When most Catholics of a certain age think of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul -one of the Church's oldest charitable organizations - what often comes to mind are those big bulky trucks picking up clothes that no longer fit, toys stored away in the basement or that old refrigerator out in the garage.

Those storied trucks are still making their rounds in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, gathering up items to be brought back to an airplane-hanger-size thrift store in Lincoln Heights. But as the society's Los Angeles Council gets ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary next year, changes are well underway to serve the old and new poor in different ways.

And at the forefront of these innovations is a strategy to tackle the Southland's growing social tragedy: homelessness.

"Our emphasis now and in years to come is going to be following the premise that the best way to end homelessness is to prevent it," says Jose Rossier, CEO of the Los Angeles Council. "Whatever it takes to prevent a family from being homeless, we have to consider doing."

A new program involves the council's 100 mostly parish-based grass-roots "conferences" seeking out landlords willing to share the society's vision of giving low-income families decent places to live. Every sponsoring conference will subsidize the rent for a certain time period, along with guaranteeing that any damages to the apartment will be fixed. Conference members will also work with the families, helping them budget their income so they can eventually pay the full rent themselves.

Already, "Project Independence" is up and running in Santa Clarita, where the local group of Vincentians have helped families obtain stable housing. Last year the society also committed to a year lease of a one-bedroom residence in East L.A., where a young mother and her two children are living.

"Affordable housing in Los Angeles is an oxymoron - it just doesn't exist," Rossier points out. "So another idea that we're tinkering with is expanding this idea of guaranteeing the rent and maybe buying duplexes and triplexes throughout the county, and placing some of the homeless people who live at our downtown shelter and in our conferences in them.

"This is a new emphasis for us, because shelters are great but a family cannot feel at home, cannot begin to reconstruct itself unless it has a house or an apartment. So whatever it takes to prevent a family from being homeless, we're willing to do. And I don't want to put them in the barrio or the ghetto. I would love to have a family move into the San Fernando Valley or other nice area, so we aren't putting the kids in harm's way."

Well kept secret
In Los Angeles, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul's first conference was established at St. Vibiana's Cathedral parish in 1904; however, the society wasn't incorporated here until 1908 under the jurisdiction of Bishop Thomas Conaty.

By 1945, Archbishop John Cantwell described the society's work as "strong and healthy with that vigor which emanates from the charity of Christ." There were four stores and a central warehouse, servicing the trucks picking up and delivering donated items. Money collected from every poor box in every church went to the society to carry on its works.

Last year, 1,800 Vincentian volunteers logged nearly 134,000 hours and put almost 400,000 miles on their cars reaching out to one million individuals in need. They also raised more than $1 million.

Special works of the council included the Cardinal Manning Center for emergency and transitional housing, which helped close to 136,000 men, women and children with meals, lodging, medical and mental health treatment, plus job counseling. The Circle V Ranch Camp for economically disadvantaged and at-risk children in the Santa Barbara Mountains offered more than 1,200 kids, ages seven to 13, summer camping vacations, where they enjoyed swimming, arts and crafts, and hiking.

The St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store serves a variety of purposes. First, it gives low-income individuals and families a place to shop for food, clothes, furniture and appliances at bargain prices. Second, it distributes these items free of charge to the poor. Third, store profits support the council's works.

Taken together, these acts of charity beg the question, Why do many Angelenos think the St. Vincent de Paul Society is some bygone church organization their grandmothers belonged to?

"The society has been around so long, but its members have pretty much kept quiet," says Brian Pickering, public relations director for the Los Angeles Council. "The philosophy for the volunteers is 'we don't want a pat on the back.' It's been a struggle to get Vincentians to speak more, because they think they're boasting talking about their work.

"So it's been hard to increase our public image," he notes. "And because there are so many charities around today - even though we believe we're different - if people don't know who we are, our assistance is very limited. Slowly but surely we're making inroads."

One of the major differences is home visits.

Following in the footsteps of their founder, Frenchman Frederic Ozanam - who reportedly made the first home visit when the young law student carried a supply of wood to a poor Parisian family in 1833 - Vincentians still go to the homes of people seeking assistance. In pairs, the lay volunteers offer direct help along with referrals to individuals and families in crisis.

"What social service agency goes out to homes? Who does that today?" Rossier asks before answering his own question, "Special people who are not being paid. And when we get to their homes, we look around and maybe see that children are sleeping on the floor or there's no refrigerator.

"So before we leave, we make an offer: 'Do you mind if we donate those things to you?' They'll look at us like, 'Do we mind?' And the request is then sent to the thrift store. We put it in our trucks and deliver it to their house for free. That's what makes us different from: 'Come in here and I'll give you a voucher.'"

The CEO points out that with the Los Angeles Council's new "District Empowerment" program, conference presidents can make emergency requests for funds from the organization's seven district presidents without going through the central office. Today, checks for rent, utilities, prescriptions and other bills are usually delivered in days instead of a week. The result? Fewer families are evicted or have their electricity turned off, and more can get the medicines they need.

A call for urgent help can come to a pastor in the evening and that same night Vincentians will visit the distressed family.

"The volunteers were, are and will always be the heart of what the St. Vincent de Paul Society is," Rossier reports. "Because what they're doing is putting their faith into practice."

'Bundle Sunday' man
Ed Kunkler has been doing precisely that for more than 30 years.

At his Our Mother of Good Counsel Conference in the Los Feliz area, he makes sandwiches for the five-days-a-week free lunch program and helps out with the monthly hot meal. He also spends hours every week organizing the society's "Bundle Sunday" program, which collects clothes and usable good from the archdiocese's nearly 300 parishes. In addition, he offers advice to parishes on how to create new conferences and revitalize existing ones.

Retired for two decades as a federal government worker, the 80-year-old has made more than 100 homes visits, but still finds them interesting as well as challenging.

"If you go to a home and you find out there's a problem that you really can't do anything about, the people are still going to be really thankful that 'here's somebody who cares enough to come to see me,'" he says. "So it's a very important part of the work that we're doing.

"Ozanam's challenge to his friends at the time was 'let's go to the poor.' So going to the poor is the challenge that we have."

Another challenge, according to Kunkler, is how to determine the best way to help people in crisis. Giving them money isn't always the answer and lecturing never works. He believes the most effective way is to lead them into responsible decision-making. But this takes time, effort and, most of all, experience to succeed.

"See, there's no formula to this," he says. "You play it by ear. You try to help people."

The joys have been serving hot nourishing meals to men on the street plus keeping families from eviction and homelessness. He feels like he's doing something worthwhile in his life, while keeping active and alert. Being a Vincentian, in short, has eliminated the possibility of boredom.

"The thrust of this work is still the spirituality of it," Kunkler explains. "In other words, we need to understand why we're doing what we're doing. We need to understand that we're dealing with brothers and sisters of Christ.

"Sometimes that's a little difficult to do," he adds. "But if we can do it in that vein, we will continue to grow the conferences in parishes. The conferences that are truly thriving pay attention to the spirituality of charity, and the members are truly concerned about the poor and the needy."

Editor's note: This is the first of a three-part series on the St. Vincent de Paul Society's Council of Los Angeles, which has been providing hope and dignity to Southern Californians since before 1908.