Shelters

On May 17, 1987, Gene Ackley was carried by friends from a sea of wine bottles in a Gardena motel room to the safe harbor of a Costa Mesa white clapboard house. There--with the help of fellow alcoholics at Charlie Street, a free 10-day program run entirely by volunteers--he came off a three-week blackout bender into the beginning of a new life.

When I appear at the fence of the Glendale homeless shelter with my rolling suitcase, I hear cries of "It's the book lady" or, if I'm with my daughter, "It's the book ladies; let them in!" At that point, we are allowed to cut to the front of the line and pass through the gate without being wanded or searched. We then head for a table in the hall where we empty our suitcase and spread out our books. Since I'm on the board of the Friends of the Glendale Public Library, I collect most of the books I bring from the red-dot, super-sale bookshelf at the library.

Michelle Ellis works and lives in Mission Viejo. But home for Ellis, 23, and her 10-month-old son, Ryan, is not one of the expensive houses that have mushroomed in this sprawling, affluent South County community. It's her tan 1983 Toyota Camry parked on the street in front of the home where she works as a housekeeper during the day. Ellis is among a growing number of low-income single mothers who can no longer afford the high cost of housing and child care in South County.

Scarlet, Deakin, Fudge, Nugget and Shyla are in the prime of life and pretty good-looking to boot, but their puppy-making days ended for good Tuesday in the back of a big blue van in Sylmar. Nine dogs and a cat named Smokey marched up the stairs of the Lucy Pet Foundation's mobile spay and neuter clinic, unaware of what they were in for in the parking lot of Pet Supreme. Lucy, the Chihuahua whose picture is on the side of the bus, stood by for moral support. And here's the story: Actor Dick Van Patten, a guest on "The John Davidson Show" in 1981, struck up a conversation with the drummer in the show's band.

Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze. Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework. "No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her. Around here, Khadijah is known as "Harvard girl," the "smart girl" and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago. What students don't know is that she is also a homeless girl.

Re "Woof, bark, bowwow," Opinion, Feb. 10 As John Homans points out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals won't shy away from reminding everyone that Westminster, and the breeding industry it props up, contribute to the need for shelters to euthanize millions of dogs and cats. Nor will we turn away suffering animals, as many shelters with no-kill policies do to improve their statistics. When adoptable animals come our way, we send them to high-traffic open-admission shelters, where they will have the best chance of being adopted.

Re "County Keeps Shelters Open Until April 30. The article on the shutdown of the shelters for the homeless caught my attention. Most of the homeless out there are either drug and alcohol abusers or mentally ill. In either case, they do not have to be a burden on the community. I have a small (16-bed) nonprofit center, [Mountain View Recovery Center]. I have no funding and am nearly self-supporting. I rent a house, paying too much money, and men work and pay enough to keep us open.

Saints and sinners walk the same streets and sometimes the blessed are hard to find. But, across Los Angeles, several people have dedicated their lives to finding the silent ones who live under freeways, hugging the toothpick bodies that sleep in stinky tents, and feeding the souls who, even after all this, still believe in God. Every day at 10 a.m., Billy Soto packs his gray van with sandwiches, juice, hot chicken and rice and drives through downtown Los Angeles to feed the homeless.

Work schedules at Los Angeles city animal shelters won't change, at least for now, after animal activists and union workers protested a plan to eliminate overnight staffing. Brenda Barnette, general manager of Animal Services, has announced she will delay a plan to cut the graveyard shift at six shelters operated by the city. The move, which could affect as many as 22 animal shelter workers, will be reviewed during an April 8 town hall meeting, Barnette said in a letter released Thursday.

Shawnine Mackay, who often sleeps on the street near Hollywood Boulevard by lowering herself out of her wheelchair onto the ground, said she would love to be able bed down in one of Los Angeles County's dozens of homeless shelters. But shelter workers have repeatedly turned her away because of her dog, Molly, who is trained to help her detect and cope with seizures.

The sun was shining and the ice cream was melting so Rene Cerritos didn't waste any time. "Chocolate! Chocolate ice cream just for you!" the 18-year-old hollered. "Who wants some?" On Saturday, the high school senior joined 300 students from 36 high schools in a district-wide volunteer day aimed at helping the homeless. Children were bused in to help at six shelters, from Pacoima to Bell to downtown Los Angeles. They served meals, sorted clothes, called donors, picked up trash and painted a mural.

