For L.A. homeless: a gym, movies, and hair salon

Looking out the window of her facility just blocks away from the new mission, Alice Callaghan, director of Las Familias Del Pueblo Community Center, points to a freshly renovated loft complex that she says is part of the reason area housing prices are getting steeper.

"The same $17 million that they spent would have bought a lot of permanent housing ... and put an end to the encroachment of luxury apartments around here," says Ms. Callaghan.

Despite the influx of luxury condos, however, mission officials say there has also long been pressure by surrounding businesses to get as many people off the streets as possible. And they say the new 500-capacity mission dining room will put an end to food lines that stretched around the block three times a day at their old facility. They say new activity rooms with television and movies for grown-ups and a separate play space for children will do much to reduce the numbers of homeless who pass time on the streets throughout the financial district.

Showers and the area's first 24-hour public restroom will be available. The gymnasium and training room will help address the lack of physical activity by those trying to recover from substance abuse.

"We have long felt that one major component missing in our drug and alcohol rehabilitation was a physical dimension to recovery," says mission spokesman Orlando Ward. "In the past, we would address the spiritual and the emotional but were neglecting real physical activity which we feel is important to rebuilding the whole man."

But 20-year local activist Ted Hayes, who runs an encampment of temporary housing just blocks away, says the building will do the opposite.

"The building of large missions in the inner cities of America only helps to keep the cycle of homeless going with what we call the 'homeless industrial complex,'" says Mr. Hayes. "A big fancy operation like this only maintains the bank accounts and lifestyles of those who run them and helps donors rid themselves of guilt."

Still others think a multifaceted approach is necessary. In this view, a combination of shelters with emergency services can help with short-term needs until longer term social and economic goals are realized.

"There are dangers and drawbacks to various approaches that can be offset by the strengths of others," says Paul Tepper, director of the Weingart Center, an institute which studies homelessness.

Either way, both sides seem to agree that citizens will continue to be threatened with instability until the supply of affordable housing is increased; incomes of the poor are adequate to pay for food, shelter, and healthcare; and disadvantaged people can receive the services they need.

"Attempts to change the homeless assistance system must take place with the context of larger efforts to help very poor people," says Roman.

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