The Brief

Los Angeles officials cheered a small but significant victory recently: a 10% drop in the number of unhoused people sleeping outdoors in the city of L.A. Overall, the count in the city shows total homelessness dropped 2%, though officials said that’s within the margin of error.

This result from Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s annual point-in-time count, released on June 28, came after historic investment by the city in temporary shelters, long-term housing, and other services.

But while a positive step, it’s a very small one. As LAist has reported, local homelessness has, in fact, reached a plateau: As more people enter permanent housing, others continue to lose theirs.

For the region’s largest and fastest-growing unhoused population, little has changed. Latinos represent 43% of the unhoused population in the Los Angeles Continuum of Care (an integrated system of care that guides and tracks homelessness). It includes most of L.A. County save for Glendale, Pasadena and Long Beach. While LAHSA used different methodology to count Latinos this year, their share remains effectively the same as a year ago.

Homeless service providers and experts say there are unique challenges, especially for Latinos who are immigrants, and particularly for those who lack legal status. These include wage theft, a lack of available resources for undocumented immigrants, and reluctance to seek assistance.

At the same time, local shelters have been stretched this past year as newly arrived asylum seekers, some bused to Los Angeles and other cities from Texas as political pawns, have also landed on the street.

A shelter ‘greatly impacted’ as new migrants arrived

In Boyle Heights, Proyecto Pastoral’s Guadalupe Homeless Project operates two shelters that serve Spanish speakers, a 41-bed shelter for men at the Dolores Mission church, and a smaller women’s shelter a few blocks away.

At one point earlier this year, at least 90% of the residents at the men’s shelter were new asylum seekers from countries like Venezuela, Honduras and Nicaragua. Some had arrived in L.A. with nowhere to go; others had temporary housing arrangements that fell through.

“Our shelter was greatly impacted,” said Raquel Roman, executive director of Proyecto Pastoral. “But the reality is that we need to use the services we have available to serve that population, because they are in an emergency state of being unhoused. And so we can't separate the numbers.”

Staff at Proyecto Pastoral's Guadalupe Homeless Project men's shelter at Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights serve dinner to residents.

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Noé Montes

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LAist

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Roman said for now, the new-migrant population at the men’s shelter has dropped to about half, but that could change, depending on circumstances at the border.

A short distance away, the 15-bed women’s shelter primarily houses a different demographic — older women, including longtime immigrants. One resident is Rosa, 67 and undocumented. Her story exemplifies the kinds of challenges immigrants struggle with in staying housed in L.A.

Job loss, wage theft, and homelessness

At the end of 2022, as Rosa relates, she was working in a small women’s clothing shop in “los callejones,” by downtown L.A.’s Santee Alley. LAist is not using Rosa’s last name due to her immigration status.

One day at work, around the holidays, she was lifting a heavy box when she felt a painful sensation.

Rosa, a resident of the Proyecto Pastoral women's shelter, says she lost her job at a clothing shop due to an injury. She went through her small savings and wound up unhoused.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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“I felt something pulling from my waist to my shoulder,” Rosa said, speaking in Spanish. An emergency room visit confirmed that she’d injured her back. She would need physical therapy and time off work — which she took, she believed, with her employer’s blessing.

But when Rosa returned to work within a couple of weeks, she received bad news: “They told me that I no longer had my job,” she said.

As a senior without legal status, Rosa faced poor work prospects. She moved from a one-bedroom unit she shared with two other people, paying $500 a month for the bedroom, to an $85-a-day motel.

She went back to her employer to ask if she could at least receive unpaid overtime she had racked up, but said she was told that if she came back again, “you’ll be met by immigration.”

Rosa had soon blown through her small savings and could no longer pay for housing. At least she had one advantage: Rosa had wound up unhoused before, several years earlier, under similar circumstances.

Back then, someone had steered her to Proyecto Pastoral, where she stayed until she could get back on her feet.

So this time, she knew where to go. She arrived at the shelter about 14 months ago.

Challenges, vulnerability

Experiences like Rosa’s are not unusual, said Roman. Undocumented immigrants are subject to wage theft and other workplace exploitation.

“That means they may not get a living wage,” Roman said, which puts these workers at risk as rent prices become untenable.

These same workers don’t qualify for affordable housing programs, Roman added. “You need a Social Security (number) and proof of income to get housing, Section 8 housing,” she said. “The housing and the work is really difficult for folks.”

Roman said in the past, she’s also encountered undocumented immigrants who’ve had trouble accessing homeless services because they’ve lacked a Social Security number. And even getting to that point can be a struggle.

Rosa and Maria, both residents of Proyecto Pastoral's women's shelter in Boyle Heights.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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“There’s a shame to being unhoused, and so a lot of times, people do not want to seek the help that they need,” Roman said. “They stay in a car, they stay in a park, they stay on a couch … and sometimes living in places that are not suitable.”

A common housing fallback in Latino communities is “doubling up” with other renters in a single unit — what Rosa was doing at the time she became injured. This was prevalent even before the economic sting of the pandemic: A UCLA study released late last year concluded that between 2016 and 2020 in L.A. County, Latinos made up 76% of those who self-identified as experiencing doubled-up homelessness.

These precarious housing situations can themselves lead to homelessness; studies have suggested that doubled-up renters who are not on the lease are more likely to become unhoused.

Takeaways from community ‘listening sessions’

Since taking office in December 2022, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has pledged to get more Angelenos off the street, with the city investing more than $1 billion to combat homelessness.

And as the number of Latinos experiencing homelessness locally has jumped dramatically, rising by 26% just between 2020 and 2022, local officials have paid more attention.

In recent months, a new Task Force on Latinx People Experiencing Homelessness that includes LAHSA staff, service providers, and public officials has sought community input, hosting bilingual “listening sessions” in communities around the L.A. area.

The goal is to present recommendations to county officials in October, said Patricia Lally, the facilitator and consultant leading the sessions.

Lally worked with community groups in places like Lancaster, Bellflower, and downtown L.A. to draw participation from local Latino communities. While some sessions were better attended than others, people who showed up talked about feeling deeply at risk.

“They said things like this: ‘My annual rent increases at a rate that I just … can't keep up with it much longer.’ And ‘I'm going to have to live with my daughter’ or ‘I'm going to have to find something else …’” Lally said.

She said some people related having to choose between housing and sending money home to relatives out of the country: “‘I can't afford to pay rent and then also to take care of my family … I'm homeless, even though I'm working, because … I can't afford rent.”

Lally said while the task force’s recommendations aren’t ready to share, figuring out ways for people who can’t access housing resources to do so will be high on the list.

“I know the task force is going to be recommending that L.A. County and L.A. City get very clear about unrestricted resources, and that how can we funnel unrestricted resources to undocumented immigrants that might not be able to avail themselves of other housing resources,” Lally said.

Keys to housing

It’s access to housing resources that, in the end, will be leading Rosa out of the Proyecto Pastoral shelter and into a small apartment.

At the Proyecto Pastoral women's shelter, Rosa displays the keys to her future housing unit.

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Leslie Berestein Rojas

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LAist

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With help from shelter staff, Rosa was able to qualify for a county program that provides housing for people with health problems who frequently use county health services — and for which her immigration status was not an obstacle.

One recent afternoon at the shelter, Rosa jingled her new keys proudly in the sun. She had just returned from seeing her future home, a studio unit downtown.

“I just received my keys!” she beamed. “They gave me my housing, furnished. They brought in furniture. I’m very happy. And I’m very grateful.”