re-organize LAHSA. David Howden, LAHSA’s funding manager, said the winter shelter program should run according to plan, with final grant award announcements expected Friday, Oct. 28.

For the past several years, finding a Long Beach home for the shelter has been a challenge, often involving last-minute deals for temporary spaces. Wilson and others attribute the difficulties to a lack of suitable warehouse space available for short-term lease and to resident concerns about increased homelessness and crime surrounding a shelter.

Without a winter shelter program, Wilson predicted that the bad weather would mean a noticeable increase in people living on the streets and in temporary encampments in Long Beach.

“It would be a disaster,” she said. “The downtown area, I think, would really see the impact without a program here.”

Maria Giesey, a member of the Long Beach Area Homeless Coalition who has helped in past efforts to locate the winter shelter in Long Beach, said she would like to see some of the local outpouring directed toward victims of Hurricane Katrina focused on those in need closer to home.

“That is wonderful,” she said of hurricane relief efforts. “But the people here are just as homeless and just as displaced and we are doing nothing about it.”