A week before winter officially begins, and Southern California is having its first cold spell. Mid-day temperatures on this sunny Sunday are down in the mid-50s, with a breeze making it seem even colder here in Venice. Still, this being a SoCal beach community, young men and women are out riding bikes on 3rd Avenue, while teens glide down the gentle incline on skateboards.

The street is a gentrification potpourri of two-story stucco apartments and spacious Spanish-style homes with tile roofs. At the top of the hill, however, is a brown brick three-story rectangular building that seems somewhat out of place. Moreover, in back snaking along one side is a line of a dozen mostly men with weathered faces waiting to get a bag lunch of a peanut butter-and-jelly or tuna fish sandwich, piece of fruit, snack and box of juice handed to them through an open window.

Lorenzo has already been in line and is sitting at a red picnic table in the back yard under an old Eucalyptus tree, munching on his free meal.

"I used to be able to find some work gardening or cleaning up places, but it's really worse, like there's nothing now," he tells a visitor to St. Robert's Center. "Before I was able to get more work and food, because before they used to give out food everywhere in Venice. Not no more. And now there's a lot of people sleeping on the beach and homeless everywhere."

The 50-year-old man lives in a 20-foot Dodge motor home he parks nightly on different streets in the seaside community. He survives on his monthly GR (General Relief) check of $220 plus $150 in Food Stamps and has been coming to the west- side Catholic Charities center for 12 years on weekends, often after he goes to Sunday Mass.

"The food is really good here," Lorenzo reports with a nod. "They also give out shampoo and clothes and blankets. But the food, that's it for me. It really helps out a lot. This place is really doing a good thing.

"And the people here are real nice, especially Tina," he adds. "She's strong, but she's sweet. She's straight with everybody. If somebody is making trouble, she comes over and stops it. And she knows everyone, you know, she calls our name. A lot of places are not like that. You get the food and you leave, and they don't know who you are."

Tina Lee has run the weekend food program and been a case manager at St. Robert's Center for 6 1/2 years. She says her homeless clients come not only from Venice but also Santa Monica, Mar Vista, Culver City and even Malibu. On Sunday afternoons the homeless can also get donated clothes, while needy families in the neighborhood receive bags of groceries on Saturdays and Sundays.

She says the weekend program practically runs itself, with seven local parishes donating the food and six - St. Monica, St. Joan of Arc, Good Shepherd, Corpus Christi, St. Timothy and St. Paul the Apostle - supplying volunteer servers as well. She also stresses that, with the recession, business unfortunately is booming.

"The economy is bad, so the lines are longer," Lee observes, standing out back, watching the walled-off enclosure fill up. "About six months ago it started getting worse. We started getting more new people. We have a lot of recurring people for years and years. But now we see a lot of new clients, younger people in the homeless line.

"I have new families coming, too, because people have lost their jobs or they're only working part time. A lot of families are coming for groceries. Seeing these new people is sad - it's very sad. People have nowhere to go. It's unbelievable."

Embarrassed clients
Hector Briones, Tina Lee's supervisor as Catholic Charities' Our Lady of the Angels metro and western regional director, couldn't agree more. At the half-dozen community centers he supervises, more destitute individuals and families are showing up asking for help. And the agency's shelter programs have waiting lists.

"We're seeing more people at our centers and new clients we haven't seen before - people from higher levels within the economic guidelines," he points out. "We get people who are almost embarrassed to come and ask. We've had clients who tell us, 'I used to give to your program, now I find myself asking for your help.' Mostly with food.

"And we're seeing an upsurge in requests for rental assistance. People just don't have the money. When gas went sky high, that's when we noticed it. People either had to spend money on gas to go to work or their food and rent. But now that gas prices have gone down tremendously, I don't know if it's going to show much difference because, of course, the other problem is that people are losing their jobs."

Moeed Kahn, Briones' counterpart in the San Fernando Valley, says at Catholic Charities sites in Glendale, Canoga Park and Van Nuys requests for help are up a whopping 35 to 50 percent. Most are for rental assistance, help paying utilities and food.

"I really believe if I had $100,000 it would be gone in no time," he says. "So we are working closely with our local parishes. We are getting a lot of support from St. Bernardine and St. Mel churches in Woodland Hills, St. Genevieve in Panorama City, St. Cyril of Jerusalem in Encino. In Glendale, we are very heavily supported by Holy Family and Incarnation, and St. Bede in La Caņada.

"People are getting more involved in food drives, and we would not survive without our volunteers," he adds. "But we are still stretched pretty thin."

'A whole different crowd'
Anna Totta has saved a phone call from a woman in Pico Rivera who recently lost her $20-an-hour health-care job and said she didn't know how she was going to continue taking care of her parents and two children. The single mom said her family was being evicted because they couldn't pay the rent. But all the Catholic Charities' San Pedro regional director could do was refer her to the local housing authority.

"I have to call her back to see what happened," she says. "But we're being really overwhelmed. With food requests alone, it's about a 30 to 40 percent increase from the previous year in Long Beach. And we're seeing people that we don't ordinarily see. We're getting a whole different crowd of people because they just can't make it."

Catholic Charities' two shelters in the South Bay are also feeling the effects of the economic downturn. During the last fiscal year, the family shelter served 400 people, while the previous year the number was 275. And Project Achieve Shelter for single men and women, which the agency took over in the summer of 2007, is always full according to Totta.

She says eviction prevention money has dried up, the six tons of food her community centers pick up from the Southern California Food Bank every week goes in and out the door, and more hungry and homeless Californians keep asking for help.

"What scares me is next year," Totta confides. "It's not dying down. The number of people coming to us for help is increasing. It's increasing while foundations have lost funding, so they're not able to help us as much. The government is cutting back, too. I have almost enough funding for this fiscal year. But next year, I don't know what's going to happen."

Tough times
Catholic Charities workers Anne Wrotniewski and Elena Guzman are on the front lines of the economic downturn in Southern California. The former is in charge of the case management program and client resources at Brownson House Community Center in Boyle Heights, while the latter runs the San Juan Diego Center in El Monte.

Both are struggling to keep up with old and new clients at their social service outposts. Brownson Center client numbers are up 30 percent from last year. Just three months ago, the San Juan Diego House was serving 25 to 30 families a day; today it's 50 to 65 families.

"I do a lot of the data input, so I can verify that most of our clientele used to be individuals on public assistance, especially single moms," Wrotniewski notes. "Now we're getting families with the head of the household who is working, either part-time or full-time, and they're still not making ends meet. We're also getting a lot of unemployed individuals, a lot of people looking for jobs.

Guzman says her new clients have not only lost their jobs but many have also lost their homes. "People are coming for rent, for Edison bills, for gas bills, for taxi vouchers," she reports. "We have fresh vegetables and fruit every Monday from the Los Angeles Food Bank. And every Monday we have like 300 people here. So every Monday we're crazy here."

Both workers say today's tough times are the worst they've ever seen and offer horrendous challenges to their agency. Both are frustrated that they don't have the resources to help more families stay in their homes or individuals find employment.

"It's really hard," admits Wrotniewski. "But we always have an ear vigilant to find out where other organizations are offering assistance. But we're not seeing the need lessen."

The San Juan Diego Center has even started classes for depressed clients, trying to raise their sense of self-esteem. Currently, there's a waiting list. "We are waiting on donations for everything," Guzman says. "Every week there's more people, and we need more money for everything to help more people: money, food, clothes -everything."

Editor's note: To make a donation to Catholic Charities of Los Angeles or to find out about volunteer opportunities with the social service agency, call (213) 251-3400 or visit www.catholiccharitiesla.org.