"My name's Lima Johnson, like the beans," he says, greeting a visitor to his round table in the café-like front room of the St. Francis Center. In front of him are Styrofoam cups of nearly finished gumbo soup, coffee and milk. He's also just polished off a big dinner roll and is ready to hit the streets.

"The chicken soup was good," he says. "It's thick and nutritious, and it really fills you up. I've got another cup right here that I'm gonna eat a little later on."

The 66-year-old man in the faded blue baseball cap with the raised stitched words, "Jesus is my boss," has been homeless since 2000. He lost his job as a security guard at nearby Los Angeles Trade Tech and shortly thereafter most of his immediate family died, too. With his safety nets gone, he started coming to the center at 1835 South Hope Street for a hot breakfast after noticing the line outside.

And now Johnson is hooked. "I come here about every week, twice a week, 'cause I can't resist this," he explains with a chuckle, taking a final sip of soup. "It fits the bill. But I've also gotten tested for AIDS and my blood pressure checked here, 'cause I have high blood pressure. I catch the bus from downtown where I live in a shelter on Broadway.

"The meals and services have helped me out a lot, a whole lot," he points out. "I can't find a steady job, and the rents at apartments are high. Motels are $65 a night. That's awful. But the priest here gives you a lot of encouragement. I talk to him, and he's easy to get along with. He likes people."

Father Robert Pfisterer does like talking to the homeless and working poor families who show up regularly at St. Francis Center. In fact, the 84-year-old retired Franciscan priest in the traditional brown habit quips, "I may enjoy it more than they do," interrupting his conversation with two men at a nearby table.

The retired theology professor, theologian and pastor says the destitute men are always telling him how they can't find work or an affordable place to stay in Los Angeles. On Friday mornings he uses his Spanish-language skills to visit with senior citizens, mostly women who come to the center for groceries for their struggling families and also to socialize. And twice a month he celebrates Mass.

Father Pfisterer is glad to continue a Franciscan presence at the center, which was founded in 1972 by Father Hugh Noonan, who he knew. "This is the work of the Church, and we Franciscans have always gravitated towards the poor," he notes.

"If Francis was alive today, he'd probably be out in the street with these men. The challenge is to try to know how to live Francis' ideals and his spirit today in this 21st century culture. I don't think necessarily we have to live it literally, but it's very difficult to know just what to do."

After a moment, he adds, "I'm sure, though, that the people here have the Franciscan spirit. They're living it. I knew Hugh Noonan well and I know he would be pleased."

L.A.'s blighted backwater
When it comes to serving the poor, the St. Francis Center is in the minority of local service providers who address the needs of two different populations - the homeless as well as low-income, mostly immigrant Hispanic families. Both groups have long been attracted to downtown's often-forgotten, blighted backwater neighborhoods of South Park and the Garment District. So far this year, some 42,000 breakfast meals have been offered to homeless men and women, while 12,406 families, or a total of 53,483 individuals, have received groceries. Bag lunches are also handed out to the homeless during the week.

Juggling the two groups is no small feat for the paid staff of eight workers, who rely heavily on an army of volunteers.

Metal serving carts on wheels form a breakfast line from 7:45 to 9 a.m. on this recent Tuesday. Then it's a race against the clock to convert the area to a mini-supermarket with different food stations by 11 o'clock for low-income families. The families are from about 25 aging apartment buildings in the impoverished community southwest of downtown. The homeless also come from the not-yet-gentrified gritty area or drift in from L.A.'s infamous skid row.

Youth have access to an after-school computer room, with Venice Arts offering an on-site program in digital photography. In the summer, more than 100 boys and girls attend one-week, out-of-the-inner-city vacations at Camp Maristella in Wrightwood and a YMCA camp in Big Bear.

Every Friday morning there's a social and food program specially designed for seniors. In addition, a monthly mobile clinic from Clinica Monsenor Oscar A. Romero provides primary health care to area residents, including HIV, blood pressure and other medical testing.

The center also puts on community forums addressing family, educational and other issues from time to time.

Business is booming
A much-maligned study done last January reportedly found the Los Angeles City-County homeless population had dropped 38 percent, from 68,808 in 2007 to 42,694 in 2008. Yet business is, sadly, still booming at the St. Francis Center. Two years ago when Gerard Gumbleton became executive director, serving 60 breakfasts was considered a big day. Now 175 is seen as nothing special, with numbers rising to 275 on occasion.

The number of families relying on the center's food pantry has also risen drastically. In 1970, when families could only come once a month for staples, the center was serving 20 to 30 families a day. Today, when they can come every week for food, the average has jumped to 80, and some days rising as high as 150. The net result: 300 to 500 families are now getting free groceries a week.

