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Help ahead for the homeless

by Don Kazak

They gather at the Red Cross building near the downtown Palo Alto train station every morning, talking quietly in small groups. They drink the coffee provided for them and maybe exchange a few words with the Urban Ministry staff members on hand to deal with any problems.

There are 150 who come by the Urban Ministry's makeshift, outdoor drop-in center every weekday morning. There are many more homeless people, all told, in Palo Alto who sleep in parks or under bushes.

In two years or so, the city's homeless population may have a new drop-in facility, the Opportunity Center, where a variety of services will be available, including hot showers. It's not expected to solve the problem, but will offer greater options to Palo Alto's homeless.

"It's incredibly important," Mayor Dena Mossar said of the center. "As a community, we have responsibilities to the homeless population, to help those who want help."

The Opportunity Center, like the Urban Ministry earlier, came directly out of work in the faith community. The two Palo Alto churches involved in center's creation five years ago were First Presbyterian and All Saints Episcopal, which are both member congregations of Peninsula Interfaith Action, a faith-based community organizing group that encompasses more than two dozen Peninsula congregations.

For the past five years, a community working group has met every other week in an attempt to devise a set of services for the homeless and find a place to house such needs.

The Palo Alto City Council, at its meeting next Monday night, may bring these dreams to fruition when it votes on the plans for the Opportunity Center. The center is expected to win approval since most of the community opposition to it -- from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Town & Country Shopping Center -- has melted away.

It's an ambitious and expensive project, with an eventual price tag of some $21 million, which includes the purchase of the land on Encinal Avenue -- next to the medical foundation and right near the train tracks. Of that money, some $14.5 million has been raised so far, coming from a variety of state, federal and local sources -- including the city. The goal is to have $2 million as an endowment to help carry the operating costs of the center, including rent subsidies for the 90 low-income housing units that will be built.

The Opportunity Center will also include separate drop-in centers and services for single men, and for women and children with families.

"We have an obligation to help them," Eve Agiewich said. Agiewich wears no fewer than three different hats in this process. She is the chairwoman of the Palo Alto Human Relations Commission and a member of the community working group that put the proposal together and will -- in effect -- become the landlord for the homeless center. Agiewich is also a staff member at the Clara Mateo shelter in Menlo Park, which will run the portion of the Opportunity Center that will serve women and families with children.

There are 120 beds at the Clara Mateo shelter, so named because it was created with support from both San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

Years ago, there were no shelter beds, no services, and the homeless fended for themselves.

There was just a guy serving coffee from the back of Winnebago motor home in the parking lot of a Palo Alto church. Jim Burklo was the guy -- a minister who tended to a flock others are less than sympathetic toward.

Things have come a long way in the intervening 15 years.

Burklo, then a minister at The First Congregationalist Church in Palo Alto, helped form the Urban Ministry in 1982. By 1984, it had its first executive director -- another minister -- and was beginning to serve the homeless. By 1987, Burklo stepped as the executive director, serving coffee from the back of that Winnebago motor home.

It took a while, but the Urban Ministry was able to find space at the Red Cross building, where it has remained until now. But its program, essentially, was out of doors.

As Burklo says wryly, they couldn't kick someone out for inappropriate behavior: Everyone was already "out."

"We had a homeless drop-in center for the homeless," Burklo said. "The Opportunity Center is very significant for the community. Finally, there will be a dignified place to offer these services."

The last point is important for Burklo. As he explains it, "When people are in a dignified environment, it's easy for them to regain their dignity."

Getting homeless people reengaged into society is an important goal, and if the center didn't pursue that, it likely wouldn't have gotten the support it has so far from city officials, including the City Council.

Often a homeless person will say to one of the Urban Ministry staff, "For me to end my homelessness, this and this has to happen," said Dan Jensen, Urban Ministry director.

The first step is often one of the 15 to 17 beds in the homeless shelter that rotates among Palo Alto and Menlo Park churches during the winter. "It's intended to be an emergency shelter to give them some help in finding a job and housing," Jensen said.

The next step is longer-term transitional housing, heavily subsidized and at little cost to the residents, "an opportunity to show some stability," Jensen said. But there is no transitional housing in Palo Alto, which is why as many as half of the 90 units slated for the Opportunity Center will be set aside for such use

The other half of the housing units at the center will be reserved for very-low-income people, just as the apartments built in the relatively new Alma Street apartments.

The Opportunity Center will also mark a new phase for the Urban Ministry, which has grown from its humble beginnings.

Today, the Urban Ministry has a staff of four full-time employees and five part-timers. They work at the drop-in center and the nightly church-based shelters. They also operate the Food Closet at All Saints Church in downtown Palo Alto and help with the morning and evening hot meals provided by volunteers.

There are hot meals six days a week, mostly at 5 p.m. with 11:30 a.m. meals on Thursdays and Saturdays, in addition to hot breakfasts most mornings. The afternoon/evening meals usually draw about 150 people.

