PLAN FOR HOMELESS CENTER IN VENICE HITS HEAVY OPPOSITION

Residents Cite A 'State Of Siege' And Say They Can't Handle More
Vagrants And Addicts

In nearly 24 years in Venice, Ty Allison has been threatened with a
knife and assaulted by vagrants. Almost daily, he calls police to
report that homeless people are using crack and methadone in his driveway.

Ana Petrova cleans up human feces every morning in the alley behind
Peter's Marina Motors, the business she and her husband have operated
on Lincoln Boulevard for 40 years.

Allison and Petrova say they feel compassion for the homeless, but
they are among many neighborhood business owners and residents
vigorously battling a walk-in services facility that St. Joseph
Center plans to open in its former thrift shop at Lincoln and Flower Avenue.

"We're a neighborhood that is literally under a state of siege," said
Allison, a freelance photographer who works out of his home just east
of Lincoln. "We can't absorb this center."

As the Los Angeles region seeks solutions for its homeless
population, and as police try to disperse the many denizens of
downtown's skid row, residents of communities such as Venice and
Hollywood are finding that the homeless problem is increasingly
coming to their back door.

Allison's and Petrova's neighborhood, near Penmar Park in north
Venice, has already seen a proliferation of operations -- several
medical marijuana stores, two methadone clinics and at least three
liquor stores that, according to residents, sell single shots out
their back doors -- that would be unwelcome in Brentwood or Pacific
Palisades. A guerrilla needle exchange has been a continuing problem
in alleys throughout the area.

So residents mobilized when they learned late last year that St.
Joseph Center, a reputable nonprofit provider of homeless services,
was on the verge of relocating its homeless access center to the
thrift-shop site from a nearby location west of Lincoln.

They organized Venice SONIC (Save Our Neighborhood's Integrity
Committee) and hired an attorney, Robert P. Silverstein, who says Los
Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl "has pushed the project
through under stealth of night." Rosendahl countered that "this has
been public through all of 2006."

Residents are sensitive to how others may view their opposition. "We
know we're going to be tarred and feathered as NIMBY and
anti-homeless," said Chris Williams of the Penmar Neighborhood Assn.
"But that's just not true.

"The problem with this particular program ... is that it enables the
service-averse and criminal homeless to stay in their dysfunctional
lifestyle. And that's not safe for our community and our seniors and children."

Besieged by upset residents and business owners, Rosendahl attended a
meeting in December at the home of resident Carol Bodlander, where
neighbors vented about drugs and prostitution, vagrancy, inadequate
police presence and poor city response to requests for better
lighting and other improvements.

With residents threatening a legal battle, Rosendahl organized a town
hall meeting Tuesday evening at the Penmar Recreation Center.

It was standing room only as Rhonda Meister, executive director of
St. Joseph Center, tried to ease residents' concerns. She told the
crowd of more than 250 that the move was prompted by the sale of the
building that had long housed the daytime center at 4th Street and
Rose Avenue. That spot was near a number of other agencies and
clinics -- notably the Venice Family Clinic -- that provide services
to homeless and low-income people.

After new owners raised the rent to $10,000 a month, she said, St.
Joseph Center researched more than 150 other properties, none of
which was suitable. As a last resort, the organization decided to
relocate the thrift shop and convert the space into a center offering
showers, coffee, laundry services and a place to hang out during
daytime hours. The homeless access center also would link
participants to medical care, mental health treatment, substance
abuse services and other aid.

Meister stressed that the 31-year-old organization -- founded by two
sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, an order that runs Mount Saint
Mary's college and other institutions -- was dedicated to meeting the
immediate needs of homeless and low-income people and to getting them
into housing. And she assured the crowd that the center would provide
security guards who would rove around the facility and through nearby alleys.

In an interview Wednesday, Meister said she did not expect an
increase in the numbers who would be served by the center. At its
previous location, just south of the Santa Monica border, the center
has seen about 3,000 people a year.

More than half of them are identified as coming from Santa Monica,
and last June, its City Council voted to provide $75,000 to help St.
Joseph create a new home for its access center. That was in addition
to $100,000 from the city of Los Angeles and $86,000 from the county.

Tuesday's meeting featured a mix of outraged residents, well-known
Venice Beach denizens and homeless advocates. Amy Thiel, who lives
near the former thrift shop, tearfully urged officials to open the
center's doors, saying the area's homeless "are members of our city
and part of Venice, California.... [They] need help, resources and showers."

Rosendahl told the crowd that the city was installing new lighting
and planned to close off some of the problematic alleys near the St.
Joseph facility. But Andre de Montesquiou, owner of California
Chicken Cafe on Lincoln Boulevard, said such improvements have been
promised over the years but never delivered. "Don't throw these bones
out to us," he said.

He and other members of Venice SONIC said they would prefer a
facility that provided overnight shelter and did not push the
homeless back out onto the street at closing time.

Lois M. Takahashi, an associate professor in UCLA's department of
urban planning, said Venice and Santa Monica were already doing a lot
to help homeless people.

"We have to think about the broader context here," Takahashi said.
"We focus on the NIMBYs and cities that are offloading homeless, but
we're not really talking as much about redistributing the
responsibility across the region, which is a necessary element to
solve this problem."

Sometimes, overcoming community concerns can be a simple matter of
education and old-fashioned political support.

In Hollywood, a plan to create a housing complex and homeless
services center near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Gower
Street appears to have overcome initial opposition from concerned
residents and business owners.

"The community opposition has pretty much died down," said Helmi
Hisserich, Hollywood administrator for the Community Redevelopment
Agency, who credited a series of informational meetings and the
strong backing of City Council President Eric Garcetti.

The CRA, which purchased the land from the First Presbyterian Church,
plans a 40- to 60-unit complex with long-term subsidized apartments
and on-site services to help tenants stay off the streets.

A proposed drop-in services center was scrapped. Hisserich wouldn't
say whether the elimination of the drop-in center helped ease
community concerns but acknowledged that such centers are "hot-button
issues" and added, "The community response certainly helped shape the plan."

Times staff writer Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.