Poor and unreliable data collection by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority makes it “nearly impossible” for unhoused people and the city to know how many interim beds are available and how many are being used at any given time, according to a new city audit.
Despite having a software-based reservation system for shelter bed availability, LAHSA’s system is so unreliable that the agency monitors bed availability using phone calls and daily emails, the audit found.
The homeless services agency also failed to follow up with interim housing providers on their point-in-time sheltered homeless count data, despite indications of data quality issues. Additionally, many shelters recently reported low bed use rates, which may suggest that the number of unhoused people in shelters is being undercounted and that available beds are not being used.
The new audit also found that LAHSA’s Find-a-Shelter app had inaccurate data and did not attract large participation by providers, which limited its function.
At a news conference Wednesday, Sergio Perez, chief of accountability and oversight with the city controller’s office, said the city and its homeless community need a system as reliable as ride-hailing apps that enable people to see available vehicles in real time and where they are.
“That’s what we need to meet the ongoing crisis on our streets today, to meet the real human need of our unhoused neighbors,” Perez said. “It is what we lack.”
Perez said the data system deficiencies raise concerns about L.A.’s attempts to address the homelessness crisis with urgency and calls into question the validity of the city’s efforts not to criminalize poverty.
“If we can’t track interim shelter beds in a timely manner … then we run the risk, on a day-to-day basis, of violating the Constitution, which prohibits governments like the city of Los Angeles from punishing those who live on our streets when they have no other option. It could be that this is happening in Los Angeles as we speak,” he said.
City Controller Kenneth Mejia said that LAHSA’s dysfunctional system “is not only insufficient for addressing the wide problem of L.A.’s homelessness emergency, but in fact it proved to be fully deficient last winter, when we had severe winter weather.”
According to the report, the homelessness agency contracted with 211 L.A. last winter to respond to requests through the winter shelter hotline and provide referrals to shelters. When 211 staff realized that LAHSA’s bed reservation system was inaccurate, telephone operators were forced to call shelters to verify bed occupancy before making referrals. The process increased wait times for callers and for 211 L.A. to respond to them.
Call-line staff told auditors that they received more than 160,000 shelter-related calls from people for the winter shelter program, but were only able to answer just over 50%.
In a statement released with the report, Mejia said it is crucial that the city maximize use of its “extremely limited amount of interim housing beds” and that providers know when beds are available.
In the audit, Mejia touted Mayor Karen Bass’ move last year to declare the homelessness crisis a state of emergency, but pointed to the inadequacy of some resources available to properly address it: Only 16,100 interim housing beds are available for the estimated 46,260 people in the city experiencing sheltered or unsheltered homelessness, according to LAHSA’s 2023 homeless count.
“[T]he woefully inadequate amount of both interim and permanent housing resources, as well as the antiquated and inefficient methods of data collection and housing referral processes, significantly inhibit efforts by the city to respond to the crisis with the urgency that it requires,” he said.
In a statement to The Times, LAHSA said the audit comes as the agency is working to enhance its data practices and improve the accuracy of its bed availability information.
The new bed-availability system in the works will include detailed tracking of beds, units, sites and buildings; current occupancy rates; real-time unit and bed availability; and information for service providers about all the programs in a building, among other things. The system will be fully implemented by Dec. 31, 2024.
LAHSA added that it is developing a new client portal that will improve communication tools. People seeking services will be able to see a list of all shelters and access centers; view upcoming appointments; direct-message case managers and get alerts to help them find shelter during emergencies or severe weather events.
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“Data collection and dissemination are at the core of LAHSA’s purpose, and we are making significant improvements so we can offer the information that maximizes our interim housing system and move into permanent housing faster,” the agency said.
The city controller’s office recommended that LAHSA, in collaboration with the city, redesign a shelter bed availability system that makes it easier to facilitate referrals to its shelters. It also suggested that it craft and execute a plan to “monitor, evaluate, and enforce” requirements for shelter program operators to report bed attendance and availability data completely, accurately and in a timely manner.
Lastly, the office advised the agency to require operators participating in the annual homeless count that report bed use rates lower than 65% or more than 105% to accurately count the number of unhoused people in their shelter and explain bed use rates.
Along with the audit, the city controller’s office also launched an interim housing bed availability map. Officials said they hope it serves as an example for LAHSA if it follows their recommendations.
“Right now we are trying to figure out what exactly happened during the shooting, the information we have is kind of conflicting,” Las Vegas Metro Police Department spokesperson Jason Johansson said at a news conference.
The police did not disclose additional information about why they were only searching for one suspect.
A police commander initially said two were killed, but Johansson later said at a briefing that one man in his 50s was pronounced dead and another was in critical condition, while three others were in stable condition.
Police said all five victims were homeless. The attacks occurred a little after 5:30 p.m. local time in an “unhoused encampment” at the intersection of Sandhill Road and Charleston Boulevard near U.S. Highway 95 in East Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to CBS News. Police said the shooting occurred in an “unhoused encampment.”
Medical teams transported the five men to the UMC Trauma Center, where one victim was pronounced dead.
The shootings came on the same day Los Angeles officials announced they believed a serial killer was responsible for the killings of three homeless men in the city.
CBS Los Angeles reported that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Friday activated its winter shelter program in an attempt to provide additional safety for unhoused individuals in response to the three separate fatal shootings.
Reporting contributed by Faris Tanyos
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A shooting in Las Vegas Friday evening left two people dead and three others wounded, authorities said.
The shooting occurred a little after 5:30 p.m. local time at an intersection near U.S. Highway 95 in East Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to CBS News.
All five victims were homeless, police disclosed.
The three wounded victims suffered injuries not believed to be life-threatening, police told CBS affiliate KLAS-TV.
The circumstances of the shooting and identities of the victims were not immediately provided. The shooter was still at large as of Friday night, police told KLAS.
This comes after Los Angeles officials reported Friday that they are seeking a suspected serial killer in the shooting deaths of three homeless people earlier this week. The killings occurred on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday.
In a news conference Friday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass urged unhoused people to immediately seek shelter.
“Our message to the unhoused community is clear — do not sleep alone tonight. Seek shelter, seek services, stay together, seek support and we need your help to get the word out,” Bass said.
Faris Tanyos is a news editor for CBSNews.com, where he writes and edits stories and tracks breaking news. He previously worked as a digital news producer at several local news stations up and down the West Coast.
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Billed as the “The Great Red State vs. Blue State Debate,” the event moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity averaged 4.75 million viewers, according to Nielsen data.
The number was more than double the November average for “Hannity,” which was 2.3 million viewers, as the debate pulled in people who do not typically watch his nightly diatribes against liberals and the Biden administration. The figure also accounted for 73% of the viewers watching cable news in the 9 p.m time slot.
The event faced stiff competition, up against a close, high-scoring “Thursday Night Football” contest between the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks streaming on Amazon, and the finale of “The Golden Bachelor” on ABC, the most-watched TV program of the night.
The highly anticipated match-up staged in a suburb outside Atlanta was unusual for TV news, with DeSantis, a contender for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, facing off against a sitting governor who has repeatedly stated he is not running for national office.
Newsom, a leading surrogate for the Democratic party, was also entering an arena where the moderator, Hannity, was clearly aligned politically with DeSantis.
Despite the efforts of Hannity to keep order — he pleaded on and off the air with both participants to not talk over each other — the 90-minute event became chaotic at times, making it difficult for viewers to understand either of them.
The questions offered up by the conservative host were mostly built around unfavorable comparisons of California to Florida on issues such as crime, handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, homelessness and gasoline prices, and put Newsom on the defense for much of the evening.
But Newsom entered the showdown with nothing to lose, as he is insistent he will not be Democratic candidate for president in 2024, despite chatter in right-wing circles. He largely used his time to defend the performance of President Biden’s administration while getting exposure in front of a national audience that may not have been familiar with him.
When Hannity served up a question stating emphatically that Biden was in cognitive decline, Newsom shot back that he will “take Joe Biden at 100 versus Ron DeSantis any day of the week at any age.”
DeSantis needed the event to ignite his flagging presidential campaign, as he badly trails former President Trump in polls and has fallen behind former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley in some primary states.
DeSantis used props in his presentation, including a very brown map that depicted the volume of human fecal matter on the streets of San Francisco, where Newsom was once mayor.
Fox News used clips of the debate on its Friday opinion programs, touting it as a win for DeSantis, who up to now has failed to catch fire with the network’s audience.
“This was a victory of conservatism over liberalism,” said Kaleigh McEnany, the former Trump White House press secretary who is now a co-host of the Fox News daytime show “Outnumbered.”
But McEnany said Newsom, whom she described as “sharp,” cannot be written off as a political competitor.
“Watch out for him, because he’s coming if not in ‘24, in ‘28,” she said.
ATLANTA — Along a busy Atlanta residential road, a 68-year-old Vietnam War-era Army veteran has found what he calls a “match made in heaven.”
Harold Tilson Jr. found himself homeless earlier this year but for the past few months has been living in transitional housing run by the nonprofit Veterans Empowerment Organization, or VEO. It provides emergency and permanent housing for dozens of previously homeless military veterans.
“If you’re homeless and you need help, you couldn’t ask for a better place to go because they take care of just about everything,” Tilson said.
It’s part of a years-long effort by government agencies and nonprofits around the country to address homelessness among veterans. Since January 2020, the numbers of homeless veterans have fallen 11% and have gone down 55% over the past 13 years, according to a government count. That’s in sharp contrast with the general homeless population.
