New Haven for Homeless to Be Oasis on Skid Row : $11.5-Million Facility Will Be Innovative

5th and Wall:

Angelenos know it as the heart of Skid Row, an intersection of “The Pit,� “Down on the Nickel,� the toughest turf in town.

It’s where “Hill Street Blues� was filmed until the TV show was discontinued.

It’s where “Mom’s Kitchen� dished up hot meals and a prayer in the basement of an old hotel before the building was torn down.

Now there is a vacant lot with a construction barricade where the hotel stood, on the northeast corner of 5th and Wall streets.

A crew has prepared the site and is expected to start work there in a week or two on an $11.5-million facility for the Los Angeles Mission, which has been operating since 1949 about a block away.

The Los Angeles Mission is now in a turn-of-the-century building at 443 S. Los Angeles St., deemed structurally unsafe, even before the Oct. 1 earthquake. The building suffered $85,000 in damages during the quake.

A telethon will be held today from 2 to 5 p.m. on KHJ-TV, Channel 9, to raise funds.

The money will help keep the old, 20,000-square-foot building operational and to build the new, 113,000-square-foot one. It is just one of several plans for mission expansions in Los Angeles but is the farthest along in planning, says its architect, T. Scott Mac Gillivray.

Mayor Tom Bradley has stated that he expects the new mission to be the largest and most cost-effective center for relief and rehabilitation in Los Angeles, which he claims has more homeless than any other city in the United States.

When the new building is completed, the mission will provide counseling, food, beds, a baggage check, a referral service, a mail room, medical treatment, shaves and showers, clothing, a day-room lobby, two courtyards, a rehabilitation program with apartments for 100 men and 30 women, half-way house apartments for graduates of the program, jobs--from cleaning the mission to operating the mission’s computers, support for continuing education and vocational training, and exercise rooms.

It will have a running track and racquetball, ping-pong, billiards and weightlifting equipment. It will have recreational rooms with vending machines and microwave ovens.

Too cushy for Skid Row? No, says the Rev. Mark Holsinger, director of the mission. “The young guys, especially, need a way to use their energy.�

Not Coddled

Mac Gillivray said, “The recreational areas will be only for rehab people, not transients, and (though the rehab people get room and board), they are are committed to working 40 hours a week for $5, so they’re not being coddled.

“What do they do with their spare time? If they go back on the street where there are pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers and their old drinking buddies, they’ll just get in trouble again. It’s better to have a place to work up a sweat, have a soda pop and make some popcorn.�

The modern-looking new building will also have skylights, terraces and rounded walls.

An architectural statement on Skid Row?

Mac Gillivray says no. “It was not done as a flourish. We wanted it to be first and foremost practical. If we made it square, people would think it was cheap, but the building will be economical.�

Circular Chapel

It will be made of relatively inexpensive materials: concrete block and stucco with a steel frame. Gypsum wallboard, patterned vinyl tile flooring and industrial carpet will be used inside.

The new mission will occupy nearly the entire lot, but Mac Gillivray was able to incorporate some unusual wall angles for acoustical and security reasons. “From the contact office (where people check in at the the main entry), you’ll be able to see both sides of the courtyard at once, the entire lobby and the back hallway,� he explained.

He also designed the chapel in a circular shape, “because we wanted that shape for a spiritual feeling, and it also works well for seating.�

Speaking of seating, there should be no lines of homeless people waiting outside to get in for meals. “We tried to solve that architecturally,� Mac Gillivray said.

He and Holsinger visited new missions in Portland, Seattle, Denver, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. and San Diego to find design solutions for such unique problems as the homeless lines, but there were few answers.

“A lot of people who dedicate their lives to helping the homeless end up just providing a bed for the night or a hot meal. My hat is off to them, but this mission is interested in tackling the whole person,� Mac Gillivray said.

Graffiti Discouraged

The process toward improving a person’s self-image should start, said Mac Gillivray, with eliminating the outside line. “We don’t want the mission to be a scourge of the neighborhood,� he said, “and we also feel that for humanitarian reasons, it’s not right to make people stand in line or lie down on the sidewalk.�

Instead, people waiting for a meal at the new building will climb steps to the courtyard, hidden by a block wall made of rough-hewn concrete in alternating patterns to discourage graffiti.

“If you walk down the sidewalk, after the mission is built, you won’t see people sitting on benches inside because of the wall,� he explained. “It will be a nice wall, about five feet tall on the street with plants growing from the ground to about 18 inches and plants above. We don’t want it to be like a penitentiary, because then the guys won’t come inside.�

Inside, the wall should create a sense of security, he said. The idea is that in a pleasant though confined space, people are more likely to behave.

Men Only Now

Everybody is welcome to the dining hall, medical clinic, mail and baggage rooms, but women in Skid Row will find counseling and emergency shelter in another part of the building, separated from the men’s quarters. That entrance will have a courtyard and wall similar to the one near the dining hall and chapel.

Until the new building is completed in October of 1988 by Golden Coast Construction of Westminster, the mission will continue to cater only to men.

The men the mission helps aren’t all ruffians, but sometimes, especially as winter and harsher weather approaches, there are fights outside to determine who gets a bed for the night, Holsinger said. He has discouraged fighting by handing out bed tickets on a first-come, first-served basis, but anxiety, even on a balmy eve, runs high.

“Everybody’s afraid on Skid Row,� Holsinger remarked. “You only hear about one-tenth of the people who get killed here. In the alley behind our mission now, people get killed--robbed and beaten--all the time.�

Bigger Kitchen

The mission’s earthquake-damaged building is even a haven, but it only provides 78 beds a night. The new facility will have about 300, 32 for women--transients and those on the rehab program.

There will be 160 beds for male transients in a 140-foot-long dormitory, separated by 3- to 5-foot-tall partitions. Remaining beds will be in smaller rooms for people on the mission’s rehab program or recent graduates of it, people like the mission’s head cook. Holsinger said, “He had two restaurants but drank his life away before he came into our program.�

That cook now oversees the making of 550 meals a day. The new dining hall and kitchen will enable the mission to increase that to 2,000.

Two other fellows on the rehab program who also help in the kitchen were sent by the mission to culinary arts classes at Los Angeles Trade Tech. One of the mission’s computer programmers came out of the penitentiary.

Private Donations

Mac Gillivray described some others on the rehab program: “When I was at the mission one day doing research, a group of six to 10 guys in their ‘20s and ‘30s came in, dressed in blazers. It turned out that this was the choir, and they had just come back from singing at some church.’

Some 50 churches, various denominations, support the mission, a nonprofit Christian relief agency that relies entirely on private donations. Holsinger, who bought the Los Angeles Mission with a group of philanthropists in 1980, was ordained by the Church of the Nazarene but has led inner-city relief efforts for 22 years.

“When I first started, the guys at the missions were mostly just drunk and disgusting, but now we get kids, all races--though few Latinos. A lot of the men we get now are just 18 to 25,� he said. “Most have been on drugs or are products of broken families.�

When they come to the mission, most lack self-discipline and the know-how to take care of themselves. When they leave, after being on the rehab program, some get into the mainstream of life.

Holsinger hopes to increase that number at 5th and Wall.