Youth Center Fights for Acceptance : Neighborhoods: West Hollywood’s progressive reputation is clouded by impasse over gay and lesbian outreach agency. Critics fear hustlers would be drawn back to the area.

Since its birth 10 years ago, the city of West Hollywood has touted itself as a mecca for gays and lesbians, a community that would open its arms to people who had been spurned in their own hometowns.

But now the commitment to a “Gay Camelot” is being questioned as the city and a social services agency wage an increasingly testy debate over the opening of a drop-in center for gay and lesbian youths.

The collision of “not-in-my-back-yard” politics and gay politics is over a proposal by the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center to open a storefront for runaways, prostitutes and other street youths on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Neighborhood groups argue that the opening of the drop-in center--where youths would receive counseling and condoms along with hot meals, showers and a laundry--would lure back street hustlers who recently have been on the run because of an intensive policing effort.

Outreach workers for the gay and lesbian center say the hustlers never left, but simply were driven underground by gang members and an aggressive abatement program by the Sheriff’s Department. They say the impasse over the opening of the center casts a cloud over the city’s progressive reputation and turns a cold shoulder on young people fleeing oppression in their homes.

The dispute ratcheted upward recently at the center’s annual dinner, a glitzy affair that attracts the movers and shakers in the gay and lesbian community. After taking shots at traditional foes such as Gov. Pete Wilson and Christian fundamentalist Louis P. Sheldon, center Executive Director Lorri L. Jean’s keynote speech turned to West Hollywood.

“Even in West Hollywood, the nation’s first gay city, some residents don’t want us offering desperately needed services to homeless queer youth in their neighborhood,” Jean said. “ ‘Not in my back yard,’ they say--the very back yard in which the most needy homeless gay and lesbian youth congregate.”

West Hollywood City Councilman Steve Martin, who is gay, called Jean’s remarks a “cheap shot.”

“The members of the City Council don’t appreciate that sort of grandstanding in front of an audience of the gay and lesbian glitterati,” Martin said. “And then having their constituents labeled as homophobic because they disagree on this one issue.”

Jean said that she has been restrained in her approach to the issue and that, if she wanted, she could mobilize many people to fight for the drop-in center. “I certainly think if we wanted to make an organized effort, there would be a lot more people supportive of this in West Hollywood than against it,” she said.

The dispute has been particularly dicey for the two gays on West Hollywood’s five-member City Council. Councilmen Martin and John Heilman said they have felt squeezed between longtime neighborhood activists and gay politicos--with both sides feeling that the opening of the drop-in center is a philosophical litmus test.

But West Hollywood officials said much of the controversy over the proposed location west of La Brea Avenue--in a ragtag stretch near auto body shops, bars and a nude club--could have been avoided if the social services agency had made its intentions clear before it signed a lease.

“We have finally turned the corner on the east end of Santa Monica Boulevard,” Martin said. “We are looking forward to building a better life for our residents and businesses. The center doesn’t seem to get that at all.”

Heilman was more diplomatic, but he also said many gays and straights do not believe that the proposed location, near a notorious hustler bar, is the best one.

Although the agency has been paying $2,500 a month since early summer for the slate-gray building at 7506 Santa Monica Blvd., it cannot be used without the city’s approval of a variance permitting fewer than the required number of parking spaces.

Several alternative sites for the drop-in center have been studied, but all have been ruled out by the agency. One would have been too costly. Another was deemed too far from Santa Monica Boulevard, the city’s main street and the haunt of bare-chested hustlers, transvestites and street urchins.

West Hollywood officials said they may reconsider the original site, but only with increased security, restricted hours of operation and other rules to ensure that the center does not become merely a way station for youths on their way to working the streets.

Jean said she was distraught over the stalemate. But supporters of the center said they hesitate to publicize the dispute for fear of jeopardizing the $351,000 in grants the city provides annually for social programs.

Martin, while acknowledging the city’s support of the agency, seemed to validate that fear: “It’s hard to feel good about the center when they didn’t even have the courtesy to call the council members to tell them that they were going to open.

“If the center is looking for a political rumble on this, they are taking on the wrong people,” he said. “West Hollywood politics has always been brass-knuckled. We don’t ask for any quarter and we don’t give any quarter.”

Rashida Shah, the center’s street outreach specialist, said the center would be more effective than police crackdowns in moving teen-agers from the street. Now she travels the streets in a maroon van or on foot, offering young people counseling and referrals for jobs, housing and medical care.

“This center will be a safe place to come and start talking things out more,” Shah said. “It takes them out of their environment and puts them into a very safe and positive environment. . . . I see this as the only way you have to offer people alternatives.”

But Martin, elected on a strong law-and-order platform, gives voice to some of his constituents’ harsher views of the youths.

“The center’s view of these kids is very warm and fuzzy--they have been thrown out of their homes and abused and therefore they can do no wrong,” Martin said. “That’s just ridiculous. That’s not been our experience. . . . This program could work, but the center is going to have to listen and take people’s concerns to heart.”