Shelters

When the weather gets cold this winter, homeless families on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley will be directed to emergency shelters geared to serve families, rather than given motel room vouchers for a night's lodging, officials said on Monday. Centralizing the families will make it easier to provide services at a lower cost, while assuring children a comfortable, secure place to stay, the officials said.

Re "Domestic Abuse Shelters Lack Services for Disabled," June 14: It's equally hard to find domestic violence placements for women who are homeless. One reason is that many long-term homeless women have mental disabilities that shelters feel unable to accommodate, just as they may be unable to accommodate physical disabilities. Unfortunately for homeless women, another reason is ignorance. Shelter staff sometimes seem unable to grasp that a lover or spouse can hurt you just as easily if you live on the street as if you live behind four walls.

On many cold nights this winter, the county's homeless will be able to take shelter in National Guard armories in Fullerton and Santa Ana. A program run by Shelter for the Homeless will house up to 250 people each night. Many are brought to the shelters in buses that pick them up at public parks. An armory at 400 S. Brookhurst Road in Fullerton and another at 612 E. Warner Ave. in Santa Ana will be used, each housing about 125 men, women and children for the night.

When the big one hits, at least a handful of Orange Coast College students will have a little experience building makeshift shelters from easy-to-find materials. Last month, members of the school's architecture club were asked to design a functional, portable, waterproof shelter that could be used in a disaster. The group's pitched-roof structure, made of bamboo poles, plastic walls and canvas, earned them first prize for design at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's annual design contest.

Two Orange County shelters will open Wednesday for four months, providing relief from chilly nights for about 300 of Orange County's roughly 35,000 homeless people. "We're just trying to provide somewhere for people to come in and sleep with some comfort," said Scott Mather, coordinator of the county's cold-weather shelter program. "If I had my way, we'd have [the shelters] open year-round."

In the wake of the season's first major rainfall, officials have opened several shelters across the county where the homeless can spend the night warm and dry. In the San Fernando Valley, the National Guard Armory at 17730 Victory Blvd. in Van Nuys will be open overnight from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. each day through Feb. 29, said Marlene Singer, a manager with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

The number of bus shelters will double in the city, and neither liquor nor tobacco advertisements will be allowed on them, under new contracts signed by the city. The contracts also allow city officials to review advertisements and to remove any they consider objectionable. Metro Display Advertising Inc. of Irvine and Eller Media Co. of Orange, which each have 15 shelters in the city, each will build 15 more. They also will pay the city $110 per month per shelter, an increase over the city's current rate of $78.38 per month, said Donald L. Heinbuch, city administrative services manager.

More than half of Los Angeles shelters face critical shortages of money, a new study of the shelter system for the homeless in Los Angeles County has found. So far, the shelters have managed to keep their doors open and even double their service to nearly 5,000 beds in the last 2 1/2 years, according to the study by the Shelter Partnership Inc., an organization that assists in developing and maintaining emergency shelters.

Re "Snared by Their Shelters," Column One, Jan. 10: As a tax professional regulated by the Internal Revenue Service, I applaud efforts by the IRS and California to crack down on the buyers and sellers of "abusive trusts." These tax-avoidance schemes for the wealthy should be particularly offensive to most taxpayers who pay their fair share. While there is no question in my mind that the accounting and law firms who perpetrate these fraudulent shelters are fully culpable, it is hard to believe that such participants as Pacific Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey and Assemblywoman Carol Liu are innocent "victims."

The city of Los Angeles launched a new 60-day shelter program for the homeless Monday, but had to find new homes for part of the program. The National Guard, citing factors such as the Persian Gulf mobilization, refused to allow two armories to be converted from part-time shelters to nightly use.