We’ve all seen it: Tents lining the sidewalks of freeway overpasses; or people drinking from fire hydrants in Skid Row; or an unhoused person forced off the metro with nowhere else to sleep.
These are stark images, and no less painful for the people who endure these conditions while living unsheltered on the street.
The homelessness crisis is not new to Los Angeles, and despite recent and ongoing efforts from city and county leadership, the problem is persistent. There’s been a big push by the L.A. mayor’s office to get people into housing but, while we wait for more permanent solutions, living on the street is often a day-to-day battle against illness and death.
The most recent Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count estimated that 46,000 people are experiencing homelessness in L.A. city alone — and another 9,000 people in other parts of L.A. County. About two-thirds of them are considered “unsheltered,” which includes living in a car or a tent. Of those surveyed, about one in three reported substance addiction.
Living unsheltered can be dangerous and even deadly — and there has been a massive increase in the death rate for unhoused people in the county over the last few years.
The promise of services — whether in the form of permanent housing, treatment for substance addiction, or mental health counseling — cannot help if people aren't alive in six months, a year — or five — to receive them.
While they wait, people have immediate needs: sanitation, bathrooms, overdose-prevention, and access to clean drinking water.
But there’s a big gap: Government agencies in the city of L.A. and L.A. County have not been able to sufficiently meet all these needs, whether due to not having enough money or bureaucratic red tape.
Mutual aid is an old idea, but it’s becoming more and more popular in Los Angeles. Essentially, it means working together to provide essential resources for people in your community — no strings attached.
It’s played a big role in other crises: providing resources during the AIDS crisis, offering legal support for immigrants. During the COVID pandemic, it became a much more mainstream idea around the world.
Some groups using the mutual aid model are official nonprofits. Others are decentralized groups with only a few volunteers. In recent years, especially in L.A., many of these groups have turned their attention toward unhoused communities, offering everything from bottled water to clean needles to backpacks.
They essentially act like a bandaid, providing what's needed in the short-term to keep people alive until the city can provide more permanent solutions, like housing, addiction treatment, and other long-term services.
To get a better understanding of who these volunteers are and what kinds of services they provide, we followed two groups in the field as they distributed supplies: one, a loosely knit team of volunteers, and the other a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid
WaterDrop LA
PUMA, or Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid, operates in the L.A. neighborhood of Palms on Mondays and Wednesdays. Harm reduction is a main priority for the group. That means providing people who use substances with tools aimed at preventing an overdose or an infection. That includes glass pipes, clean needles, Narcan and alcohol wipes.
Someone can’t change their relationship with substance use if they die from infectious disease or overdose before they’re able to.
Ndindi Kitonga, the group’s founder, says PUMA’s approach to harm reduction is backed by scientific data. “We know that when people suffer from infected wounds, or from overdose, this doesn’t make people’s relationship with substance use better,” she says.
Kitonga says that many unhoused people they’re working with are interested in substance treatment. But they say it’s not easy for them to access.
“And of course,” she adds, “someone can’t change their relationship with substance use if they die from infectious disease or overdose before they’re able to.”
Jesse Lloyd Goldshear, a volunteer with the Monday crew and a postdoc researcher studying public health at UC San Diego, agrees.
“Giving out harm reduction supplies, it’s, I think, become kind of a priority for most of the mutual aid groups,” Goldshear says.
PUMA is not a registered nonprofit and Goldshear believes that its decentralized, grassroots approach makes the volunteers more flexible to the evolving needs of the communities they serve.
In Palms, underneath the overpass near Venice Boulevard and Globe Avenue, Goldshear and Kitonga hand out most of the harm reduction supplies. Another volunteer, Sebastian Hernandez, brings carts to load all the materials, and mother-daughter duo Pat and Eve Garcia bring about 100 homemade burritos and a large baggie of hot-sauce.
Many of the people experiencing homelessness whom we spoke to say that they've come to rely on this assistance.