Authorities credit the Obama administration’s work to make housing veterans a top priority and more recently the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that boosted the Department of Veteran Affairs’ homeless programs and expanded rental aid. Advocates also point to partnerships between government agencies, nonprofits and corporate foundations.
Last month, the VA gave $1 billion in grants to community nonprofits for the upcoming year to tackle the issue, the most ever, said Jill Albanese, director of clinical operations at the Veterans Health Administration’s Homeless Programs Office.
“This isn’t something that we’re doing on our own: This is really something that we’re doing through partnerships,” Albanese said. “They’re the experts on homelessness in their communities.”
Still, the number of veterans living on the streets is significant. There are more than 33,000 homeless veterans, according to the 2022 Point-in-Time count conducted by the VA and Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.
And much still needs to be done, said Kathryn Monet, CEO of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, calling it a “moving target” — just as people are moving out of homelessness, others become unhoused every day. Affordable housing is key, she said, though communities nationwide have struggled with that.
Along with housing, the VEO offers classes about financial literacy, securing VA benefits and how to get on a path toward employment and housing independence. There’s also a common area for reading and a gym for working out.
“We are proud to say that we are not a shelter. This is a program center, meaning the veteran has to put some skin in the game,” said Tony Kimbrough, a former military intelligence officer and CEO of the nonprofit, which started in 2008 with a single two-bedroom house. “We’re going to put a ton of it in there, but we expect a little bit of back-and-forth.”
Tilson became homeless in February when he was forced out of the triplex he was renting south of Atlanta.
He spent the next month and a half sleeping in the street or on business doorsteps, relying on friends from his church for food or access to a shower. Church members steered him to local nonprofits and he eventually landed at VEO, where he has been living in emergency housing, has taken a five-week financial literacy course and is focused on improving his credit score.
Tilson, who suffered a stroke last year, said he needs a knee replacement and hernia surgery to address the physical toll carrying his belongings took while he was homeless. A VA case manager is helping him get those, and he’s optimistic that in a few months he’ll get to move into his own place, with the help of VEO and another local nonprofit.
His friends from church are thrilled about the help he’s getting, Tilson said, but “nobody can be happier than me.”
In addition to 10 double-occupancy rooms housing veterans like Tilson in emergency shelter, the VEO campus has 41 apartment units where veterans pay a few hundred dollars in rent. VA funding makes up the difference, allowing the nonprofit to reinject the money and expand. Its next project is 20 single-occupancy bedrooms being built this winter.
VEO says it expansion would not be possible, without more than $2.3 million in corporate donations from The Home Depot Foundation.
The Atlanta-based foundation has helped some 50,000 homeless veterans nationwide through its partnership with nonprofits like VEO. It has donated $500 million to veterans causes since 2011, and on Friday announced a commitment to giving an additional $250 million by 2030.
Company employees have also volunteered more than 1.5 million hours in service to veterans, including building or repairing 60,000 houses and facilities for former service members. On Friday, 20 members of “Team Depot” were finishing a weeklong project to build a garden, complete with a water feature, in honor of Veterans Day.
“When we think about the role that corporate foundations can play, it boils down to three things,” said Jennifer A. Taylor, a political science professor at James Madison University and a military spouse who studies philanthropy and veterans issues. “Are you a funder — giving out grants for others to do the work? Are you a doer — taking employees out into the community? Or are you a convener — bringing thought leaders together? Home Depot is doing all of those things.”
Home Depot CEO Ted Decker said the company’s giving philosophy was always housing-centric but was “pretty disparate” before 2011. That’s when then-CEO Frank Blake, realizing that tens of thousands of employees were veterans or spouses of veterans, decided to focus the company’s philanthropy on veteran housing.
“It fit our culture,” Decker said.
Despite the progress that’s been made, there are still tens of thousands of homeless veterans, including nearly 3,500 in the Los Angeles area.
Navy veteran Malcolm Harvey III spent years living on the streets in Southern California, including Los Angeles’ Skid Row. In 2015, a representative from the nonprofit U.S. Vets helped him get a job with the organization. Speaking gigs on behalf of The Home Depot Foundation followed.
Now, Harvey, 62, is married, owns a condo and works as program director at the Long Beach nonprofit People Assisting The Homeless.
“We can’t become numb to this,” Harvey said of the homelessness problem among former service members.
“We made a promise to them when they took that oath and put on that uniform and decided to defend this country,” he said.
“We owe them a debt of gratitude. But we owe them more than that: We owe them action.”
___
Associated Press Writer Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.
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If you are a veteran who is homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness, call the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans at 877-424-3838 for assistance.
Crouching at the entrance of San Francisco City Hall, Jason Jacobs brushed gold paint onto the ornate doorway of the Beaux-Arts building.
“Whether I paint the gates or not, they’re gonna get their breath taken away,” said Jacobs, a San Francisco native who often marvels at the stunning architecture.
Fresh paint. Street cleanings. Homeless sweeps. Colorful art. Workers like Jacobs beautified the city, days before politicians, executives and journalists from around the world descend on San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference. From Saturday to Nov. 17, the international event is expected to bring more than 20,000 people to the city and attract thousands of protesters.
APEC is made up of 21 member economies, including the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and Canada. The members account for nearly 50% of global trade and 40% of the global population, giving the U.S. a big platform to promote policies that advance free and open trade in the Asia-Pacific region.
A highly anticipated meeting between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the summit could also help ease tensions between the two countries.
The stakes are high for the U.S. but also for San Francisco, which is hosting the APEC summit for the first time. It’s the biggest gathering of world leaders in San Francisco since 1945, when representatives from 50 nations signed a charter that established the United Nations.
The global spotlight will shine on a city filled with stark contrasts — home to billion-dollar tech companies and streets lined with homeless encampments.
“You can go to the deepest, darkest parts of the Tenderloin or you can go to the top of the Hyatt Regency,” said Jacobs, a painter at City Hall.
Blocks away from the Moscone Center, where the summit’s main events will be held, Christie Palominos sorted through her belongings. Palominos said she’s trying to figure out what she wants to keep before she moves into permanent housing. Piles of clothing, a shopping cart, bags, coloring books and a variety of objects surround her.
Christie Palominos, 47, sorts through her belongings blocks away from the Moscone Center, where main events for the APEC summit are scheduled to be held.
(Queenie Wong/Los Angeles Times)
Palominos, 47, didn’t know world leaders would be in town, but she said one of her homeless friends has been asked by the same police officer to move multiple times.
“They’re clearing out the homeless people because they don’t want them to see this,” she said.
Grappling with family issues, drug addiction and mental health problems, Palominos said she’s been hopping among San Francisco homeless shelters for more than a year. It’s not easy for homeless people to find a spot in a shelter.
“Usually I stay as long as I can, but it’s kind of hard because there are certain people who pick on you. They think they’re better than you,” said Palominos, who has a bruise under her eye and a bandage wrapped around a bloody finger.
On the streets, Palominos said she’s seen traumatic acts of violence like a shooting and stabbing. Struggling with addiction to crystal meth, Palominos said she’s been clean for five days.
“Walk a day in my shoes,” she said. “I guarantee that some of these rich people who walk around in these high-rises wouldn’t survive.”
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition for Homelessness, said her organization has been hearing about more homeless encampment sweeps ahead of the international conference. With shelters seeing spaces already filling up or limiting openings, Friedenbach said it’s “really frustrating” because the city is just displacing groups of homeless people when they’re moved around. Instead, advocacy groups were hoping for more temporary housing for the homeless during the conference.
“They want to clean up the city’s image and use this conference as a way to draw back tourism,” she said. “These efforts never work because folks don’t have disappearing power. People are out there because there’s not enough housing. There’s not enough shelter.”
In 2022, 7,754 people experienced homelessness in San Francisco. About 43% or 3,357 were staying in shelters, according to city data.
Homelessness has been a contentious issue in San Francisco. In December, a federal judge temporarily blocked the city from clearing certain homeless encampments without offering shelter. The court order stemmed from a 2022 lawsuit the Coalition on Homelessness filed against San Francisco, alleging that city workers are trying to drive homeless people out of town and are seizing and destroying their property “with the express purpose of removing visible signs of homelessness from San Francisco’s street.” The city is still allowed to clear streets for emergencies, health and safety reasons and to temporarily clean.
Emily Cohen, deputy director for communications and legislative affairs at the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said in an email the city isn’t expanding shelter capacity just for the summit but did set aside funding to add roughly 300 shelter beds as winter approaches.
The Interfaith Winter Shelter, which has a site at Natoma and 8th streets, is scheduled to be open during the summit and the city is expanding shelter capacity at three adult congregate shelters, she said.
“When our community hosts events, like APEC, we want to put our best foot forward,” she said.
That hasn’t stopped Republicans from holding up San Francisco as an example for what happens when Democratic politicians are in charge. In June, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, shot a campaign ad that portrayed San Francisco as city that has “collapsed because of leftist policies.”
“We came in here, and we saw people defecating on the street,” said DeSantis, standing next to a graffiti-sprayed buildings. “We saw people using heroin. We saw people smoking crack cocaine, and you look around, the city is not vibrant anymore. It’s really collapsed because of leftist policies.”
The city has been struggling to recover from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, when San Francisco grappled with office and business closures partly due to government-mandated shutdowns that affected a vibrant downtown filled with retailers, restaurants and bars.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a press conference Thursday that the tattered urban images people see on social media about San Francisco capture a snapshot in time in certain neighborhoods, ignoring the rest of the picturesque city.