The Urban Ministry had gone through rocky times in recent years, with financial difficulties, a loss of city support, and executive directors coming and going.

The solid permanence of a new home reflects internal stability, too. The Urban Ministry is no longer a stand-alone human services agency. It's now part of a much larger agency, InnVision, with a similar but longer history.

InnVision was started in 1973, a decade before the Urban Ministry, by nine San Jose churches. Today, it runs several shelters, a small janitorial business that hires disabled adults, a shelter and support center for families with children, and a food distribution network for low-income people.

Which brings three players into the Opportunity Center's birth: the drop-in center for men run by the Urban Ministry (now InnVision); the drop-in center for women and families run by the Clara Mateo shelter; and the community working group, which doesn't directly provide any services but put the whole concept together, raised money, and brought in outside agencies.

"We figured out a way to bring the pieces of this puzzle together," said Don Barr, a physician at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation who heads the community working group. "InnVision will provide management and the Urban Ministry will do what they've done so well for years, providing services to people."

Jensen said the Urban Ministry's work will be helped by being indoors once the Opportunity Center opens. Currently, the caseworkers are at the drop-in center for half days; the drop-in center at the Red Cross building is open five weekdays 8-11:30 a.m. Once the Opportunity Center opens, the case workers will be able to work the entire day.

Another relationship is expected to get stronger -- the involvement of Stanford students. Through the Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford students have pitched in to help the homeless for years, said Nadinne Cruz, Haas Center director. That includes a night outreach program where students go out with "care" packages for homeless people. The packages include toothbrushes and toothpaste, clean socks, and other items.

Both Burklo and Barr also have had a long involvement with the Haas Center. In addition to serving as pastor of a small congregation in San Mateo, Burklo is a campus minister as well. Barr teaches in the university's Sociology Department in addition to being a physician.

"So it's a natural fit for us," Cruz said of the Haas Center's involvement with the Opportunity Center. "It will be a more sustainable relationship."

But the road getting to the Opportunity Center had a few bumps along the way, including a really big one last fall when Dr. David Druker, president and CEO of the Palo Medical Foundation, stood up at a Palo Alto Planning Commission meeting and said he didn't like the idea of the Opportunity Center being built 35 feet away from his clinic.

Druker said he feared for the safety of the clinic's patients, and feared they might break into the clinic and steal drugs. That brought some consternation from members of the Planning Commission, including a light dressing down from Commission member Phyllis Cassel, who works as a registered nurse.

Ron Wilson, general manager of the nearby Town & Country Shopping Center, also voiced his fears about the impact of the Opportunity Center.

The two have since gone in opposite directions. Wilson has declined further comment to the Weekly, saying the Opportunity Center was "a done deal."

The medical foundation, on the other hand, is working closely with the community working group to iron out any potential problems.

"We're working to make sure things come together," said Tim Tosta, attorney for the medical foundation. "It's going very much in the right direction."

Tosta and Barr said they hope to have a written agreement in place for the Monday night City Council meeting. The agreement will spell out the physical relationship between the clinic and homeless center on such matters as parking and security, Tosta said.

"Both sides will be thinking of security and safety, for the clinic's patients and for the homeless people," Tosta said. "You've got sensitive populations in both places."

"I feel we're communicating well and identifying the core issues," said Christine Burrows, CEO of InnVision, "and we'll come up with some solutions that satisfy everyone. Safety is an issue for us as well. We want to make sure that our clients are safe, too."

The last point is underscored by Burklo, who knows the homeless population here as well as anyone.

Burklo admitted that violence and aggression are sometimes present among the homeless. "We're working with people with all kinds of stress in their lives, and some do have a background of crime and violence. It is an issue that has to be attended to," he said.

However, it's the safety of the homeless people Burklo is most concerned about. "A very few cause violence or trouble, but their victims are always other homeless people," he said.

Capt. Brad Zook of the Palo Alto Police Department backs that up, saying he cannot recall any crimes committed by homeless on more affluent victims.

There was a tragic shooting about a year ago near one of the church shelters, when one homeless man shot and killed another homeless man, Zook said.

Zook, who is taking part in devising a safety plan for the Opportunity Center, is optimistic that any problems can be solved. "We have a pretty good relationship with most of the homeless here," Zook said. Palo Alto police will move people out of parks that close at night, or off people's private property when asked to -- mostly by persuasion -- with few citations actually issued.

"It's not a crime to be homeless," Zook said.

Barr said he believes in time the Palo Alto Medical Foundation will be "a very good neighbor. I suspect they will play a role in the future."

It's still going to be a while, even after the expected Palo Alto City Council vote for approval, but Palo Alto's homeless program soon won't be homeless anymore.

"It's time that changed," Burklo said simply.

Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com