82-year-old Vicki Pacifico settles into a folding chair in a classroom at The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, chatting with her friend Janet and other seniors who are part of her Stagebridge theater class. She checks a few sheets of music in a black binder. Then she and the others begin to chant: “Bravo, bravisimo… in veritas,” as they warm up.
About a mile away, 23-year-old Robbie Carlysle shows up for an interview at the Center’s McDonald/Wright headquarters. He doesn’t stop at reception for directions; after all, he used to live here.
Vicki’s relationship with the Center dates back more than 40 years, far longer than Robbie has been alive. But the two represent the arc of the Center’s evolution and the ongoing process of reimagining itself time and again to keep up with the changing needs and priorities of the community it serves.
Now is one of those times of change.
On May 27, the Center announced the most ambitious expansion plan in its history: the development of a one-of-a-kind campus that unites The Village with a new facility on land directly across the street from it, offering approximately 100 units of affordable housing for LGBT seniors and youth, doubling the number of beds available for homeless youth, and much more. It will also be the Center’s new administrative headquarters.
To help fund it, the Center launched the largest capital campaign in the history of the LGBT movement. While the Center has been helping homeless youth since 1969, providing a “crash pad” for them to sleep, this is the first time it will offer permanent, affordable housing in a facility designed for that purpose. The units will add to those acquired in April, when Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing (GLEH) became part of the Center’s Senior Services Department, and the Center assumed management of GLEH’s 104-unit Triangle Square in Hollywood.
The Center’s Senior Services program now serves three times the number of clients than just a few years ago, and the population of LGBT people over the age of 50 is predicted to double by 2030. Meanwhile, more homeless youth than ever are seeking the Center’s help. Recently, the Youth Center on Highland saw a record 134 homeless young people in a single day. The Center’s expansion plans will enable the organization to meet the challenges of a new era: providing affordable housing, medical care and other basic services to some of the LGBT community’s most vulnerable members.
Pacifico first stepped across the threshold of the rickety, rented Victorian that served as the Center’s headquarters in 1973. It had only been four years since an informal group of activists, including LGBT rights pioneers Morris Kight and Don Kilhefner, had begun offering help to LGBT people in need. Their “Gay Survival Committee” soon became so overwhelmed with demand that they began seriously planning for a center that would provide a wide range of services to a community still brutalized not only by the Los Angeles Police Department but also by society at large. In 1971 they incorporated as the Gay Community Services Center with $35 in the bank.
By her first visit, the Center was already serving some 6,000 people a month through a gay men’s STD clinic and another medical clinic exclusively for lesbians, six “Liberation Houses” for homeless gay youth and adults, legal services, peer counseling for the trans community, and drug and alcohol addiction services. But for Pacifico, fresh out of a painful breakup, the draw was the simple companionship she found in the Center’s “women’s consciousness raising” sessions.
“Women were sitting around on the floor with their backs against the wall,” she said. “They would talk about how they felt about themselves, how they felt about their bodies, how they felt about being there for each other instead of ripping each other apart. You were there to make friends, and it was wonderful.”
But while Pacifico and thousands of women like her found a supportive environment at the Center, lesbians weren’t reflected in the organization’s name until 1980. And, despite the many services available to them, bisexuals and the transgender community weren’t represented in the name at all. That changed in May, when, along with the expansion plans, the Center announced a new name, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, a new logo, and the launch of a new website.
“Our new name and logo reflect the diversity and the dynamism of our organization and our community,” said Center CEO Lorri L. Jean. “The Center has always been a place for everyone in our community, and we’re proud that our new name better reflects that reality.”
This is not the first time an unprecedented capital campaign has helped the Center meet the challenges of a new era. Twenty-five years ago, another helped the Center confront the AIDS crisis, among other critical issues for LGBT youth and adults.