“I see a lot of beauty all over San Francisco…,” she said. “My hope is that people will have the opportunity to experience San Francisco for themselves and tell the whole story.”
The skyline of downtown San Francisco with the Golden Gate bridge.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
Later in the day, Breed and Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a new plant nursery and education center in the Soma neighborhood.
Newsom, who met China’s president last month, said before a big event like the APEC summit everything’s got to “get dialed up” just like when people clean up their house before they have visitors.
“This place is beloved and its best days are in front of it, not behind it,” he said. “And all those doomsdayers. All those negative folks. You know what? They haven’t offered anything.”
Still, business closings have also heightened fears about the future of downtown San Francisco. Major retailers including Nordstrom, T-Mobile, Whole Foods and Anthropologie have left amid concerns about less foot traffic, sluggish sales and safety. The pandemic also fueled more online shopping, which meant people didn’t feel the need to visit stores as often. Still, businesses such as Ikea, are also opening new stores in San Francisco and artificial-intelligence startups have been flocking to the city.
San Francisco Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Rodney Fong said cities are re-imagining what their urban centers feel like as technology changes the way people work. With APEC expected to generate $53 million for the local economy, according to the San Francisco Travel Assn., businesses throughout the city also have an opportunity to rope in more sales.
“This is a really important moment for San Francisco and we’re really looking forward to showcasing all the innovations,” Fong said.
Ahead of the conference, the Webster Street pedestrian bridge, which was once light gray, is now freshly painted red in Japantown. Two new decorative crosswalks were being installed in Chinatown and North Beach. The green grime that once covered the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, located near the conference, is gone.
On a sunny day before the summit, workers washed the streets and placed new grass at the Yerba Buena Gardens because of heavy use over the summer. A green fence, scheduled to be removed Tuesday, wrapped around the park with a sign that read “Improvements in Progress.”
At the Moscone Center, some of the city’s most picturesque spots are on signs about the event. The Palace of Fine Arts. City Hall. The Golden Gate Bridge, next to blue water and a sandy beach. “APEC is going to be EPIC,” one sign reads.
Longtime San Francisco natives like Jacobs can’t envision living anywhere else.
LOS ANGELES — As more and more of her friends and neighbors found themselves priced out of rental units in Venice Beach, Judy Branfman began photographing the dozens of houses, bungalows and apartments being sold, renovated and then relisted at double or triple the cost.
Branfman started with only the vague idea that she should be documenting the growing problem of evictions and housing unaffordability in her beloved west Los Angeles neighborhood. The writer and activist lamented that Venice, where tourists flock to the famous boardwalk and Muscle Beach, has been slowly shedding its historically bohemian vibe and becoming another enclave for the wealthy.
Word spread about her photo project and earlier this year Branfman started hosting community meetings where residents could share their experiences with evictions that forced them to move out of the area and, in some cases, into homelessness. Some people recited poems. Others expressed themselves through paintings. And the more academically-minded among them began compiling housing and eviction statistics.
Branfman’s initial notion to just shoot a few photos has culminated in an unlikely but ambitious art-meets-data exhibit titled “Where Has All The (affordable) Housing Gone?” It’s on display through Saturday at Venice’s venerable Beyond Baroque gallery, a hub for cultural events and activism dating back to the late 1960s.
“The idea was to illustrate the problem, to show what we’ve lost. You know, make it visual so people would walk in and be a little shocked, and want to do something about it,” Branfman said at the gallery this week.
Venice became a center of the Los Angeles homelessness crisis during the coronavirus pandemic, when camps sprouted up in residential neighborhoods and along the sands. The nation’s second-largest city also has 46,000 residents who are homeless among the overall population of 4 million people, according to the most recent survey.
The area was a flashpoint because of its visibility as a city landmark — the boardwalk attracts an estimated 10 million visitors per year. A certain edginess always coexisted with a live-and-let-live ethos in the artsy beach community, but the widening of the wealth gap has become increasingly apparent as tech firms moved in and sleek modern homes went up.
As building owners seek to bring in more deep-pocketed renters, longtime residents find themselves dealing with rent increases that overwhelm their finances. Some 80% of low-income Los Angeles renters pay over half their income toward housing costs, according to data released this week by the nonprofit Angeleno Project.
While Los Angeles is on track to meet certain goals for new housing set out by recent ballot measures, “supply is severely behind demand,” the report found.
“Some 3,500 housing units are at high or very high risk of losing their affordability terms, threatening to push more families into homelessness,” said the report. “A significant dip in affordable housing that started in 2022 post-COVID-19 continues to trend downward.”
Upon entering Branfman’s exhibit, visitors are confronted by her photos on an enormous and detailed map depicting, block by block, many of the nearly 1,500 rent-controlled units she says have disappeared from the housing market in Venice over two decades. In many instances, the buildings were sold to large corporations that are increasingly buying up properties and jacking up rents.
The map, and much of the exhibit, pins some of the blame for the problem on the Ellis Act, a 1985 California law that gave landlords broad authority to evict tenants in rent-controlled buildings for redevelopment, and then later list the same units at market rates. Branfman said she was “Ellis Acted” when she was evicted from a Venice apartment in 2003.
“Too many tenants are afraid to fight back. And most don’t know what their rights are under the law,” she said. And even when tenants do file complaints against landlords, she said, the city very rarely prosecutes the claims.
On the wall opposite the map is a free-verse poem made up of quotes about why many renters are were afraid to take on landlords, such as: “I don’t want any trouble” and “My neighbors aren’t documented and they’re afraid if they say anything they’ll be targeted.”
Upstairs there are paintings and mixed-media figurines that the artist Sumaya Evans calls “dignity dolls.” Evans, who was homeless in Venice for years before recently finding housing, said creating art gave her a sense of self-worth when she was living on the streets.
“You get used to being ignored as a homeless woman. People are blind to you when you’re outside,” she said. “And so being a part of of a project like this, being a part of a community, is just so healing.”
Branfman and other housing activists are hopeful that change could come with measure that’s qualified for the 2024 ballot. The initiative that will go before voters would expand local control by overturning a 28-year-old law that prohibits rent control on single-family homes, condos and rental units that were built after 1995.
After the exhibit closes Saturday, Branfman hopes to find a home for some of the installations at a library or university. Most of it will live virtually on its own Instagram page.
“The rest of it will be on display in my apartment,” she laughs.
LOS ANGELES — As more and more of her friends and neighbors found themselves priced out of rental units in Venice Beach, Judy Branfman began photographing the dozens of houses, bungalows and apartments being sold, renovated and then relisted at double or triple the cost.
Branfman started with only the vague idea that she should be documenting the growing problem of evictions and housing unaffordability in her beloved west Los Angeles neighborhood. The writer and activist lamented that Venice, where tourists flock to the famous boardwalk and Muscle Beach, has been slowly shedding its historically bohemian vibe and becoming another enclave for the wealthy.
Word spread about her photo project and earlier this year Branfman started hosting community meetings where residents could share their experiences with evictions that forced them to move out of the area and, in some cases, into homelessness. Some people recited poems. Others expressed themselves through paintings. And the more academically-minded among them began compiling housing and eviction statistics.
Branfman’s initial notion to just shoot a few photos has culminated in an unlikely but ambitious art-meets-data exhibit titled “Where Has All The (affordable) Housing Gone?” It’s on display through Saturday at Venice’s venerable Beyond Baroque gallery, a hub for cultural events and activism dating back to the late 1960s.
“The idea was to illustrate the problem, to show what we’ve lost. You know, make it visual so people would walk in and be a little shocked, and want to do something about it,” Branfman said at the gallery this week.
Venice became a center of the Los Angeles homelessness crisis during the coronavirus pandemic, when camps sprouted up in residential neighborhoods and along the sands. The nation’s second-largest city also has 46,000 residents who are homeless among the overall population of 4 million people, according to the most recent survey.
The area was a flashpoint because of its visibility as a city landmark — the boardwalk attracts an estimated 10 million visitors per year. A certain edginess always coexisted with a live-and-let-live ethos in the artsy beach community, but the widening of the wealth gap has become increasingly apparent as tech firms moved in and sleek modern homes went up.
As building owners seek to bring in more deep-pocketed renters, longtime residents find themselves dealing with rent increases that overwhelm their finances. Some 80% of low-income Los Angeles renters pay over half their income toward housing costs, according to data released this week by the nonprofit Angeleno Project.
While Los Angeles is on track to meet certain goals for new housing set out by recent ballot measures, “supply is severely behind demand,” the report found.
“Some 3,500 housing units are at high or very high risk of losing their affordability terms, threatening to push more families into homelessness,” said the report. “A significant dip in affordable housing that started in 2022 post-COVID-19 continues to trend downward.”
Upon entering Branfman’s exhibit, visitors are confronted by her photos on an enormous and detailed map depicting, block by block, many of the nearly 1,500 rent-controlled units she says have disappeared from the housing market in Venice over two decades. In many instances, the buildings were sold to large corporations that are increasingly buying up properties and jacking up rents.
The map, and much of the exhibit, pins some of the blame for the problem on the Ellis Act, a 1985 California law that gave landlords broad authority to evict tenants in rent-controlled buildings for redevelopment, and then later list the same units at market rates. Branfman said she was “Ellis Acted” when she was evicted from a Venice apartment in 2003.
“Too many tenants are afraid to fight back. And most don’t know what their rights are under the law,” she said. And even when tenants do file complaints against landlords, she said, the city very rarely prosecutes the claims.
