ATLANTA--The St. Vincent de Paul Society (SVDP) is starting a new program offering temporary shelter in the Chamblee-Doraville area for newly arriving homeless men who need help in becoming independent, productive individuals.

The project, begun in April 1996, met with some early difficulties. A church offered a site for the shelter, then withdrew it just a couple of weeks before the scheduled opening. Although the Society made several calls and engaged the services of a realtor, it was impossible to find a site to offer shelter to single men during the 1996-97 winter.

In September, the Society's shelter committee met with ministers from various churches in the Doraville-Chamblee area. From that meeting came another offer for a possible site for the shelter, but after the project was presented to the church by members of the SVDP shelter committee, it was turned down.

The shelter committee members then met with the staff of Our Lady of the Americas Mission and the Latin American Association and decided to pursue two paths leading to the goal of providing non-traditional shelter programs for men.

One path is to enlist volunteer host families to take in newly arriving homeless men seeking jobs. Lynnette Rodriquez, director of family services for the Latin American Association, said her organization has a list of families willing to take in homeless men.

The men who are candidates to live as guests in the host families' homes will be screened twice, once by the organization that first encounters them and then by the St. Vincent de Paul Society shelter coordinator.

A guest must be seeking a job and need a place to stay only until he can either afford an apartment or share an apartment with others. St. Vincent de Paul will then help the host family by providing help with a month's lodging.

A second approach involves providing an apartment that men may share, again for no more than a month. The Society shelter committee will interview the men and choose a leader who will be responsible for the operation of the apartment and live rent free as long as he agrees to take in new roommates on the program the next month.

Persons interested in filling the paid position of shelter coordinator should fax resumes to the St. Vincent de Paul Society at (404) 874-7176. Families interested in becoming a host family should call Sheila Bissonnette, executive director of the Society, at (404) 874-7140.