The carload of concerned locals, including an Orthodox rabbi, a pizzeria owner and a construction project site manager, peered into an alley in search of signs of life.
“This alley’s actually too thin to live in,” Pico Shul’s Rabbi Yonah Bookstein said as the sedan carrying the group crawled across a narrow alley in a residential block of West Los Angeles, the vehicle’s headlights illuminating only concrete covered in overgrown weeds.
The group was searching for homeless people, vehicles being used as homes, and makeshift shelters and tents as part of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) Greater L.A. Homeless Count on Jan. 28. They were among the 60 volunteers who gathered at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center, one of 150 deployment centers for participants, before setting off on foot and by car into the night.
By the end of the survey, which began at 7:30 p.m., Bookstein’s group tallied seven homeless individuals, including a man who was seated upright at a bus stop near La Brea Avenue and Washington Boulevard and concealed under a blanket, and two beaten-up recreational vehicles that appeared as though they were being used purely for shelter.
Bookstein, whose fellow volunteers included Darren Melamed, owner of the kosher restaurant Pizza World, and Aaron Korda, a Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy graduate now working in construction, expressed optimism about the results of the count.
“While tonight we might not have seen any large-scale homeless encampments in our particular area, we all know they exist here in L.A., and those groups covering those areas are tasked with counting those people,” he said. “The place where we counted was much more sparsely populated, but, we, just getting out of the car and looking around, found [about] 10 people who were either in the streets or in cars or were otherwise homeless.”
About 95 percent of the county’s census tracts were covered during the three-day event from Jan. 26-28, according to LAHSA spokeswoman Naomi Goldman. The rabbi noted how U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funding for local homeless programs is contingent on Los Angeles keeping a count of how many homeless people are here.
“This is a really important part, counting the homeless, because a lot of funds are distributed to programs, services and agencies to help people based on numbers,” he said. “So if we don’t have an accurate count, we can’t get accurate funding.”
In total, the volunteers who turned out to Kaiser on Jan. 28 counted 40 individuals who they identified as homeless and 70 vehicles that appeared as if they were being used as shelter, according to Veronica Rios, a volunteer coordinator of the Kaiser deployment site and a member of Mid City Neighborhood Council.
Rios said this was her first time helping with the count, in which volunteers are equipped with flashlights, maps and clipboards and are divided into walking and driving teams of four. They determine if someone is homeless by gauging his or her appearance, behavior and condition — the “ABCs,” according to a guide given to the volunteers. When counting parked cars, they consider criteria such as if a vehicle is in disrepair, has its lights on inside and has blankets on the windows.
People of many faiths turned out to help, including Tara Hill, a Baptist who is a project manager at Kaiser and has been an employee of the hospital for 26 years. (Many of the volunteers were hospital employees.)
“I like to give back for one thing, and we’re having more and more homeless people [in this city]. I drive to and from work and I see probably 10 people,” she said, seated in the crowd during introductory remarks by LAHSA commissioner Kerry Morrison, as volunteers drank coffee and enjoyed fruit snacks.
Goldman added: “We absolutely had a diverse representation of people all across the county who want to work on this issue, who want to improve the quality of life, and I think the faith-based community was a very strong partner this time around.”
The count is an undertaking involving 7,500 volunteers fanning out across 10 regions of L.A. County. Every city is involved except Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale, which are not under the jurisdiction of the count’s organizer, LAHSA.
This year marked the first time a count took place for two consecutive years; previous counts were held biannually. LAHSA officials hope to hold the count every year from now on so as to have the best possible data on the homeless population. Last year, 44,000 homeless people were tallied; this year’s results won’t be available until May, Goldman said.
“At this point, we’re not going to speculate on the numbers,” she said. “The whole point in doing all this is to get the best numbers and best information we can.”