On the wall opposite the map is a free-verse poem made up of quotes about why many renters are were afraid to take on landlords, such as: “I don’t want any trouble” and “My neighbors aren’t documented and they’re afraid if they say anything they’ll be targeted.”
Upstairs there are paintings and mixed-media figurines that the artist Sumaya Evans calls “dignity dolls.” Evans, who was homeless in Venice for years before recently finding housing, said creating art gave her a sense of self-worth when she was living on the streets.
“You get used to being ignored as a homeless woman. People are blind to you when you’re outside,” she said. “And so being a part of of a project like this, being a part of a community, is just so healing.”
Branfman and other housing activists are hopeful that change could come with measure that’s qualified for the 2024 ballot. The initiative that will go before voters would expand local control by overturning a 28-year-old law that prohibits rent control on single-family homes, condos and rental units that were built after 1995.
After the exhibit closes Saturday, Branfman hopes to find a home for some of the installations at a library or university. Most of it will live virtually on its own Instagram page.
“The rest of it will be on display in my apartment,” she laughs.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — An abandoned office park in Sacramento will be the site of the first group of 1,200 tiny homes to be built in four cities to address California’s homelessness crisis, the governor’s office announced Wednesday after being criticized for the project experiencing multiple delays.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is under pressure to make good on his promise to show he’s tackling the issue. In March, the Democratic governor announced a plan to gift several California cities hundreds of tiny homes by the fall to create space to help clear homeless encampments that have sprung up across the state’s major cities. The $30 million project would create homes, some as small as 120 square feet (11 square meters), that can be assembled in 90 minutes and cost a fraction of what it takes to build permanent housing.
More than 171,000 homeless people live in California, making up about 30% of the nation’s homeless population. The state has spent roughly $30 billion in the last few years to help them, with mixed results.
Under Newsom’s plan, Sacramento will receive 350 homes, Los Angeles will get 500, San Jose will get 200 and San Diego will get 150. But seven months after the announcement, those homes haven’t been built, and the state has yet to award any contracts for builders, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Newsom’s administration said the state is “moving with unprecedented rate” on the project and will finalize the contracts this month, with plans to break ground at the Sacramento location before the end of the year. Officials also pointed to a new law signed by Newsom in July to streamline construction of tiny homes.
“When it comes to projects like this, it’s just not overnight,” Hafsa Kaka, a senior advisor to Newsom, said at a news conference Wednesday. “There’s no holdup. We’ve been continuing the momentum.”
On Wednesday, city leaders said 175 tiny homes will be placed at the 13-acre vacant office park, part of which will eventually be built into a medical campus with treatment beds, a health center and other services run by WellSpace Health, a nonprofit health system.
“This is going to be a whole person approach,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said Wednesday. “It’s going to help thousands of people who are going to benefit because of the comprehensive nature of the approach here.”
Sacramento and the state have also agreed to place the other 175 tiny homes at the California state fairgrounds.
San Jose this month has secured a 7.2-acre lot owned by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority for its 200 homes. Newsom’s administration on Wednesday didn’t say when it would start on the projects in Los Angeles and San Diego.
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County and city will spend billions of dollars to provide more housing and support services for homeless people under a lawsuit settlement approved Thursday by a federal judge.
The county ends more than two years of court battles over LA’s response to the homelessness crisis by agreeing to provide an additional 3,000 beds by the end of 2026 for people with mental health and drug abuse issues.
It was the last piece in a series of commitments that were hammered out after a lawsuit was brought in 2020 by the LA Alliance for Human Rights, a coalition that includes businesses, residents, landlords, homeless people and others who alleged that inaction by both the city and county created a dangerous environment.
“All told, we’re looking at some 25,000 new beds for unhoused people and a total of over $5 billion … just to implement these three agreements,” alliance spokesperson Daniel Conway said.
U.S. District Judge David Carter had rejected earlier settlement proposals offering far fewer beds.
Conway said the final deal was historic and “will stand the test of time” because it includes court enforcement requirements.
It will serve as “a blueprint for other communities looking to address homelessness humanely and comprehensively,” Conway said.
The new agreement sets up a commitment to provide hundreds of new beds each year through 2026 but doesn’t include specifics on funding, although earlier this year the county and city both passed budgets that together include some $1.9 billion to fight homelessness.
California is home to nearly a third of the nation’s homeless population, according to federal data. About two-thirds of California’s homeless population is unsheltered, meaning they live outside, often packed into encampments in major cities and along roadways.
During the court case, the city had contended that the county, which operates the local public health system, was obligated to provide services and housing for people who are homeless or have substance abuse issues but was failing.
Now, both governments will partner in an effort that “stands to help more unhoused Angelenos in the city come inside and receive care,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement.
“It took a long time and a lot of hard work from many people to get to this point, but this is finally an agreement we can be proud of,” county Board of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn said in a statement. “This is an achievement that will mean real care and housing for thousands of people who are struggling with mental illness and addiction.”
LA has one of the nation’s largest unhoused populations. Those living on the streets, in shelters or in vehicles has ballooned in recent years.
A federally required January count estimated that on any given night there were more than 75,500 unhoused people in the county, with well over 46,000 of them in the LA city limits. About a third of them said they had substance abuse issues.
Since 2015, homelessness has increased by 70% in the county and 80% in the city.
Homeless populations, once mainly confined to Skid Row, are now found in nearly all parts of the city. Encampments have cropped up in Hollywood, pricey West Los Angeles and within sight of Los Angeles City Hall.
Bass made dealing with the homelessness crisis a priority in her mayoral campaign. On her first day in office last December, she declared a state of emergency over the issue.
However, a nonprofit group called Fix the City filed a lawsuit Monday against the emergency declaration, calling it a “vast and illegal expansion of mayoral power.”
The group, which has battled the city over its approach to dealing with development issues, contends that Bass’s efforts under the emergency to fast-track construction of affordable housing has circumvented necessary public input and planning review, including eliminating competitive bidding for some projects.
A homeless man who shot and killed another man during a robbery outside a Brooklyn shelter was sentenced to 30 years to life Thursday — after prosecutors flew in a witness from Poland to testify at his trial.
Keith Brannon, 55, was convicted twice at trial of the 2015 murder of Christopher Tennison — but the first time, his verdict was tossed by an appeals court.
The second time around a new witness was brought in to testify — a former shelter resident now living in Poland who found the gun used in the murder.
Brannon confronted the 35-year-old Tennison outside a homeless shelter on Sackman St. near Atlantic Ave. in Brownsville on Aug. 8, 2015 and shot him point-blank in the chest.
Text messages between the two men from before the killing showed Brannon had demanded cash from the victim.
A resident at Brannon’s shelter found the murder weapon under his bed and turned it over to investigators, who found Brannon’s DNA on the firearm, prosecutors said.
That resident didn’t testify at the first trial. He was living in Poland and didn’t have the money or paperwork to make the trip back to the U.S., so investigators with the D.A.’s office and the NYPD got help from federal Homeland Security Investigations officials to get him emergency documentation, prosecutors said.
“This defendant senselessly took the life of another man and, with today’s sentence, has been held responsible for this inexcusable crime,” Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzalez said. “I am grateful to the dedicated prosecutors in my office, and to Homeland Security that assisted in securing a key witness, for ensuring that justice was done in this case.”
Brannon’s initial 2017 conviction was overturned because the judge in the case, Neil Firetog, ruled that it was “only fair” prosecutors could cross-examine Brannon about his criminal record if his lawyers were going to grill the government’s witnesses about their records.
A new jury convicted him of murder, weapon possession and attempted robbery on Sept. 14, and on Thursday, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice John Hecht sentenced him to 30 years to life.
In victim impact statements given to the court, one of Tennison’s sisters described the “unbearable pain” of his loss, while another expressed anger and forgiveness.
“It saddens me and hurts me to my core to know that his life ended far too soon over something so trivial, the sister said. “I’m angry with you, I’m sad about the whole situation and wish he was still here and I didn’t have to write this. But I forgive you! Jesus can and will forgive you!”
On any given night, more than 170,000 people are living on California’s streets or in its shelters. It is the largest homeless population in the country — fueled by a lack of affordable housing and the state’s failure to provide adequate mental health care.
One-in-four has a serious mental illness.
It’s a crisis that’s bred fear in communities, as violent crimes rise. And this past week, Sacramento’s top prosecutor sued California’s capital city for allowing it to quote “collapse into chaos.”
That’s the landscape Gov. Gavin Newsom says he’s trying to change, starting this fall, with a controversial, new plan on track to cost billions.
It’s called CARE court because it brings mental health care into the courtroom. Now judges will order people to get help and counties to provide it under a new law that emphasizes accountability and consequences.
We met with Gov Newsom and found him to be fired up and fed up.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: Change has its enemies. I get it. But one thing you cannot argue for, with all due respect to all the critics out there, is the status quo. You can’t. And in the absence of alternatives, What the hell are we gonna do to address this crisis?
It is a crisis overwhelming cities across the country, but California has been hit the hardest.
And Gov. Gavin Newsom says it is desperation – born out of scenes like this… that drove the idea for CARE Court.
Cecilia Vega: You’ve used words like, “You’re outraged.” “You’re disgusted by what’s happening on the streets.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Cecilia Vega
60 Minutes
Gov. Gavin Newsom: I am. ‘Cause I see what everybody else sees. I try to walk my kids to the park and have a difficult time navigating the sidewalk. It’s a fail-first system, not a care-first system, which means you have to end up in the criminal justice system before finally someone provides support and a bed and a solution. We’ve gotta change that. And that’s what we’re doing.