With the epidemic in full force in 1993, the Jeffrey Goodman Special Care Clinic opened its doors to provide anonymous testing and HIV/AIDS medical care. At the time, nearly 195,000 Americans had died of the disease, which was quickly becoming the leading cause of death for those between the ages of 25 and 44. The clinic was located in the Center’s new headquarters, a renovated office building on a street that was renamed one year later for early Center board member Judge Rand Schrader. Both the purchase of the property and the opening of the clinic were made possible by a $7 million capital campaign, the first ever by an LGBT organization.
In 2013 the Center became a Federally Qualified Health Center, the only one in California and one of the few in the nation specifically for LGBT people. The Center’s various medical programs—including the Audre Lorde Lesbian Health Program and the Transgender Health Program—welcome more than 2,300 visits a month, providing everything from primary care to counseling to fertility services.
When the new campus is completed (anticipated in 2018) and Center administrative staff moves to the new facility, all four floors of the McDonald/Wright Building on Schrader Blvd. will be dedicated to health, mental health, and medical services.
Robbie Carlysle is quick to show you the picture of himself with actor Seth Rogan.
It was snapped while he was working as an extra in a movie starring Rogan; no big deal for an aspiring actor, but for Carlysle, it’s a long way from where he graduated high school.
“Nineteen, fat, Jewish, gay and in Alabama,” he joked. “I couldn’t have been a bigger target!”
An aunt gave him $200 for a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles, where he had once lived before one of his family’s many moves and where he thought he would have a place to stay with an online friend. But when he arrived, he learned that the “friend” had a wife and family. It was the beginning of 10 days on the street.
“I had a blanket and I would sleep outside of synagogues,” he said. “I called around to shelters, and there were a couple of nights I got to stay there. But mostly, I slept in the entrances of empty buildings downtown. I would sleep with my arms around my legs just so if they tried to beat me up for my shoes, I could get up and run.”
On an average day, there are an estimated 6,000 homeless youth sleeping on the streets of Los Angeles; a staggering 40 percent of them are LGBT. Like Carlysle, many are afraid of being attacked if they sleep and so, unlike Carlysle, turn to drugs to stay awake and to sex for money in order to feed themselves.
The Center’s Transitional Living Program currently has 24 beds for homeless youth; providing a welcoming place where young people can live for up to 18 months while the Center helps them develop the skills and resources necessary to live on their own. And to serve even more homeless young people, the Center operates the Youth Center on Highland, providing a place to stay (approximately 25 “emergency” beds) for a night or a few nights, get nutritious meals, clean clothes, and access services to help them get and stay off the streets. Demand for services at the youth center – open seven days a week – has never been greater. The new facility will double the number of long-term transitional living and emergency beds and will provide more than 10 times the number of affordable housing units for youth.
Carlysle was lucky—a helpline referred him to the youth center (then on Santa Monica Blvd.) for services, and within a month, he was a resident of the Center’s Transitional Living Program. With the help of Center counselors, he registered for school and earned his associate’s degree in web design, which is his “day job” while he builds his acting career.
“I’ve seen how low my life can get, and I never want to go back there again,” he said. “If the Center hadn’t been there for me, I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t like to think about it. I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in today without the help and guidance of the Center.”
The organization that began with $35 in the bank is expected to have a fiscal year 2015 budget of over $80 million and currently welcomes some 42,000 client visits every month. In a few years, a building sure to become a cultural landmark—the Center’s new campus—will greet Vicki Pacifico as she arrives for her Stagebridge classes. Some of her classmates will be residents of the dozens of new senior apartments on the McCadden campus. Out in the courtyard, you’re likely to find youth like Carlysle helping even younger people with their homework or assisting a senior who’s trying to set up a laptop.
“This won’t be just a housing facility,” said Jean. “The people living, visiting, and working here will form a community in the truest sense of the word. It will be a place where the youngest and oldest members of our
Community—with a capital “C”—can interact, benefit from each other’s experience and energy, and enrich each other’s lives.”
Thanks to the work of early activists and the thousands who followed in their footsteps, the LGBT community today faces a far more welcoming environment than anyone could have imagined in 1969. The next half-century will bring new challenges; the new campus will help ensure the Center is ready to meet them.
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