This story first appeared on The LA Local.
A week after 45-year-old Raz Chowdhury was moved off the streets into interim housing through an Inside Safe operation, he was found dead in his hotel room.
Chowdhury had spent years living on the streets of Koreatown, moving between encampments along Sixth Street and Wilshire Boulevard and Manhattan Place.
Sherin Varghese first met him three or four years ago. Chowdhury would reach out to Varghese, a volunteer with Ktown for All, an advocacy group that provides direct aid for people experiencing homelessness in Koreatown. He would ask her for tents, tarps, clothes and other supplies. More often than not, she said, they weren’t for him.
“He would always go above and beyond to take care of the people around him,” Varghese said at a vigil for Chowdhury on Saturday, Aug. 29.
Once, after Chowdhury lost his phone during a sanitation sweep, he searched for Varghese online and found her work number. He called to ask if she could bring tents and tarps for him and other people whose belongings were lost in the sweep.
“He was resourceful, he was reliable, and he was so thoughtful about the way that he talked about how all of this affected him and affected his friends,” Varghese said.
On June 25, Chowdhury was among 31 people moved into housing during an Inside Safe operation at Wilshire Boulevard and Manhattan Place, according to Mayor Karen Bass’ office.
A week later he was dead.
What happened after Inside Safe
According to Ktown for All, Chowdhury died at the Mayfair Hotel in Westlake, which is used for interim housing.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner said the case is still under investigation and Chowdhury died at a hotel in the 1200 block of West 7th Street on July 2. His cause of death is listed as deferred and the case is under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which oversees the Mayfair, would not say if Chowdhury was a resident when he died. An agency spokesperson said they cannot confirm an individual’s enrollment in a LAHSA-contracted program without a written release from next of kin.
LAHSA’s latest Inside Safe report shows that 6,406 people had entered interim housing through the program as of July 31. About 1,750 people remained in interim housing, including 289 at the Mayfair. Meanwhile, 1,802 people, or more than one in four who entered the program, had returned to homelessness. Another 126 people, or about 2%, were listed as deceased.
Bass’ office said it does not disclose the locations where an individual is placed following an Inside Safe operation.
Once someone is connected to interim housing, ongoing services and case management are handled by a LAHSA-contracted service provider, mayor spokesperson Jieun Kim said.
Remembering Chowdhury
The people who knew Chowdhury gathered last week to remember him at the site of the encampment where he had lived at Wilshire Boulevard and Manhattan Place.
A little more than two dozen people attended the memorial, where they placed flowers at the base of a small tribute to him.
Planters now line the sidewalk where the tents once were. Several people cried as they shared memories of Chowdhury, who they said spent years looking out for others living on the streets of Koreatown.
Cynthia Zhang, who has volunteered with Ktown for All for about four to five years, remembers visiting an encampment where Chowdhury was staying after the Los Angeles fires. Newly displaced people there told her they felt safer with that community than they did at shelters.
“I think Raz was really instrumental in helping create that kind of space,” Zhang said at the vigil.
The last time Zhang saw Chowdhury, he had moved again and did not have a lot of his stuff. But he had a new puppy named T-Rex and seemed to be in good spirits.
“He had a really lovely smile,” Zhang said. “I just remember him skateboarding around … all these little things, maybe because I didn’t see him every day, it really does feel like I’ll be walking around and I’ll see him in one of our old spots.”
David Strugar, another longtime Ktown for All volunteer, said Chowdhury was often the person volunteers went to when they wanted to know how people in the area were doing.
“I would always point him out and say, ‘That’s the mayor of this area,’ because wherever he was, he was just the center of it, and he took care of people,” Strugar said.
Chowdhury would tell volunteers who needed what and help distribute supplies, Strugar said.
A few weeks before he died, Varghese said, she and Chowdhury were looking for places where he could stay outside a 41.18 zone, where the city restricts sitting, lying, sleeping and storing personal property in certain public rights-of-way under specified circumstances.
Then Inside Safe moved him indoors.
“I hoped that he’d be one of its success stories, but a week later, he was gone,” Varghese said. “The program is called Inside Safe, but for Raz and 125 others, it wasn’t that. And it was never going to be Inside Safe, and it was never going to be easy to be inside alone for someone who had so much to give and always surrounded himself with people to take care of.”
The last time Strugar saw Chowdhury, he had his dog T-Rex with him. Ktown for All volunteers don’t know where T-Rex is now.
Chowdhury believed he had the right to community and companionship, Strugar said.
“And there are so many people who have so much and won’t give anything,” Strugar said. “And Raz kept having everything taken away from him, and he still ended up being the person to give.”
He added, “I just keep expecting to walk around the corner and see him, and I’m angry that I won’t.”