Here’s how it will work: a person referred to CARE Court for a severe mental illness is evaluated. If they have an untreated psychotic disorder, like schizophrenia, a judge can order a mental health treatment plan including medication, therapy and a place to live.
The governor believes the new civil court system will help thousands get off the streets – and make everyone safer by helping people before they become a danger to themselves or others.
Cecilia Vega: You think CARE Court could be the solution that could save someone’s life?
Gov. Gavin Newsom: I don’t think it. I know it. It’s very familiar what we’re doing, even though it’s novel and new and bold.
Cecilia Vega: Novel, new and bold. So it’s an experiment?
Gov. Gavin Newsom: No. It’s not. When people get their meds, when people get support, we know we can turn people’s lives around. This is imminently solvable
But what if someone ordered by a judge to get help doesn’t think they need it?
They’ll have access to a public defender and *can* refuse treatment… they won’t be sent to jail.
But there is a catch… if someone in CARE Court does refuse — a judge could refer them for conservatorship — an extreme outcome that strips them of rights and forces them to comply with treatment.
Anita: This is where he would go…
Anita Fisher hopes CARE Court will be a lifeline for people like her son, Pharoh Degree, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia while serving in the army 22 years ago. He’s now 45.
Cecilia Vega: Tell me a little bit about Pharoh.
Anita Fisher: Pharoh is the kindest. He– even from a little boy. His report card used to say joy to have in my class. And some of the things that we’ve gone through you couldn’t have paid me to believe.
For nearly two decades, Fisher has worked as a mental health advocate in San Diego, running support groups and classes for hundreds of families when their lives are derailed by a loved one’s mental illness
Anita Fisher: A lotta times he even can get very agitated. And then he starts to self-medicate. Whether it’s alcohol or street drugs and that takes it to a whole different level.
Cecilia Vega: You sometimes feel like your son goes missing in those moments.
Anita Fisher
60 Minutes
Anita Fisher: Yes. We would try to have the conversation with him about, you know, have you stopped your medication? And he said, “Well, they said I don’t need this medication.” I was like, “OK, who is they?” And I know that it’s the voices.
Cecilia Vega: What’s this like f– as a mom, for you?
Anita Fisher: It’s devastating.
Supporters back CARE Court because the new law allows families and others — like law enforcement and first responders — to petition a court to help them get someone into treatment.
Until now, Fisher says there has been little recourse… like last year when her son stopped taking his medication.
For seven months, she called for a psychiatric intervention, but without her son’s consent, she says her attempts were ignored.
Anita Fisher: When I saw him, I had to call his name. He’d be wrapped in blankets.
Pharoh became homeless… and Anita spent days searching for him at local spots near their home.
Cecilia Vega: When you would find Pharoh on these days, what kind of condition was he in?
Anita Fisher: He was just very psychiatrically ill. He would be, “I’m fine.” But, no. He wouldn’t look fine at all.
Cecilia Vega: Your son would be convinced that he was fine mentally, that he didn’t need his meds. How do you convince him otherwise? What has to happen?
Anita Fisher: He ends up arrested. It’s– it’s almost we have to wait for that to happen.
And, last October, he wasarrested for vandalism. In custody, he received medication and enrolled in a treatment program.
Pharoh declined to be interviewed on-camera, but he described to us on the phone how difficult it can be to live with his illness.
Pharoh Degree, on the phone: Constant overthinking, your brain is always racing, your inner voice is always talking. Racing, racing. No peace. Never any solace and peace.
Cecilia Vega: What do you think would have happened to him had he not had that treatment?
Anita Fisher: Every single time I have to start, in my mind, preparing a funeral. I have to get my heart and myself and my family ready, you know, the– will he make it this time? It’s not– it’s not easy.
Skid Row in Los Angeles
60 Minutes
With California voters overwhelmingly ranking homelessness as a top concern, last year, the CARE Act sailed through the state legislature with near-unanimous and bipartisan support.
Assemblymember Jim Cooper: It’s the humane thing to do.
But opponents point to the threat of conservatorship – where people can be locked up and treated without their consent.
And more than 50 advocacy groups condemn CARE Court as a “costly mistake” “likely to do real harm.”
Cecilia Vega: Some of the words that have been used to describe CARE Court: coercive, backwards, harmful. Are any of those fair? You laugh.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: I laugh. I mean– I don’t laugh dismissively. Those are talking points that have been on rewind for decades and decades. And I’m frankly exhausted by them.
Cecilia Vega: Someone could end up in conservatorship. And that is a very big deal. Isn’t CARE Court saying, “Comply or else?”
Gov. Gavin Newsom: We have– we have people end up in conservatorship all the time. And I get why people don’t want to see more of those. But we have that system already.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: And here’s all I ask. Prove us wrong. Don’t assume us wrong. Your compassion is not superior to our compassion.
Cecilia Vega: But that’s a big gamble when you’re talking about conservatorships, people’s lives. Prove us wrong.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: Exact opposite.
Cecilia Vega: Wait and see.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: The gamble is allowing more people to die under our watch. The gamble is more families struggling, suffering. How dare we?
Eve Garrow is a homelessness policy analyst for the ACLU of Southern California.
60 Minutes
Eve Garrow: We see it as a pipeline to conservatorship the greatest deprivation of civil liberties short of the death penalty.
Eve Garrow is a homelessness policy analyst for the ACLU of Southern California.
Cecilia Vega: What are the individual rights that you think someone would be stripped of under CARE Court?
Eve Garrow: The right to determine, for example, what medications go into your body–
Cecilia Vega: There’s no forced medication in CARE Court.
Eve Garrow: There’s no forced medication. But when there’s pressure and coercion you’re more likely to potentially comply with treatment that actually isn’t meeting your needs.
Cecilia Vega: Governor Newsom says that you’re defending the status quo.
Eve Garrow: The administration likes to propose this false dichotomy, that either we force people into treatment, or we let them die on the streets.
Cecilia Vega: You don’t feel like that’s what’s at stake here?
Eve Garrow: I don’t feel like that’s what’s at stake, because obviously there’s a third alternative.
Garrow says that alternative is for the state to provide comprehensive care for all Californians with mental health disabilities.
Cecilia Vega: Is that realistic?
Eve Garrow: Yes. It is. If we invest in those services, instead of investing in a new court system. Of course it is.
Cecilia Vega: A lot of people will hear you, and say, “Eve, clearly the current situation is not working. Aren’t we at the point where we have to try something else?”
Eve Garrow: I agree completely with that. But the something else we need to try is not a civil court system.
We went with Garrow to the notorious Skid Row in Los Angeles, a county where 1-in-8 of the nation’s homeless people live.
For years, on and off, that included Marquesha Babers; a 28-year-old who told us she has several serious mental health conditions including bipolar disorder.
When we met her, she lived in a shelter.
Marquesha Babers has dealt with homelessness. She told 60 Minutes she has several serious mental health conditions, including bipolar disorder.
60 Minutes
Marquesha Babers: I go almost every day to ask if I could speak to a therapist or if I can, you know, get some mental health services or help. And there are really none. Or if you do find one it’s like, “Oh, well, the waiting list is six months before you can actually talk to a therapist,” or–
Cecilia Vega: Six months?
Marquesha Babers: Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Cecilia Vega: Do you feel like you’re getting medication that you need?
Marquesha Babers: Absolutely not.
Cecilia Vega: What has to happen in order for you to get that?
Marquesha Babers: Honestly, I would have to be committed into a mental health hospital because going into places that offer, like, volunteer services are– they’re backed up, or they don’t have enough space, or my insurance doesn’t cover some of the stuff that I need.
Cecilia Vega: When I say the word CARE Court to you, what comes to your mind?
Marquesha Babers: Medical incarceration. It’s just another way to mass incarcerate people, and instead of it just being, like, criminal, it’s medical now.
Cecilia Vega: What would you like to be done?
Marquesha Babers: I think there just needs to be way more attention to services and prevention rather than the consequences of not having those services.
This year, the Newsom administration invested about $17 billion to fight homelessness and treat mental illness. But leaders in many counties say money earmarked for CARE Court is nowhere near enough for the thousands of people expected to land in the system.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: Spare me. Honestly, I’m a little indignant by this rhetoric. The only thing limiting people is an unwillingness to be accountable. And I’m just done with that.
Cecilia Vega: But are you overly optimistic on this one? This is a very taxed system. And you’re expecting it to take on a lot more.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: I’m done with the excuses. You should be done as a taxpayer. Everyone watching should be sick and tired of the excuses. There’s plenty of money in this space.
Yet even with California facing the highest debt in the nation, Gov. Newsom is asking voters to approve billions more for housing, and he admits that without enough, CARE Court will not work.
Cecilia Vega: You’re promising here that anybody who goes into CARE Court will have some kind of housing attached to them–
Gov. Gavin Newsom: Well, I’m not promising anything here. I’m promoting a promise where there’s accountability at the local level. I’m not the mayor of California. I’m the governor.
Cecilia Vega: And those local governments, if they don’t comply–
Gov. Gavin Newsom: There are sanctions–
Cecilia Vega: –will be held accountable.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: They are – Absolutely. Foundationally what CARE Court is about, is about accountability at all levels.
Cecilia Vega: Worth the billions of dollars that you’re gonna end up spending on this–
Gov. Gavin Newsom: We’re spending more on the back end. We can save taxpayers billions of dollars and save lives.
By December, CARE Court will launch in eight California counties, including Los Angeles and San Diego, where Anita and Pharoh live. By the end of next year, it will be statewide.
