No Place To Go: A Majority Of People At Some Local Homeless Shelters Are New Asylum Seekers

One recent night at the Proyecto Pastoral Guadalupe Homeless Project men’s shelter at Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights, residents lined up for their evening meal, holding out plates as workers filled them with black beans, rice, and chorizo with potatoes. Several dozen men sat at long tables, speaking in hushed tones as they ate.

It’s a routine that’s been repeated here nightly for decades: for more than 30 years, the shelter has served what was once a relatively small Latino unhoused population. Many who came here were older immigrants from Mexico who’d spent much of their lives in the U.S. working low-wage jobs.

But in recent months, things have changed.

“We're mainly serving people that come from other countries like Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua,” said Salvador Mendoza, the shelter’s lead case manager. “I will say yeah, 90%.”

The bulk of the shelter’s residents are now asylum seekers who’ve arrived in the U.S. in the past several months, he said. Most are from Venezuela. Some came on buses from Texas; others made it to L.A. themselves, some after being initially bused elsewhere. Many had plans to stay with acquaintances, relatives or other sponsors, but those plans fell through.

“So they come to this cruel reality, you know, of not being able to find a job, not being able to have a roof over their head, not knowing the language, not knowing where to go, what to do, so their only option is just being on the street,” Mendoza said.

A change of plans

Among the men at the long tables that night was Edwad Peña, who’d been in the shelter for one week, and in the U.S. for only two.

After a grueling six-month journey from Venezuela to the border, Peña said he was admitted into San Diego in March via the CBP One mobile app, which allows asylum seekers to schedule appointments with border officials ahead of time. He stayed a couple of nights in a temporary migrant shelter in San Diego and reached out to a friend in Chicago, who sent him train fare to join him there.

Edwad Peña said he left Venezuela because of the unstable political and living situation in the country. He made it to the U.S. in March. After plans to stay with a friend in Chicago fell through, he wound up sleeping on the street in Los Angeles.

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“When he sent me the fare, he told me ‘yes’,” said Peña in Spanish.

But then he received a text with bad news: His friend had spoken to his family, who objected to hosting him: “He told them, and they didn’t want to.”

Not wanting to trouble his friend in Chicago, Peña got off the Amtrak in Los Angeles instead, with nowhere to go.

He said he tried to ask police officers he saw for help, “but almost everyone was gringo. Then, this lady passed by and saw me.”

The woman, who spoke Spanish, offered him a little cash and directed him to look for help in MacArthur Park.

“She gave me $20, may God repay her,” Peña said, “and she told me to look for churches.”

Once in MacArthur Park, though, he heard other advice. Someone there told him to go seek shelter “on a street called San Pedro,” he said. He had no idea he was being directed to Skid Row.

Pena said he spent two terrified nights on the street there. Unable to get into a shelter at first, he connected with some fellow Venezuelans, a family with two children. He remembers one of them, a little girl of around 9 or 10, asking her parents, “Is this the United States?”

Peña said he and the father took turns keeping watch, but “you can’t sleep,” he said. “ You lay down, but you’re always worried someone …will come and hit you.”

He said he prayed for dawn to come quickly. After a couple of days he was able to get into a shelter, while the family left for Florida. He then learned about the shelter in Boyle Heights, where he’s been since.

‘We don’t have a sense of the scale’

Those who work with L.A.’s unhoused population, including a growing number of unhoused Latinos , say it’s been difficult so far to get a sense of how widespread migrant homelessness is becoming in the city.

Beds, cots, and belongings at Proyecto Pastoral's Guadalupe Homeless Project men's shelter at Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights.

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UCLA researcher Melissa Chinchilla, a commissioner with L.A. Homeless Services Authority, said that for a number of reasons, the agency doesn’t collect the immigration status of unhoused people.

“And so we don't have a sense of the scale of the number of individuals that are recent arrivals and showing up within the homeless service system,” Chinchilla said.

That said, LAHSA is aware of the situation, Chinchilla said, and there’s been talk of conducting surveys with homeless service providers to better understand the scale and demand.

It’s been nearly a year since the first migrant buses arrived in Los Angeles from Texas, greeted by a coordinated effort made up of local officials, churches, and immigrant advocacy groups who helped place people with local sponsors, find hotels for those needing temporary shelter, and assist those passing through with getting to their final destination.

Local NGOs said buses haven’t arrived since earlier this year. But many more migrants have arrived since, and not everyone is on the radar. In recent months, a growing number of asylum seekers have entered the U.S. via San Diego, as migrant traffic has shifted there after Texas clamped down on border crossings.

Migrants who arrived in Los Angeles minutes prior disembark a bus to enter St. Anthony’s Croation Catholic Church to receive support services on Thursday, July 13, 2023.

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And some later buses arrived in Los Angeles unannounced, making it harder for service providers to prepare assistance, said Chris Baca, a case manager with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, one of the groups forming part of the LA Welcomes Collective that’s helped bused-in newcomers.

Some people were put on buses to destinations they didn’t intend to go to, and where they had no one to assist them long-term.

“What we've been told from some individuals is that immigration officials just put like, a random address,” Baca said. “And then put them on their way to whatever city without that actually being their intended destination.”

Baca said his organization is presently case-managing roughly 30 people in need of permanent housing, and that they have referred some migrant families with no local sponsors to homeless shelters, particularly Union Rescue Mission, a Skid Row shelter that accepts families with children.

That shelter’s interim president and CEO, Jeff Hudson, told LAist that for the past six to eight months, migrants have made up roughly 300 of the 400 people staying at their emergency services shelter on Skid Row.

Some migrant families have also been camping out in the street nearby. Hudson said it’s not for lack of space at his shelter; he said some may be hoping for a city hotel voucher, which is not granted to people who are sheltered.

Mayor Karen Bass’s office sent LAist a statement saying her office “continues work with our nonprofit partners and looks forward to working with the state and federal government to ensure that funding remains available on this critical issue.”

‘Something that is not working’

Meanwhile, these individuals and families continue to show up at local shelters.

Salvador Mendoza at Dolores Mission said many of the men who used to come here — the former day laborers, the longtime residents — are still out there, and they do still come, but the shelter’s 41 beds accommodate whoever is in need at that moment. Proyecto Pastoral has a small women’s shelter nearby as well. Sometimes migrant families with kids have shown up too, and they’ll refer them elsewhere.

Mendoza added that the migrants who have been heading there aren’t referred by NGOs, but chiefly by word of mouth.

“They start asking people, ‘Hey, I’m homeless, I’m looking for a place to stay,’” Mendoza said. “If they find the right person, they’re going to be guided the right way. If not, sometimes they spend nights on the street, riding buses without paying fare, or on the Metro train.”

As he sees it, local officials need to get a better handle on how to assist vulnerable migrants who have already endured trauma on the way to the U.S.

Salvador Mendoza is the lead case manager for Guadalupe Homeless Project. The organization provides beds, meals, and showers for unhoused individuals, including recently arrived Venezuelan asylum seekers.

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Noé Montes

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“There’s something that is not working,” Mendoza said. “As a city, we were not prepared to start receiving all these people that are just coming in … I feel that all shelters are trying their best to accommodate them, to help them. But I just feel that we were not prepared.”

Edwad Peña says he’s warned friends in Venezuela to think twice about coming, especially with families.

Peña said he has told them, “Don’t even think about it.”

But he plans to stay. Peña is looking forward to his first immigration court date in December, and to obtaining a work permit, so that he can find a job and move out of the shelter.