Governor Pete Wilson's recent announcement that there would be no funding this winter for shelters in the state's National Guard Armories is sending shivers down the spines of homeless people and their advocates. El Niño promises the worst storms of decades. PNS commentator Peter Marin has written about homeless issues for Harper's and other national publications.

SANTA BARBARA -- Almost unnoticed amid the swarm of predictions that El Niño will bring ferocious storms and record rainfall to California this winter comes Governor Pete Wilson's announcement that the state will no longer pay to keep National Guard Armories open.

Armory buildings, primitive as they are, have been shelters of last resort for the homeless in many California communities. Here in my home town, I work with an organization of homeless people and their advocates to run the winter shelter at the armory. Even in balmy southern California, cold or rainy nights drive more than 200 men and women in out of the elements to sleep on cots or the floor.

During the winter, the nurse who worked with us regularly saw cases of tuberculosis, pneumonia, pleurisy, aggravated asthma and a host of other bronchial conditions. We also saw infected and gangrenous wounds, massive staph infections and any number of other problems requiring immediate attention -- as well as AIDS in one stage or another.

It is hard to imagine how men and women suffering from these conditions will do during the winter season. Yet that is what the governor proposes.

There are certainly no alternatives for some. Last week, a woman was murdered in the brush alongside the freeway that passes through Santa Barbara. I called round to our local private shelters to see what help she might have been able to find.

The Salvation Army has 34 beds available, nine of them set aside for women -- but on any given night these are occupied by "residents," women who are there for an extended stay. They are not available to newcomers.

Transition House caters mainly to families, but sets aside six beds for single women and six for single men. These, too, are almost all occupied by residents trying to put their lives back together.

There is also a local Rescue Mission which is dedicated to saving souls -- it has 85 beds for men, but clients must enroll in strict religious rehabilitation programs if they want to stay longer than 10 days. The same rules apply to the few women's beds, when they become available. In short, in a town of more than 200,000 people, we have about 15 beds for homeless women and 31 for homeless men (who need shelter for more than ten days). And every one of these is likely to be occupied. To make matters even more critical, cheap lodging has just about disappeared. The few downtown hotels that once rented inexpensive rooms by the week or month are being upgraded for tourists and now charge at least $50 a night. The lone skid row hotel allows its residents, who subsist on social security or county relief, to double or triple up -- but word on the street is that many of them are alcoholics or drug users and women, in particular, stay away as it is too dangerous.

To add salt to the governor's announcement, it is now a crime for a homeless person to lie down -- let alone go to sleep -- on public property within city limits. Indeed, no sleeping and no camping ordinances here, and in innumerable other California cities, forbid putting anything between one's body and the ground, let alone erecting something as a shelter from the weather. Boxes, tarps, tents, are not allowed. And we also have laws making it a crime to sleep in cars, trucks or campers.

All this adds up to a possible emergency of the first order for homeless people facing the winter of 1997 in California. Just hearing the words "El Niño" now is enough to make me shiver.