There were babies everywhere: crying, crawling, pooping. Framed Bible citations and photos of Jesus lined the walls. And no one was using a cellphone. This is what Vanessa Hudgens saw in 2011 when she arrived at New Jersey's Several Sources shelter, a safe haven for young pregnant women and new mothers without homes. And it made her very uncomfortable. "The first thing I did," the actress later recalled, "was run up to my room, call my mom and go, 'What on earth am I doing here?

Despite an increase in fights and several police calls at Glendale's emergency shelter, operators say a move to the city's outskirts this year has reduced complaints from residents and retailers. “At least it's away from the community,” said Alfred Hernandez, an outreach director for Ascencia, Glendale's largest homeless services provider and operator of the shelter. Last winter, when the shelter was housed at the Glendale National Guard Armory near downtown, shop owners and people using Central Park or the Adult Recreation Center lodged numerous complaints about the shelter's clients, the Glendale News-Press reported . This year, with the 90-day shelter on the outskirts of the city, there have only been two complaints from neighbors, according to a report released by Ascencia and presented to Glendale city officials.

Re "Union Station's homeless," Editorial, Dec. 25 Once again we read on this Christmas day that the business community - in this instance, aided by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority - finds no room for the desperately poor at Union Station. One way to justify keeping the homeless at bay is to perpetuate blatant stereotypes, exemplified by the oft-repeated phrase "aggressive panhandling. " Both words are extremely negative and imply that people asking for charity are not only "bums" but that their actions, as the word "aggressive" conveys, border on violence.

Volunteers are hoping to fill one of Los Angeles' largest animal shelters with more than 200 pet beds so dogs and cats will have a soft place to sleep this holiday season. Tracy James, who has been volunteering at the L.A. Animal Services North Central Shelter since 2009, came up with the idea after reading about a similar drive at another shelter. The beds, which have frames made of metal or PVC pipe and vinyl support, are a better alternative to the hard concrete floors or plastic beds - sometimes used as chew toys - currently in the shelters, James said.

On any given day in Los Angeles County, hundreds of shelters and volunteer organizations feed the homeless. According to one estimate, about 50 groups serve meals outdoors, drawing the hungry poor, the homeless and the nearly homeless who live in their cars. Such so-called public feedings have stirred controversy in cities across the country, where well-intentioned providers of outdoor suppers clash with residents who are frustrated and annoyed at having to deal with the aftermath of those meals - people trespassing onto front lawns and into backyards, sleeping in bushes and using them as bathrooms.

Federal officials on Tuesday announced a new national shelter system to help locate temporary housing for victims of hurricanes and other natural disasters. The shelter system is a key part of preparations for hurricane season, which begins June 1. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Craig Fugate, the new director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called for the public to help prepare for storms, mostly by devising family evacuation plans.

Work schedules at Los Angeles city animal shelters won't change, at least for now, after animal activists and union workers protested a plan to eliminated overnight staffing. Brenda Barnette, general manager of Animal Services, announced she will delay a plan to cut the graveyard shift at six shelters operated by the city. The move, which could affect as many as 22 animal shelter workers, will be reviewed during an April 8 town hall meeting, Barnette said in a letter released Thursday.

Last spring I wrote about a novel campaign to keep dogs and cats out of the South Los Angeles shelter by helping pet owners through difficult times. With a little money and a lot of volunteers, the intervention program run by Downtown Dog Rescue has paid vet bills and pet deposits, repaired backyard fences, spayed and neutered hundreds of dogs, and found homes for pets whose owners had to give them up. In just seven months, the group has kept more than 1,500 dogs and cats from winding up in the shelter.

NEW DELHI - India breathed a sigh of relief Sunday as assessment teams fanned out across the eastern part of the country in the wake of the biggest storm in 14 years and found extensive property damage but relatively little loss of life. The state news service, Press Trust of India, reported that 23 people died as a result of Cyclone Phailin, most from falling trees or flying debris. Many had predicted a far higher death toll from the storm in this country of 1.2 billion people, where crisis management, regulation, planning and execution are often inadequate and thousands lose their lives each year to natural disasters, building collapses, train accidents and poor crowd control.