Cecilia Vega: what does a successful CARE Court look like for Pharoh?
Anita Fisher: I hope he will never have to use it. And I hope that if it does, that he even sees it as a positive experience where his voice is heard.
Cecilia Vega: If you have to, will you initiate CARE Court proceedings?
Anita Fisher: Absolutely. I have no hesitation. It is trauma for the family to keep going through that with their loved one.
Cecilia Vega: Is part of this that voters are so fed up with what they see on the streets of their cities that as a politician, you’ve gotta clean up those streets?
Gov. Gavin Newsom: Well, that’s generally the case. But that’s not the inspiration for CARE Court.
Cecilia Vega: But is there a political factor in this for you?
Gov. Gavin Newsom: As an electoral strategy, I’m termed out.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: That’s not the issue. The politics here is compassion. The politics is purpose.
Cecilia Vega: What happens if CARE Court doesn’t work?
Gov. Gavin Newsom: Then we learn from it. Biggest risk is that we don’t take one.
Last month, Marquesha Babers, the woman who was living in a Los Angeles shelter and told us she struggles with mental illness, was reported missing by her family.
Produced by Natalie Jimenez Peel. Associate producer, Jaime Woods. Broadcast associate, Eliza Costas. Edited by Peter M. Berman.
HomeAid Affiliates Across the Country Distributed 3.6 Million Diapers and Over 2.4 Million Baby Wipes in 2023 to Families in Need
IRVINE, Calif., September 12, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– HomeAid affiliates, in collaboration with several HomeAid building and nonprofit partners, collected over six million essential items to help those experiencing or at risk of homelessness, during the 2023 HomeAid Essentials Drives that took place from March to August. These necessary items will provide much-needed resources to children, families, and other individuals across the nation.
This year’s HomeAid Essentials drives spread across the country with 11 participating HomeAid affiliates. Most of the drives collected critical items for children and families. HomeAid Phoenix collected socks and underwear, a crucial need for individuals who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
Due to the recent rise in inflation in the United States, the overall cost of diapers has risen an unprecedented 22% since 2018 while U.S. inflation rates peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. That means prices are rising at more than double the rate of inflation, according to NielsenIQ, a data firm that tracks consumer prices.
To help combat this growing crisis that many families face, 10 HomeAid affiliates collected and distributed over 3.6 million diapers, over 2.4 million wipes, and nearly 69,000 other critical baby items in eight different states.
Government assistance programs generally cover welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid for low-income households in need, but diapers and wipes are typically not a commodity covered. HomeAid affiliates across the country help address and serve this need by contributing these necessary items to our nonprofit partners who, in turn, give them directly to those families and individuals in need.
“Incredible strides have been made through HomeAid’s annual Essentials Drives, thanks to the remarkable generosity and compassion of our community. This year’s drive has not only provided essential diapers and other essential items to countless families in need but has also served as a powerful reminder of the positive change we can effect when we unite for a common cause. The impact of these efforts extends far beyond the physical donations; they embody the spirit of caring and support that defines HomeAid’s mission. Together, we are building not just homes, but also hope and brighter futures for those facing or at risk of homelessness,” said Scott Larson, CEO, HomeAid America.
The following are the totals of the 2023 spring/summer essentials campaigns from 11 HomeAid affiliates:
HomeAid Atlanta — 198,485
HomeAid Austin — 217,057
HomeAid Colorado — 2,472,614
HomeAid Inland Empire — 71,222
HomeAid National Capital Region — 283,531
HomeAid Northern California — 34,604
HomeAid Orange County — 1,519,520
HomeAid Orlando — 360,000
HomeAid Phoenix — 8,400
HomeAid Southern Nevada — 122,155
HomeAid Utah — 807,869
Media Contact: Monique Waddington, Director of Communications and Donor Relations (mwaddington@homeaid.org)
AboutHomeAid
Founded in 1989, HomeAid develops, builds, and preserves a variety of housing, including emergency, interim, transitional, permanent supportive, and affordable housing through its 19 chapters in 13 states. In addition, this includes resource/navigation centers that provide support services to those experiencing or at risk of homelessness. HomeAid partners with hundreds of nonprofit organizations nationwide that provide the housing and support services that help residents move toward self-sufficiency, such as education and job-skills training, financial counseling, physical and emotional support, and much more.
HomeAid has completed 1,183 housing and outreach projects with a value of more than $340 million. HomeAid has added over 13,445 beds that have served over 701,668 previously homeless individuals. For more information, visit www.homeaid.org.
Middlebury is paying students $10,000 to take the semester off. Other schools are housing students in everything from trailers to rooms at a casino resort—or leaving them to fend for themselves.
Priscila Sepulveda is set to begin her junior year as a film major at the University of California, Berkeley on August 23rd—if she can just find somewhere to live. “Sleeping in my car and being homeless is probably my only option right now since familyhousing for Berkeley is out of reach for the fall,” says the 23-year-old, who lost her spot in the school’s housing queue for married students when she took last year off to live in San Diego, where her husband was stationed with the Marines. College administrators are telling her not to expect housing until October, at the earliest, she reports. Problem is, if she takes the semester off while waiting for housing, she’ll lose her place in line again. “I was excited to come back to school but now it just feels like school is only stressing me out,’’ she says.
As millions of college students happily move into their campus or off-campus digs, some of their peers still don’t know where they’ll be living during the fall semester. Being admitted to a university does not necessarily guarantee campus housing; schools typically plan to house just 25% to 35% of students on-campus with an emphasis on providing beds for freshmen and sophomores, says Daniel Bernstein, president and chief investment officer at Campus Apartments, the student housing development company led by billionaire David Adelman.
UC Berkeley junior Priscila Sepulveda worries she may have to sleep in her car when classes start on August 23rd.
Courtesy Priscila Sepulveda
So many juniors, seniors, transfer students and grad students have traditionally been expected to find housing off-campus, whether they wanted to or not. But this year’s housing scramble is being exacerbated by two trends that began to emerge last year.
First, off-campus rents have gone through the roof—nationally, they’re averaging $2,062 a month, up 28% from $1,614 at the start of 2021, according to rental data from Zillow. That raises both demand for on-campus housing and the difficulties students face when they can’t get it. Second, some colleges are seeing enrollment tick up after a pandemic-induced decline during which many students opted to take a year off or delay the start of their college educations.
That post-pandemic bump is part of the problem at Middlebury College, an elite liberal arts school in Vermont that requires all of its 2,800 or so undergraduates to live on campus, unless they get special permission. Because so many students took time off during the pandemic, Middlebury’s junior and senior classes are larger than normal. So earlier this month, administrators announced a $10,000 stipend for upperclassmen willing to take a voluntary leave of absence for the 2023-24 fall and winter terms. The school said it had considered converting other buildings at the historic campus to residential use, but found doing so quickly wasn’t practical, given the need, for example, to have fire sprinkler systems installed in housing.
So far, the college has received 63 applications for deferral, and about 40 students are expected to participate, reports AJ Place, associate dean of students for residential life at Middlebury. Along with the cash, students who choose to defer will receive preferred status for housing selection in the spring. Middlebury also chipped away at demand for on-campus housing this fall by offering a new study abroad program for freshmen that allows them to spend their first semester in Copenhagen, while retaining all their financial aid and taking such first year seminars as “The Cultural Psychology of Happiness.” Usually, students aren’t allowed to study abroad in their freshman year. Those doing the Copenhagen stint will receive a $500 per month food stipend and $1,500 to cover airfare—far more generous terms than Middlebury usually offers for study abroad.
Middlebury’s housing crunch is in part temporary. But some public universities, especially those in the south and southwest, are dealing with longer term enrollment surges—a function of regional population growth and more students wanting to attend their own state schools to avoid taking on excessive debt or to be nearer to family.
The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, which charges state residents $11,332 in undergraduate tuition a year, met excess housing demand last year by renting out a nearby Holiday Inn—students dubbed it the Voliday Inn, a play on the school’s Volunteers sports teams. But with class size, the percentage of students who want to live on campus and the time kids take to graduate all continuing to rise, the school has now made longer term arrangements. In May, UT announced it will build 2,500 new campus beds in a public-private deal. Meanwhile, it has signed a five-year contract with an apartment complex five miles from campus that will immediately add 192 beds (and later even more). The complex will be served by UT’s transit service, which runs every 20 minutes on weekdays and roughly every hour on weekends.
“It’s a stressful situation not to have anywhere to sleep when you’re trying to get your education, especially if it’s supposed to be such a prestigious school.”
A tad inconvenient? Maybe. But better than the connections being offered to the 23 students being housed at the Bear River Casino and Resort, 6.5 miles south of the College of the Redwoods, a public community college in Humboldt County, in the far north of coastal California. The hotel is providing them one shuttle bus to the campus at 8 a.m. and one home at 8 p.m., and only on Monday through Friday. The nearby California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt is sending nearly 100 students to the Comfort Inn hotel, about two and a half miles from campus. One consolation for the hotel exiles: A double room at the Comfort Inn costs $6,624 per year, while the cheapest on-campus double goes for $6,972.
