Outcry Prompts Mayor to Revise Homeless Plan

The Riordan Administration, under pressure from outraged advocates for the homeless, is repackaging a controversial plan to build a Downtown Los Angeles homeless drop-in facility as a rest stop and service center for transients instead of an overnight campground.

Deputy Mayor Rae James said she will present a resolution to the city’s Community and Economic Development Committee today stating that the mayor’s office has no intention of building an encampment where police will force Downtown homeless people to live.

She said the facility would only be used as a place where transients could rest briefly on a grass lawn, shower and receive job training and other services.

“We want to make it clear we are not building a camp,” said James, who met with homeless advocates in a closed-door meeting Wednesday intended to dispel their fears.

Some of the advocates, however, accused the mayor’s office of playing a rhetoric game.

“You could call it an industrial resort, if you want,” said Alice Callaghan, director of Las Familias del Pueblo, a Skid Row social service center. “Their intention is very clear: They want to reduce the visibility of the homeless by sending them to the city’s ‘humane alternative.’

“Well, an internment camp is still an internment camp.”

The controversy started several weeks ago, when the mayor’s office--under pressure from the Downtown business community--released its plan to spend $4 million of a $20-million U.S. Housing and Urban Development grant on a homeless center.

Under the mayor’s plan, the city would buy a vacant lot in the industrial zone east of Downtown and transform it into a fenced, landscaped area where homeless people could sleep.

The facility would include a 50-bed shelter, showers, restrooms and lockers, along with a service center where homeless people could receive drug and job counseling. The center would serve up to 800 people a day. Vans staffed by social workers would be provided to shuttle homeless people to the site, James said.

In an interview earlier this month, James herself described the outdoor portion of the facility as a “campground.”

But Wednesday, she sought to back away from that description.

“A campground makes it sound like people can stay there, which they cannot,” she said. “But can they rest there? Yes, they will probably be allowed to rest there.”

Backtracking on another aspect of the original proposal, James said Wednesday that homeless people may not be allowed to sleep on the lawn overnight.

“How long they will be allowed to rest depends on the implementation plan,” she said.

The mayor’s proposal is expected to be considered next month by the City Council after it is reviewed by two council panels: the Community and Economic Development Committee and the Housing and the Community Redevelopment Committee. Because the plan is part of a joint city-county program, it also will require approval by the County Board of Supervisors.

Members of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Homelessness said that although they support a facility where homeless people can receive services, they are opposed to any outdoor sleeping facility--even if transients are only allowed to rest there for short periods.

“We see it as a first step on a slippery slope down to concentration camps in rural areas for homeless people,” said Gary Blasi, a UCLA law professor and coalition board member. “No one wants to take that first step.”

He accused the mayor’s office of seeking to hide Downtown’s homeless problem.

“It’s dealing with homelessness as an aesthetic problem for the Downtown business community,” he said.

But Gene Boutilier, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, defended the mayor’s plan, saying it could provide crucial services. He said he has no objections to giving homeless people an outdoor area where they can rest.

“If I’m the government and I tell you, ‘Here’s a patch of grass where you will stay,’ then I would be opposed to that,” he said. “But if I build a park and you chose to lie down and take a nap, and you have other alternatives, I think that’s fine.”