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Sheltered From the Streets

At NW Center, Latino Immigrants Find Sanctuary From the Dangers of Alcoholism, Homelessness

The front door of the rundown row house shelter in Columbia Heights is held shut by an old rusty chain. The cots upstairs are narrow and sagging, the heating barely functions, and there is only one bathroom for a dozen men.

But outside is much, much worse.

Outside is where Alvaro Arriola's jaw was busted by another vagrant with a baseball bat, so that Arriola needs a metal plate to hold his teeth in place. Outside is where Oscar Chavez's teenage daughter was killed, although he was so drunk he didn't find out for days. Outside is where Paz Franco used to argue with other homeless men over sleeping spots in abandoned trucks, until he was stabbed in the ribs.

For now, at least, Arriola, Chavez, Franco and seven other Latino immigrants are safe and sober inside the Salomon Zelaya Rehabilitation Center, a one-man salvage operation for chronic street alcoholics.

Today, the center's residents will help prepare and consume a free Thanksgiving dinner, including two turkeys cooked Cuban-style, with black beans and fried bananas, by the shelter's director, Pablo Sanchez, 45, a quixotic, Cuban immigrant whose only apparent qualification for the job is that he used to be a homeless alcoholic himself.

"Pablo came and begged me to come off the street. I was filthy, and I couldn't even stand up," said Carlos Hernandez, 31, a Salvadoran immigrant who began living at the shelter this month. "My stomach still hurts, but at least I'm not trembling any more. I'm scared to leave here now, because I'd just start drinking again. But thanks to God and Pablo, at least I'm alive."

Across the city there are a half-dozen more-established shelters for homeless men, including those operated by the Coalition for the Homeless and the Community for Creative Non-Violence. Some provide only emergency overnight services; others allow homeless men to stay longer and provide residents with counseling for alcoholism and drug addiction.

The Thanksgiving feast at CCNV, compared with Sanchez's modest, two-turkey dinner, has become a mammoth annual undertaking, with many volunteers serving turkey and trimmings to hundreds of the city's homeless people.

But the residents at the Zelaya shelter say Sanchez, who lives with them in the rented rowhouse at 1345 Newton St. NW, offers a more comfortable sense of sanctuary than the impersonal dormitories and trailers at larger shelters. Most of the center's residents are Salvadoran laborers who came to the United States in the 1980s, speak little English and have few skills. Over time they have drifted to the bottom of the local immigrant community, and now they bounce between the street, jail and hospital emergency rooms.

A few weeks at the Zelaya center gives them a chance to clean up, heal from injuries incurred on the streets and try again to quit the bottle. Sanchez doesn't charge the men for staying at the center, but they are expected to help with cleaning and cooking, attend informal group counseling sessions and follow a set of simple rules that forbid drinking, fighting or leaving the premises without an escort.

"Nobody cares about these muchachos [guys]. Nobody wants to offer them the help they deserve," Sanchez said. "Some people say I am not a professional, that I have no title. But I believe in the Salomon Zelaya Center, and I want to spend my life helping people. If nobody wants to send them here, I go out on the streets and get them."

Despite his passionate commitment, the dapper but volatile Sanchez has alienated some professionals and officials who work with social problems in the Latino community. Community leaders describe him as a belligerent and explosive character who pesters officials with hectoring calls and visits and often disrupts public meetings to denounce detractors or demand funds. For his part, Sanchez complains that the establishment discriminates against him and against homeless Latinos in general, by denying him funds and client referrals.

"Pablo's reputation precedes him. Before he can get in the door, someone has already made a call saying, `Look out,' " said Tanya Love, a District lawyer who has often served as a buffer between Sanchez and officials. "He's not crazy, but he gets tunnel vision, and he gets stuck on things. It can be frustrating to him and anyone who is trying to help him."

Sanchez came to the United States in 1980, fleeing Cuba in the Mariel boat lift. He spent the next decade as a lost soul on District streets, often staying in local shelters while nursing a dream of opening one himself. In 1992, he found a vacant basement in Columbia Heights, raised some private contributions and invited small groups of homeless Latino men to live there. Two years later, he landed a $44,000 federal grant from the local Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness and moved to Newton Street.

The money ran out in September, but Sanchez is relying on donations to keep the shelter open.

Mike Ferrell, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said Sanchez is "very passionate about what he believes in, and individuals like that can come across as a little obsessive or irrational." But he said he respects Sanchez for struggling to keep his program alive and for "calling it like he sees it," no matter how inappropriate the setting or how uncomfortable the audience.

But bureaucratic niceties don't matter very much to shelter residents, who say they are just glad to be welcomed in from the cold by someone who speaks their language and understands the temptations that landed them in the street.

"I was sleeping in a truck, begging in the day and drinking all the time. Pablo passed by and said I could come here," said Oscar Chavez, 34, a Salvadoran cook. "Now that I'm feeling a little sober, I want to stay. Inside here it's like a family. Outside, the first time a friend hands you a drink, that's the one that kills you."

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