Anne Douglas could have celebrated her birthday at home in Beverly Hills with her husband, actor Kirk Douglas.
Instead, she sat behind a silver-and-pink birthday cake Wednesday as women lined up, weeping, to embrace and thank her for starting the Los Angeles Mission's Anne Douglas Center for Women — one of skid row's first homeless shelters for women.
"When I first encountered the women at this homeless shelter it was heartbreaking, and I was determined to make it better," said Douglas, who has had a birthday party at the center every year since launching it in 1992.
In her living room earlier this week, Douglas said her husband, the only son of illiterate Russian Jews, had little to eat as a child.
"Or should I say he had nothing," she recalled. "He stood in line for homeless people. By the time the line came to him there was no more food."
"What discourages me is all these real estate people that are building beautiful lofts and nice small apartments in that area.... That reduces the space for expanding buildings that can house these men and women in the streets, or in the cars or in cardboard," Douglas said. "The homeless men and women are used to that area, and it should be for them instead of building better facilities for middle class and even higher."
Douglas suggested Mayor Eric Garcetti turn to the private sector for money to build homeless housing.
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