LONG BEACH - For Anthony Mercy and Becky Storey, Sunday was a night like any other. The homeless couple rolled out their sleeping bags and blankets at their usual spot near Ocean Boulevard and the Promenade, tucked away their strollers and bags just as they had on any other of 1,000 nights ... 2,000 nights, maybe more. It's hard to tell sometimes when you're homeless and the nights and years just fade into the hard concrete sidewalks.
But, for Mercy and Storey, Tuesday night was like no other.
Three days before Christmas and nearly eight years after they became homeless, the couple got to spread out fresh new sheets, blankets and pillows on a bed in a place they could call their own.
"No police are gonna come by and wake me up," Storey said.
Mercy and Storey will be home rather than homeless for Christmas.
Standing in their new one-bedroom apartment, provided and furnished by a coalition of government, nonprofit and faith-based groups, the two seemed almost stunned into silence at how their lives had turned around in just two days.
When Officer Merle Megee of the Long Beach Police Department's Quality of Life Unit first told the couple he was working on a deal to get them off the streets, they didn't quite dare to believe it.
"I thought here's another promise that will go out the window," Mercy said.
On Sunday night when the couple took up their customary spot on the concrete, he said it was already forgotten.
"On the streets you just live one day at a time," Mercy said.
But Megee was there Monday and later showed them the apartment in the West Gateway section of town.
"I
said, `This is mine? This is mine? I can't believe it," Storey
recalled. "We're going to be on a real bed, with real covers."
Late in the day Tuesday, as volunteers from Kingdom Causes,
a nonprofit group that helps coordinate faith-based charities, brought
in a sofa, dining room table and chairs, Storey was barely able to contain her emotions
Susy De Lucca of Kingdom Causes made sure the color of the dining room chairs meshed nicely with the sofa.
When Storey saw the microwave being toted in, she broke into tears and covered her face in her hands.
"A microwave?" she said in disbelief. "Y'all can't imagine what it's like until you've been out there. I'm so happy it makes me cry."
Mercy and Storey are just the latest of the Long Beach homeless population who have been moved off the streets in an effort started just five months ago and already gaining widespread recognition.
The couple are the 12th and 13th homeless downtown residents who have received permanent shelter since a grass-roots survey identified 345 chronic homeless in downtown Long Beach.
The group that organized that survey, Long Beach Connections, is an affiliation of nonprofit, civic, nonprofit and advocacy groups that banded together to aggressively battle homelessness.
Elsa Ramos, a coordinator at the city's Multi-Service Center, has helped put all the pieces together.
The solution is simple. Give the homeless housing.
"It's a great home-for-the-holidays story," said Joel Roberts, the CEO of Path Partners, a nonprofit homeless services organization.
By cobbling together city, county, state and federal resources and rallying together community groups, Long Beach Connections has already exceeded its goal of housing the "top-10" of the homeless it felt were the most vulnerable to extreme privation on the streets.
With three homeless people currently in drug and alcohol programs and another in transitional housing, the city and Long Beach Connections are showing no signs of slowing down.
Of the 13 housed, eight are men, five are women. Their average age is 50 and average time on the street is seven years.
Roberts said more money from Housing and Urban Development and Los Angeles County has been identified and with that, another 24 homeless may be able to be housed in the near future.
There is also the possibility there will be some funding to help younger homeless.
"We will have 41 (homeless) housed by January," Roberts says. "We've gone from a goal of housing 10 people to 11.8 percent (of the downtown homeless) in six months."
"This just shows what can happen when everyone pitches in," he added.
Mayor Bob Foster has also put together a fund to help the homeless with deposits on apartments, and Los Angeles Supervisor Don Knabe has kicked in $600,000 of discretionary funds to the effort.
"It's a large one-time investment that has a long-time savings," said Knabe spokesman David Sommers.
In the cases of Mercy and Storey, the plan is to pay for their housing for six months while staff at Long Beach's Multi-Service Center attempt to get them both Social Security disability benefits.
Mercy, 46, suffered an aneurysm in 2008 that required brain surgery and a 10-day stay in intensive care. He still suffers bouts with blurred vision and equilibrium problems.
Storey, 58, has arthritis in her hands and knees and a variety of long-term ailments.
So far, both have been turned down in their attempts to get disability benefits, which would pay them each $880 per month. Currently, the two subsist on general relief, which pays $221 per month plus food stamps.
"We're going to try to streamline them through the disability process," said Susan Price, Homeless Services Officer.
Because the homeless often lack the paperwork to document their disabilities and history of care, it is easy for them to become hung up and forgotten in the disability process.
Housing was something Mercy and Storey couldn't begin to contemplate, with their limited incomes, augmented with odd jobs such as working at the annual jazz festival and collecting recyclables.
Although the Long Beach Housing Authority has a Section 8 voucher program for 6,300 households, the waiting list can be six or more years, and the program hasn't even been accepting applications since 2003.
Ironically, the downturn in the economy has helped with the homeless housing effort by lowering rents.
"In the downturned economy, landlords are hungry for tenants," said Megee, who has helped broker many of the deals to place the homeless in housing. "If it weren't for that, we wouldn't be able to do what we do."
Megee praised Crestwave Property Management for its willingness to negotiate rents. Currently, three of the homeless live in one of the complexes Crestwave manages and Megee has brought nine households overall to the company.
Debbie Briscoe, owner of Crestwave, said the partnership has been ideal.
"It feels really great to help get people off the streets," Briscoe said.
She added that having Megee on speed dial is a side benefit that has nipped possible problems before they develop.
In Long Beach, vacancy rates have nearly doubled from a low in 2007 of just under 3 percent to 5.3 percent in the first half of 2009, and the rate was projected to climb to 5.9 percent by year's end, according to a market research report by Marcus and Millichap. The report also shows area rents falling nearly $100 per month over the past year to $1,213, with more slipping expected.
Housing and Urban Development sets fair market rate in the Los Angeles and Long Beach area at $1,137 for a one-bedroom apartment.
As heartening as that may be to middle-wage earners, it still puts the Southern California numbers way out of the reach of most homeless.
More than half of Long Beach renters pay more than 30 percent of their wages on housing.
Despite the high costs, homeless advocates say placing the Mercys and Storeys of the community isn't just a humane solution, it makes financial sense as well.
Earlier this year, the United Way of Greater Los Angeles released a report it sponsored that tracked homeless people before and after they were placed in housing.
One of those was an unidentified Long Beach man who in two years on the streets cost taxpayers $70,000 in services, hospitalizations and police contact, including a 90-day stay in jail. In the two years since the man was placed in permanent supportive housing, the community saved $44,000.
When Long Beach Connections did its survey of downtown Long Beach, it found high use among the homeless of emergency rooms and ambulances, among other services.
"The people we talk about housing are the most chronically homeless and have been the most service-resistant," said Nick Ippolito, the social services deputy for Knabe, adding that in providing housing it is hoped the cycle will be broken of homeless going from jail to hospital to shelter.
Ippolito said for every $1 spent in general relief another $4.34 is spent in services.
"If we can stabilize people and put them in housing (with supportive services) they can either transition back into normal life or another appropriate level of (disability)."
And then there is helping someone who has forgotten what hope looks like.
As Storey gazed around her new abode, she was already imagining little fixes she planned to make and decorations she would add to make the place feel like home.
She was positively giddy about the prospect of housework.
And one of the things that may seem the simplest and most basic to most of us was a wonder to Storey.
"I'll have a place to be warm and to cook a Christmas dinner," she said.
greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291
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