Other schools have turned to temporary on-campus solutions, rather than local hotels or semesters in Copenhagen. Virginia State University, a historically Black institution which has seen a surge in enrollment over the last three years, is now setting up prefabricated modular buildings near its regular dorms to house 268 students in what it’s calling annex units. In announcing the plan, the school answered the question “Are the units the same as trailers?” this way: “The units are temporary and were pre-constructed before delivery. They will contain the same amenities as our traditional residence halls.” As to the rationale for relying on trailers, VSU President Makola M. Abdullah pointed to the “nationwide shortage of affordable off-campus housing” and the school’s commitment to provide opportunity to all students who want to attend. In a Facebook post this month, the school, located 24 miles south of Richmond, bragged that “every student who has submitted a VSU housing application will receive a housing assignment.”
Unlike VSU, California’s public colleges have made no commitment to housing all comers. With its chronic housing shortage and high rental prices, the state has a dramatic student housing crisis, with students sleeping in their cars and even on the streets. A 2020 report by University of California, Los Angeles researchers concluded that 1 in 5 of the state’s community college students, 1 in 10 California State University students and 1 in 20 students at the University of California campuses have experienced homelessness. Suzanne Wenzel, a professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work who has studied homelessness, observes that the housing crunch can lead to a cascade of problems for students. “Homelessness and housing instability when students can’t afford a stable and decent place to stay is also often paired with food insecurity and poor nutrition, which adds yet another layer of difficulty for a student,” Wenzel says. That stress, in turn, has an adverse effect on academic performance.
Even campus housing isn’t cheap in the California system. For in-state undergraduates, tuition at UC Berkeley, one of the nation’s top colleges, is a comparative bargain—$15,600 this coming year. But living on campus (including a meal plan), costs freshmen an additional $16,000 to $20,000 per year. The Berkeley family housing that film major Sepulveda is wait-listed for, runs $1,695 a month for a one bedroom, no food included. That’s cheap compared to private market housing in Berkeley, situated on the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay, which remains one of the most expensive housing markets in the country despite a recent fall in rent there. One-bedroom apartments now available in Berkeley are asking a median rent of $2,200 a month, 35% above the national median, according to Zillow.
In response to surging enrollment, Virginia State University decided to house 268 students in prefabricated modular units, also known as trailers.
VSU
Since California schools don’t provide backup plans for those wait-listed for university housing, students are often left scrambling to sublet and pleading on social media groups for a room. In a final attempt to secure housing, Sepulveda did just that, putting out feelers in a Facebook post within the UC Berkeley Off-Campus Housing group and indicating that she would leave whenever campus housing finally opens up for her. So far, no luck. “It’s a stressful situation not to have anywhere to sleep when you’re trying to get your education, especially if it’s supposed to be such a prestigious school,” Sepulveda says. Given “the immense amount of money that it costs to go into that school, you would think they would accommodate and find a ‘meanwhile’ situation.”
Megan Chung, an incoming master’s student at UCLA studying electrical and computer engineering, has been on the waitlist for graduate on-campus housing since the list was released in early July and has also resorted to Facebook pleading. “My place on the waitlist seemed realistic until my position stopped moving for the past two weeks,” says Chung, 22. She’s frustrated that the school didn’t notify her earlier that she wouldn’t get housing and is now looking at the last minute for someone to share an off-campus apartment, preferably within walking distance of campus. Getting her own place doesn’t seem realistic: Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the Westwood neighborhood, where UCLA is located, is down, but still a pricey $2,895, according to Zumper.
In recent years, some affluent parents have bought off-campus apartments and houses for their kids. But that startegy is less appealing now that 30-year fixed mortgages are topping 7%, their highest level in more than 20 years.
In recent years, some affluent parents have turned to another method of securing shelter for their college-going kids. They’ve found it made financial sense to buy apartments or houses near campus for their progeny. Bradley Hilton, founder of Sonas Financial Planning in Atlanta, says that a few of his clients have taken this route, looking at it as a way to both avoid steep rents for their kids and to earn additional income from an investment property. “They all went for a multi-bedroom unit, whether it’s a condo or house,” Hilton says. That way, they can collect rent from other people’s kids, helping to subsidize the mortgage payments and sometimes even achieve positive monthly cash flow.
But with 30-year fixed mortgages now topping 7%, their highest level in more than 20 years, that strategy too is under pressure this year. Even for families who can afford it, high interest rates are “making that option a little less attractive,” says Ryan Galiotto, founder and lead planner at Etch Financial, in the Pittsburgh, Pa. area.
What about saving money by having your college kids live at home? “Most of the students that are graduating high school and going to college now, they spent most of their high school years in virtual classrooms because of Covid,” Galiotto observes. “What they’re saying is, ‘I spent most of my high school years in a virtual classroom. I really want this in-person experience now.’”
Reports of anti-social behaviour in Adelaide’s CBD including intoxication, large gatherings, street harassment, and shop theft has seen media headlines declaring a “crime wave” in the city.
But are the claims accurate?
What has been reported so far?
Businesses and city-dwellers have been raising concerns about anti-social behaviour in Adelaide’s CBD in recent months — especially in the North Terrace precinct.
Law student-turned-opposition staffer Simran Bacchal said she regularly felt fearful working in her family’s Bank Street cafe, and had considered abandoning the CBD for a “safer” location.
Simran Bacchal says she does not feel safe after witnessing violence near her family’s cafe in the North Terrace precinct.(ABC News: Isabel Dayman)
“We would witness a crime near the cafe every single day,” she said.
“We just don’t know what comes next — [people] might hit you, or they might get aggressive, and there have been multiple occasions where this has happened in the cafe.”
Ms Bacchal said every Monday morning was spent cleaning “alcohol, spit and bodily fluids” from the front of the cafe, pushing her customers away.
Owner of O’Connell’s Bookshop, Ben O’Connell, said property damage was common in the area, especially overnight, and greater police presence was always welcome.
Ben O’Connell says more mental health services is needed to support those in need.(ABC News: Isabel Dayman)
But he said he had not witnessed anything to suggest a “crime wave”.
The deadline in Los Angeles to pay back rent owed from the first year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, prompting fears of a wave of evictions in the city. Mark Strassmann has the story.
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Shawn Steik and his wife were forced from a long-term motel room onto the streets of Anchorage after their rent shot up to $800 a month. Now they live in a tent encampment by a train depot, and as an Alaska winter looms they are growing desperate and fearful of what lies ahead.
A proposal last week by Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson to buy one-way plane tickets out of Alaska’s biggest city for its homeless residents gave Steik a much-needed glimmer of hope. He would move to the relative warmth of Seattle.
“I heard it’s probably warmer than this place,” said Steik, who is Aleut.
But the mayor’s unfunded idea also came under immediate attack as a Band-Aid solution glossing over the tremendous, and still unaddressed, crisis facing Anchorage as a swelling homeless population struggles to survive in a unique and extreme environment. Frigid temperatures stalk the homeless in the winter and bears infiltrate homeless encampments in the summer.
A record eight people died of exposure while living outside last winter and this year promises to be worse after the city closed an arena that housed 500 people during the winter months. Bickering between the city’s liberal assembly and its conservative mayor about how to address the crisis, and a lack of state funding, have further stymied efforts to find a solution.
With winter fast approaching in Alaska, it’s “past time for state and local leaders to address the underlying causes of homelessness — airplane tickets are a distraction, not a solution,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska said in a statement to The Associated Press.
About 43% of Anchorage’s more than 3,000 unsheltered residents are Alaska Natives, and Bronson’s proposal also drew harsh criticism from those who called it culturally insensitive.
“The reality is there is no place to send these people because this is their land. Any policy that we make has to pay credence to that simple fact. This is Dena’ina land, this is Native land,” said Christopher Constant, chair of the Anchorage Assembly. “And so we cannot be supporting policies that would take people and displace them from their home, even if their home is not what you or I would call home.”
Bronson’s airfare proposal caps a turbulent few years as Anchorage, like many cities in the U.S. West, struggles to deal with a burgeoning homeless population.
In May, the city shut down the 500-bed homeless shelter in the city’s arena so it could once more be used for concerts and hockey games after neighbors complained about open drug use, trespassing, violence and litter. A plan to build a large shelter and navigation center fell through when Bronson approved a contract without approval from the Anchorage Assembly.
That leaves a gaping hole in the city’s ability to house the thousands of homeless people who have to contend with temperatures well below zero for days at a time and unrelenting winds blasting off Cook Inlet. At the end of June, Anchorage was estimated to have a little more than 3,150 homeless people, according to the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. Last week, there were only 614 beds at shelters citywide, with no vacancies.
New tent cities have sprung up across Anchorage this summer: on a slope facing the city’s historic railroad depot, on a busy road near the Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson and near soup kitchens and shelters downtown.
Assembly members are slated to consider a winter stop-gap option in August falling far short of the need: a large, warmed, tent-like structure for 150 people.
Summer brings its own challenges: hungry bears last year roamed a city-owned campground where homeless people were resettled after the arena closed. Wildlife officials killed four bears after they broke into tents.
Bronson said he prefers to spend a few hundred dollars per person for a plane ticket rather than spending about $100 daily to shelter and feed them. He said he doesn’t care where they want to go; his job is to “make sure they don’t die on Anchorage streets.”
It’s not clear if his proposal will move forward. There is not yet a plan or a funding source.
Dr. Ted Mala, an Inupiaq who in 1990 became the first Alaska Native to serve as the state’s health commissioner, said Anchorage should be working with social workers and law enforcement to discover people’s individual reasons for homelessness and connect them with resources.
Buying the unsheltered a ticket to another city is a political game that’s been around for years. A number of U.S. cities struggling with homelessness, including San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, have also offered bus or plane tickets to homeless residents.
“People are not pawns, they’re human beings,” Mala said.
The mayor’s proposal, while focused on warmer cities, also would fund tickets to other Alaska locations for those who want them.
