Text 11805, 118 rader
Skriven 2005-04-19 12:58:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: LA homeless
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0418/p01s01-uspo.html

For L.A. homeless: a gym, movies, and hair salon

The city opens a $17 million shelter Monday amid controversy that funds would
have been better spent on affordable housing.

By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

LOS ANGELES  The modernist concrete-and-steel structure rises in the shadow of
gleaming downtown skyscrapers, looking like a new museum or corporate
headquarters. Yet its identity is given away by where it stands: in the heart
of a 55-square block area of aging single-room-occupancy hotels, where homeless
men, women, and children crouch in cardboard boxes, push shopping carts, or
lean in doorways.
Opening Monday and trumpeted proudly by city officials is the Midnight Mission
- and one of the nation's plushest homeless shelters. The $17 million
state-of-the-art facility boasts a full-sized gymnasium, library, playroom,
hair salon, education center, and professional kitchen. The shelter is the
city's latest effort to address one of its most visible and resistant social
problems: the more than 6,000 people who live on the streets.


But the fanfare surrounding the new mission also raises questions increasingly
being faced by cities coast to coast. At the same time that some homeless
advocates embrace such new facilities as the best way to attract homeless
people into counseling and job-placement programs, others openly ask whether
the money could have been better spent in finding more permanent solutions.

"Since the late 1980s, America has built a mammoth infrastructure of shelters
and the number of homeless has gone up, not down. It's a bit of the
if-you-build-it-they-will-come phenomenon at work," says Nan Roman, president
of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. As Ms. Roman and other national
officials see it, the lack of affordable housing is what needs to be addressed.

"That same $17 million could have gone a long way toward creating homes and
jobs," says Bob Erlenbusch, vice president of the board for the National
Coalition for the Homeless. "Affordable housing is what these people need, not
a way to institutionalize their temporary status."

Ms. Roman and Mr. Erlenbusch, among others, say the issues surrounding the new
facility are complex and reflect mounting pressures in cities coast to coast.

The loss of affordable housing has been driving up the country's homeless
numbers since the 1980s. The gentrification of many dilapidated downtown
districts where homeless people often congregate has been creating more social
tension between new residents and those on the streets. As homeless populations
grow, social-service alternatives such as vouchers for apartments and
healthcare that many feel can offer aid without creating dependency are being
stretched thin.

"Every city is grappling with the pressures of urban renewal and condo
conversions that are impacting areas where homeless gather," says Roman. "They
are trying to find a balance between building an infrastructure that makes it
too easy to remain homeless [and finding] ways to respond to the increasing
appearance of homeless on their streets."

Midnight Mission officials say they chose to build because they could no longer
deal with increased demand for services in their previous facility. Other
observers say there was additional pressure from city redevelopment and
business officials to move their operations farther away from areas where young
urban professionals are snapping up newly created loft spaces.

Looking out the window of her facility just blocks away from the new mission,
Alice Callaghan, director of Las Familias Del Pueblo Community Center, points
to a freshly renovated loft complex that she says is part of the reason area
housing prices are getting steeper.

"The same $17 million that they spent would have bought a lot of permanent
housing ... and put an end to the encroachment of luxury apartments around
here," says Ms. Callaghan.

Despite the influx of luxury condos, however, mission officials say there has
also long been pressure by surrounding businesses to get as many people off the
streets as possible. And they say the new 500-capacity mission dining room will
put an end to food lines that stretched around the block three times a day at
their old facility. They say new activity rooms with television and movies for
grown-ups and a separate play space for children will do much to reduce the
numbers of homeless who pass time on the streets throughout the financial
district.

Showers and the area's first 24-hour public restroom will be available. The
gymnasium and training room will help address the lack of physical activity by
those trying to recover from substance abuse.

"We have long felt that one major component missing in our drug and alcohol
rehabilitation was a physical dimension to recovery," says mission spokesman
Orlando Ward. "In the past, we would address the spiritual and the emotional
but were neglecting real physical activity which we feel is important to
rebuilding the whole man."

But 20-year local activist Ted Hayes, who runs an encampment of temporary
housing just blocks away, says the building will do the opposite.

"The building of large missions in the inner cities of America only helps to
keep the cycle of homeless going with what we call the 'homeless industrial
complex,'" says Mr. Hayes. "A big fancy operation like this only maintains the
bank accounts and lifestyles of those who run them and helps donors rid
themselves of guilt."

Still others think a multifaceted approach is necessary. In this view, a
combination of shelters with emergency services can help with short-term needs
until longer term social and economic goals are realized.

"There are dangers and drawbacks to various approaches that can be offset by
the strengths of others," says Paul Tepper, director of the Weingart Center, an
institute which studies homelessness.

Either way, both sides seem to agree that citizens will continue to be
threatened with instability until the supply of affordable housing is
increased; incomes of the poor are adequate to pay for food, shelter, and
healthcare; and disadvantaged people can receive the services they need.

"Attempts to change the homeless assistance system must take place with the
context of larger efforts to help very poor people," says Roman.

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