“They save lives,” says Nono, a long-time resident of the encampment. “And that's a big deal. That's really hard to say in homeless communities.”
Harm reduction has been proven to reduce the risk of overdose, infections and overall fatalities related to substance use. It’s now being recognized more broadly as a solution to the nationwide opioid crisis. Last year, President Joe Biden called for more funding for harm reduction and the National Institute of Health launched a program to test the effects of community-based harm reduction strategies like those used by PUMA.
Outside of her tent, Nono explains that the morning we met, there had been a city sweep of the area. These types of sweeps happen throughout L.A., and usually involve removing all belongings from the sidewalk and hosing down the space.
The city is required to post signs notifying people of what’s to come, but Nono says she didn’t know. When the sweep began at 6:30 in the morning, she texted one of the volunteers, Sebastian Hernandez.
“I was like, ‘Hey Sebastian, sorry to text you so early, but it's clean-up and I don't want to lose my tent again.’ He immediately texted me back, and he reached out to the rest of the PUMA team to see who could help me,” Nono says. “Things like that are priceless.”
Kitonga, PUMA’s founder, says their philosophy of harm reduction extends beyond substance-use. “Harm reduction is minimizing violent things happening to us and our friends. It can be things like needles, but it can also be a sweater, or maintaining relationships with people who have mental health issues,” she says.
“We understand a lot of what we do, day-to-day, is survival work and filling in the gaps,” she adds. “But we think of ourselves as a network of care.”
WaterDrop LA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that operates in downtown L.A.’s Skid Row. The organization was founded by five women, all USC students, in the summer of 2020.
Aria Cataño, one of the cofounders, says WaterDrop LA emerged out of an existing group that provided food in the area, when, one day, they realized they didn’t have enough water to give out with the food.
“I started calling the missions and other organizations that are operating in Skid Row to see if they had any plan for providing water, especially during COVID. And they didn't,” Cataño says.
Now, WaterDrop LA has 10 core members who organize the weekly distribution of more than 2,000 gallons of water. About 40 volunteers join them every Sunday at 11 a.m., meeting up in a USC parking lot where they break off into groups to bring water to every corner of Skid Row.
Even with their efforts, water access is still a major, and undercovered issue in Skid Row. “A lot of people don’t realize that unsheltered people in L.A. don't have access to water,” Cataño says.
A study published this year in the International Journal for Equity in Health found that about 30% of Skid Row residents had limited daytime access to drinking water, and that number jumps to nearly 70% at night.
The real-world consequence of that means many people living in Skid Row rely on fire hydrants when they — or their pets — are thirsty.
“People crack them and then they'll drink this water that sprays out,” says Sade Kammen, a longtime volunteer with WaterDrop and other mutual aid groups in Los Angeles. “It is technically potable water, but we don't recommend it,” she adds.
Dwight Joseph Gaines has lived on Skid Row for seven years and says, even with more city services like relatively new refresh spots, it’s not enough to keep him off the fire hydrant.
“It's one of those things you have to sacrifice to live, to survive,” Gaines says.
Hawk, another Skid Row resident and military veteran, agrees. He shows us how he retrieves water from the hydrant near his tent, using a stolen utility wrench he says he bought for this purpose.
You need water for everything, right?
Hawk uses the large, hexagonal wrench to twist open the valve, letting a torrent of water gush into a 5-gallon bucket. “This is what I do every day,” Hawk says.
In addition to the hydrant providing drinking water for himself and his dog, Hawk says he uses that water, along with water bottles from WaterDrop LA, to sterilize his hair-cutting equipment. Hawk operates a one-man barbershop outside of his tent.
“That's why water is so important to me. I have to keep everything clean,” he says. “Them bringing out water, it assists us in a way that you just can't explain. You need water for everything, right?”
Hawk shuts off the valve, slides the wrench through a loop on his hip, and drags the bucket of water to his tent.
About the WaterDrop volunteers, Hawk says, “Whether we're important to other people or not, those people come down here on their own.”