"Our ministry is doubling every year," says Gumbleton, a retired psychologist and former Franciscan religious, "and this year by July we had equaled what we did last year in family services. We're seeing 30 percent new people who are recently homeless, and it's building."

Ironically, the increase of people receiving emergency day-to-day help has brought about a cut in some services and other programs. Hot meal weekday breakfast periods have been halved from four to two. The popular weekly "hygiene Wednesday" with showers, along with new socks and underwear for homeless men and women, had to be eliminated entirely. And the after-school tutoring program for kindergarten to high school students was reduced to a computer lab period for older kids.

"We've being pushed very definitely by the need, and we're responding to the need as best we can," Gumbleton says. "We're responding to people's immediate needs, and with the economic downturn that is taking everything we've got. But we have dreams where we want to go.

"Our big dream is we need another building. Because what we want to do is put the homeless entirely in this building and put the families in another building, hopefully on the next street so that we can go back and forth. We could do respite care for the homeless during the day then and also do more with children. But we need separate buildings."

Another dream that the executive director believes will happen soon is to bring in a badly needed medical clinic once a week for the homeless. A more distant hope is to start a case management component to help men and women get off of the street entirely.

"But, of course, all of this adds up to money," says Gumbleton with a knowing half-smile, "so we've got to find some big donors and capital funders."

Food for families
A little after 11 a.m., the front room has been miraculously transformed into a cozy corner neighborhood grocery store. Young moms pushing strollers with toddlers in tow plus anxious dads trying to juggle three or four plastic bags slowly make their way clockwise around the impromptu food court. They stop at stations for canned goods, loaves of bread, frozen chickens and hams, and, finally, open cardboard boxes of apples, pears, peppers and cantaloupes before saying, "bye, gracias" and going out the tinted glass door.

Theresa Sanchez has seven-month-old Carla in a backpack and almost-three-year-old Daisy by a free hand. The young mother from Guatemala comes to the St. Francis Center two or three times a month for bread, rice, canned goods and fresh vegetables and fruit. If she is lucky, there's also formula and Gerber baby food for Carla. But not today.

"It helps a lot to get my family through the month," she says through an interpreter. "If it wasn't here, I don't know what I would do because I do not work and my husband is just a day laborer. Sometimes we have run out of food because he does not have steady work. So this really helps us to survive."

Maribel Ramos, who wears a Franciscan wood cross around her neck, stands in the middle of all this activity, keeping an eye out for glitches and slowdowns. She answers questions from the grocery shoppers and restocks food stations. The 28-year-old former Navy yeoman started volunteering at the center a few years ago before becoming program coordinator and, then, program director.

"As far as food goes, we haven't had any significant drop. The food is still coming in," Ramos says. "We've been really lucky. We just started picking up from the produce market downtown. We've gotten really connected with Sara Lee, so we get all our bread from them.

"But the thing is," points out the Cal State L.A. graduate, "we're still running out because more people are coming. A lot more people. The huge spike to over 100 families a day happened about this time last year. That's when we hit over 1,000 families a month, and our numbers have just steadily increased. Last month was the biggest month we've ever had - 1,500 came in. Our average last year was probably 700."

New clients often tell her they've lost their blue-collar jobs, exhausted what savings they had and simply need food.

"When I first came here a few years ago, there were a lot of families, but now there's a lot of single people, too," Ramos reports. "A lot of single males in their late 20s and 30s are coming, and that's a major change for us. The refrigerator stays empty now. Before, it used to always be full."

Photo story class
By two o'clock, the food stations are long gone from the front room. It's quiet enough to hear a couple homeless men talking to each other out on the cracked, stained sidewalk. A teenage boy, hair '60s-style over his ears, wanders in wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with "Ramones" printed on the front. He makes his way to a back room and sits down at a wide-screen Mac computer.

Mario Jimenez, 14, explains that he just came from the Orthopedic Medical Magnate High School, where he's a freshman. He wants to be a doctor. But today he's pursuing his photo hobby, getting an early jump on his digital photography class at St. Francis Center.

He really likes the two teachers from Venice Arts. They've showed him how to control the camera, making the background of a picture blur so the subject pops out. And he's well into the class project of telling about his Mexican culture through photos. He's focusing on telling the story of the annual festival from the town where his parents come from in the state of Moreles, an hour away from Mexico City.

"Yeah, I've learned a lot about how to control the image and tell the story behind the picture," says Mario. "The pictures have to explain something. Like when I take a picture of my parents, it has to say something. Right now we're still learning, but Donald and Tiffany are really great teachers. So I'm glad they have this class. I really like coming here."

The same sentiment was expressed throughout the day by homeless men and women, struggling immigrant parents and others who came to the St. Francis Center on Hope Street.

St. Francis Center is located at 1835 South Hope Street; Los Angeles, CA 90015. On the web: www.sfcla.org. Phone: (213) 747-5347.