Tropical Storm Seen As ‘Test Run’ For Sheltering Unhoused Angelenos. How Did LA Do?

Tropical Storm Hilary has now come and gone, with no reports of deaths or major injuries in the L.A. area. That was after dozens of unhoused people were brought into shelters and motels from riverbeds.

Advocates and others see the storm as a wake up call for L.A. to learn and better prepare for future events as weather gets more and more extreme.

In the days before the storm arrived this weekend and dumped nearly three inches of rain on downtown Los Angeles, homelessness outreach teams went to high-risk areas like rivers and dams to warn people of the flood danger and urge them to get inside.

In all, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA):

• 85 people from these high-risk areas went into emergency shelters set up for the storm and motels
• 374 individuals and 140 families made it into emergency shelters across L.A. County, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).

The agency touted those efforts, which started Thursday, as saving hundreds of lives. But there were challenges.

About the challenges

Late Saturday afternoon, the day before the storm hit, there was still no information about available storm shelter beds for single adults who called the county’s 2-1-1 hotline. One woman who called in that evening saying Sheriff deputies were telling her to leave the riverbed was told there was nowhere she could go. Shelter details weren’t pushed out in a news release or on social media by the city until 2 p.m. Sunday, well into the storm being underway.

A review of data by LAist shows that as the communication issues played out, several hundred emergency beds made available across the county went unused. The rate of empty beds was much higher outside the city of L.A.

No written disaster plans

LAist has also learned the county and the region’s lead homeless services agency, LAHSA, do not have written disaster plans for how to help the unhoused population. That’s despite the county’s disaster hazard assessment — a 214-page review released in 2020 — specifically mentioning unhoused people as vulnerable from flooding and other disasters.

LAHSA officials say their staff draw from a great deal of past experience helping people in flood prone areas. Asked if they’ll develop a written plan, a spokesperson told us the agency has new leadership who will “look at what worked and didn’t work” in the recent storm response “and make necessary improvements.”

Why it's a wake up call

The latest storm ended up not being as bad as feared, still advocates and a researcher interviewed by LAist say it’s a wake up call.

“I do think this sort of shows someone should be developing that kind of larger scale emergency plan,” said Benjamin Henwood, a USC professor who studies homelessness and helped LAHSA analyze the latest homeless point in time count.

“If things got really bad [in a storm], there should in theory be enough shelter beds that everyone could clear the streets if they needed. And I haven’t heard anyone describe that as a goal or a need,” he added.

Henwood noted that in other areas of the U.S., convention centers or sports arenas have been opened up as shelter during major natural disasters.

Key findings

One advocate grades the test run a 'D'

Pete White, who runs the Skid Row-based unhoused advocacy group LA CAN, said he hopes officials move faster to open up shelter — and create more shelter — before future storms.

“It was a test run. And if I was to grade the test run, I would have to say it's a D,” White said, adding his request to the city for tarps, cots and sandbags weren’t followed through on.

“That wasn't adding a ton of capacity,” he said of the emergency shelters beds set up for Tropical Storm Hilary in the city of L.A. “That was a far cry short of what we would actually need if the storm surge came through as folks anticipated it might.”

Mercedes Marquez, who leads L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ homelessness efforts, said the storm shelter effort was the largest anyone can remember in the city, and was focused on helping people in the most danger — in riverbeds and other flood-prone areas.

Outreach in those high-risk areas started on Thursday, several days before the storm arrived, she told LAist in an interview Tuesday.

“What we were able to do was go toward the danger, and…focus outreach where that was,” she said, including opening shelters near those high-risk locations and getting people into interim housing.

City departments and other agencies worked closely together, she said, including having city buses nearby to be able to help people get to shelter.

Marquez said she and other officials will be doing a debrief starting Wednesday night, after the emergency shelters wind down, to look at what can be improved before the next storm. That review will include whether they need more — or fewer — shelter beds.

More beds needed? Or not?

Mutual aid activists — who directly supported unhoused people by providing tarps and other supplies before the storm — say the few hundred extra beds doesn’t match the scale of the need, in a county where over 50,000 people live outdoors.

Central Park Recreation Center near downtown L.A. was one of several locations where the city set up emergency shelter beds during Tropical Storm Hilary.

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Nick Gerda/LAist

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Both the city of L.A. and L.A. County have declared states of emergencies on homelessness during the past year and elected officials have been working to coordinate efforts to address homelessness.

Mayor Karen Bass said in news conferences that the city had opened the most shelter beds for a weather emergency since at least 2020.

The city opened up about 400 emergency shelter beds at eight different sites across the city, Marquez said. At its peak on Monday morning, 281 people were sheltered there, she said. These numbers are part of L.A. County’s total.

As of 5:40 p.m. Sunday, during the storm, two of the city’s shelters were almost full, five had beds available and the remaining city shelter could not be reached, according to City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office.

Carla Orendorff, a mutual aid volunteer who works with unhoused residents in Van Nuys, was shocked by the lack of beds available in L.A.

“That's not a plan. That's not even a response. That's honestly a big ‘F U’ to the tens of thousands of people who are forced to live outside,” she said.

Drenched in the rain for hours before learning of shelter

Some in Skid Row spent hours bracing against the weather.

“I was just standing there soaking in the rain,” said an unhoused woman who asked to be identified as Grace, out of concern a family member might be embarrassed by her situation.

She said the rain can trigger her health problems, which in the past included pneumonia and lupus. And that her belongings — including paperwork and electronics — got soaked on Sunday.

“It could devastate me,” she said of the rain. “The rain depressed me, because I saw an endless night.”

Grace said that late Sunday afternoon, officials pulled up in a van and offered her a place to stay, which she called a “godsend.” Until then, she didn’t know of anywhere she could go.

She recommended that officials try to announce shelter in Skid Row earlier using a loudspeaker on a vehicle, so people have more time to seek shelter before storms.

Asked about critiques of how LAHSA handled the storm, Marquez said the city’s shelter efforts were on a scale that was unheard of, with facilities opening all across the city. In Skid Row, shelters at rescue missions added capacity and gymnasiums opened up. And she said not all emergency beds ended up being used.

“I feel pretty good about the fact that for the first time, as I understand it, the city opened up shelter citywide. And so that meant that people in the [San Fernando] Valley went to shelters in the Valley, people in the Metro area went to the Metro area,” Marquez said.

“We offer many ways in. And with all due respect to the mutual aid societies, they don't work in the city government and don't know everything [that is] is going on.”

As for Grace and the time she stood out in the rain, Marquez said: “We went and got her. So I think that's an enormous success.”

Planning for future storms

“You can always do better,” Marquez told LAist. The after-action debrief will look into that, and will have some written findings, she said.

With weather getting more and more extreme, White – the Skid Row advocate – says he hopes officials take lessons from this storm.

“It's not by accident that this was the first [tropical storm to hit L.A.] since the 30s. I don't think it's the last,” he said.

“Hopefully we can be well prepared for the next one.”

LAist producer Evan Jacoby contributed reporting to this story.