HUNTINGTON BEACH : Work Begins on Shelter for Teens

Renovations began Thursday on an 80-year-old house that will become the home of the Huntington Youth Shelter, planned to be the county’s largest temporary housing facility for homeless teens.

The 18-bed shelter, expected to open early next year, will offer drug and alcohol rehabilitation, agency referrals, counseling and other services to runaway youths 11 to 17.

Residents will stay at the center free of charge for an average of two weeks, getting a place to sleep, regular meals and guidance until they can be returned to their families or a foster home. An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 teen-agers now live on the streets of Orange County, said Bob Albertson, chairman of HomeAid, a nonprofit arm of the Building Industry Assn., which is assisting the project.

A professional staff of at least four directors and counselors will run the center.

In addition to the shelter, an outreach center for the facility will open later this year at 204 5th St. in downtown Huntington Beach, in a building that will also house a police substation.

The shelter, being built on a hill overlooking Huntington Central Library on Talbert Avenue, was founded by Irene Briggs, a county Social Services Agency supervisor, and Carol Kanode, a high school nurse and member of the Ocean View School District Board of Trustees.

Kanode said Thursday she became convinced that a shelter was needed because “working as a school nurse, I would come across kids that we just couldn’t place.”

She added that one student prompted her to launch the project. The girl had been living with neighbors before taking to the streets, surviving by becoming a prostitute and selling drugs, Kanode said.

When the girl returned to school after two months and related her story to Kanode, the nurse referred her to a child-protection agency. “I remember saying, ‘This is enough,’ ” Kanode said. “I said I wanted to start a youth shelter, and (Briggs) said she’d help.”

The city donated the 1910-era Brooks House, named for the family that originally owned it, for the shelter project.