Clarita Clark became homeless after her medical team wanted her to move from Point Hope to Anchorage for cancer treatment because Anchorage is warmer. The medical facility wouldn’t allow her husband to stay with her, so they pitched a tent in a sprawling camp to stay together.
Having recently found the body of a dead teenager who overdosed in a portable toilet, Clark yearns to return to the Chukchi Sea coastal village of Point Hope, where her three grandchildren live.
“I got a family that loves me,” she said, adding she would use the ticket and seek treatment closer to home.
Danny Parish also is leaving Alaska, but for another reason: He’s fed up.
Parish is selling his home of 29 years because it sits directly across the street from Sullivan Arena. Bad acts by some homeless people — including harassment, throwing vodka bottles in his yard, poisoning his dog and using his driveway as a toilet — made his life “a holy hell,” he said.
Parish is convinced the arena will be used again this winter since there isn’t another plan.
He, too, hopes to move to the contiguous U.S. — Oregon, for starters — but not before asking Anchorage leaders for his own plane ticket out.
“If they’re going to give them to everybody else,” Parish said, “then they need to give me one.”
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Shawn Steik and his wife were forced from a long-term motel room onto the streets of Anchorage after their rent shot up to $800 a month. Now they live in a tent encampment by a train depot, and as an Alaska winter looms they are growing desperate and fearful of what lies ahead.
A proposal last week by Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson to buy one-way plane tickets out of Alaska’s biggest city for its homeless residents gave Steik a much-needed glimmer of hope. He would move to the relative warmth of Seattle.
“I heard it’s probably warmer than this place,” said Steik, who is Aleut.
But the mayor’s unfunded idea also came under immediate attack as a Band-Aid solution glossing over the tremendous, and still unaddressed, crisis facing Anchorage as a swelling homeless population struggles to survive in a unique and extreme environment. Frigid temperatures stalk the homeless in the winter and bears infiltrate homeless encampments in the summer.
A record eight people died of exposure while living outside last winter and this year promises to be worse after the city closed an arena that housed 500 people during the winter months. Bickering between the city’s liberal assembly and its conservative mayor about how to address the crisis, and a lack of state funding, have further stymied efforts to find a solution.
With winter fast approaching in Alaska, it’s “past time for state and local leaders to address the underlying causes of homelessness — airplane tickets are a distraction, not a solution,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska said in a statement to The Associated Press.
About 43% of Anchorage’s more than 3,000 unsheltered residents are Alaska Natives, and Bronson’s proposal also drew harsh criticism from those who called it culturally insensitive.
“The reality is there is no place to send these people because this is their land. Any policy that we make has to pay credence to that simple fact. This is Dena’ina land, this is Native land,” said Christopher Constant, chair of the Anchorage Assembly. “And so we cannot be supporting policies that would take people and displace them from their home, even if their home is not what you or I would call home.”
Bronson’s airfare proposal caps a turbulent few years as Anchorage, like many cities in the U.S. West, struggles to deal with a burgeoning homeless population.
In May, the city shut down the 500-bed homeless shelter in the city’s arena so it could once more be used for concerts and hockey games after neighbors complained about open drug use, trespassing, violence and litter. A plan to build a large shelter and navigation center fell through when Bronson approved a contract without approval from the Anchorage Assembly.
That leaves a gaping hole in the city’s ability to house the thousands of homeless people who have to contend with temperatures well below zero for days at a time and unrelenting winds blasting off Cook Inlet. At the end of June, Anchorage was estimated to have a little more than 3,150 homeless people, according to the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. Last week, there were only 614 beds at shelters citywide, with no vacancies.
New tent cities have sprung up across Anchorage this summer: on a slope facing the city’s historic railroad depot, on a busy road near the Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson and near soup kitchens and shelters downtown.
Assembly members are slated to consider a winter stop-gap option in August falling far short of the need: a large, warmed, tent-like structure for 150 people.
Summer brings its own challenges: hungry bears last year roamed a city-owned campground where homeless people were resettled after the arena closed. Wildlife officials killed four bears after they broke into tents.
Bronson said he prefers to spend a few hundred dollars per person for a plane ticket rather than spending about $100 daily to shelter and feed them. He said he doesn’t care where they want to go; his job is to “make sure they don’t die on Anchorage streets.”
It’s not clear if his proposal will move forward. There is not yet a plan or a funding source.
Dr. Ted Mala, an Inupiaq who in 1990 became the first Alaska Native to serve as the state’s health commissioner, said Anchorage should be working with social workers and law enforcement to discover people’s individual reasons for homelessness and connect them with resources.
Buying the unsheltered a ticket to another city is a political game that’s been around for years. A number of U.S. cities struggling with homelessness, including San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, have also offered bus or plane tickets to homeless residents.
“People are not pawns, they’re human beings,” Mala said.
The mayor’s proposal, while focused on warmer cities, also would fund tickets to other Alaska locations for those who want them.
Clarita Clark became homeless after her medical team wanted her to move from Point Hope to Anchorage for cancer treatment because Anchorage is warmer. The medical facility wouldn’t allow her husband to stay with her, so they pitched a tent in a sprawling camp to stay together.
Having recently found the body of a dead teenager who overdosed in a portable toilet, Clark yearns to return to the Chukchi Sea coastal village of Point Hope, where her three grandchildren live.
“I got a family that loves me,” she said, adding she would use the ticket and seek treatment closer to home.
Danny Parish also is leaving Alaska, but for another reason: He’s fed up.
Parish is selling his home of 29 years because it sits directly across the street from Sullivan Arena. Bad acts by some homeless people — including harassment, throwing vodka bottles in his yard, poisoning his dog and using his driveway as a toilet — made his life “a holy hell,” he said.
Parish is convinced the arena will be used again this winter since there isn’t another plan.
He, too, hopes to move to the contiguous U.S. — Oregon, for starters — but not before asking Anchorage leaders for his own plane ticket out.
“If they’re going to give them to everybody else,” Parish said, “then they need to give me one.”
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Lisa Wrightsman was a former college soccer player whose life was derailed by drug addiction before she eventually made her way back to the sport through a tournament for players from around the globe who have experienced homelessness.
Wrightsman qualified for the Homeless World Cup in Brazil. It was a competition that would forever change her life. When she returned to Sacramento, friends at the sober living facility where Wrightsman lived told her they wanted “to feel the way you look right now.”
“I actually started to feel value,” she said. “The whole tournament kind of instills you with that.”
Wrightsman is now a coach for the U.S. women’s team in the Homeless World Cup. The tournament made its U.S. debut July 8 in the capital of California, a state home to the largest homeless population in the country. It runs through Saturday.
The tournament is being held after a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, when homeless populations surged in many U.S. cities. In Sacramento alone, it increased 68% between 2020 and 2022.
Thirty countries are competing in the games with teams that include people who have lived on the streets to refugees to foster children.
They include Yuli Pineda, who moved to California from Honduras and was living with a foster family when she joined. Pineda said she’s found a sense of community playing for the U.S. team.
“Every single player comes from different backgrounds,” Pineda, 18, said. “It’s amazing that in a short amount of time we have connected that fast.”
One of the special parts about soccer is that it is so popular across the globe, said Lawrence Cann, founder of Street Soccer USA, which organizes the U.S. men’s and women’s teams.
“Imagine if you’re isolated, you feel some level of shame with everything that comes along with being homeless,” Cann said. “This gives you a natural way to connect to the largest community in the world, which is the soccer community.”
Mel Young, who co-founded the organization running the tournament, said the aim is to build players’ confidence to achieve their goals beyond the games. Some of the athletes have gone on to play professionally, but that’s not the point, Young said.
“The events are fantastic. I urge anyone to come and watch,” Young said. “But it’s about moving on. It’s about impact. It’s about people changing their lives.”
Young said he has witnessed the transformation. Years ago, Young said he got on a bus in his native Scotland and was surprised to find out the driver was a former player who competed in the tournament. He told Young he got his bus driving license after the games, was living in an apartment and engaged to be married.
Wrightsman grew up in a Sacramento suburb and was a striker for California State University, Sacramento, also known as Sac State. She struggled with drug addiction and ended up in a sober living facility, which made her eligible to qualify for the Homeless World Cup. At the tournament in 2010, she remembered how much she loved playing, and it built her confidence knowing she could share her knowledge with players who were less experienced.
This year, players are battling dry, hot weather in Sacramento, with temperatures set to surpass 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) by Friday. Some of the games were scheduled for later to avoid the most intense heat of the day.
The games are much shorter than traditional soccer matches, lasting only seven minutes each half, so anyone can participate. Each country can bring a men’s and women’s team. Women can compete on the men’s team if the country is not bringing a women’s team.
On a recent day at Sac State’s Hornet Stadium, players tried to cool down by sitting in the shade under bleachers and tents or by placing wet towels around their necks.
In the stands, spectators waved flags and sported jerseys and caps to show support for their country’s team. Supporters of the Mexican women’s team chanted “Si, se puede!” or “Yes, you can!” during a group stage match Tuesday as the reigning champions fought to win their eighth title.
For Sienna Jackson, a 24-year-old Sacramento native on the U.S. women’s team, playing soccer offered a welcome escape from stress growing up.
“It was something to get my mind off of my life and kind of calm me down,” said Jackson, who experienced homelessness for four years starting at the age of 19.
Jackson now lives in an apartment, works with a pediatric dentist and is studying dental assisting at Carrington College, a career-training school in Sacramento.
Sophie Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @sophieadanna.
