Two Stories from Venice Show How Early Support Can Prevent Homelessness
Last month, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to cut $200 million for homelessness spending. This is a short-sighted mistake. We know that upfront assistance to people who are struggling can make the difference between them becoming unhoused or not.
Recently, I spoke with two people in Venice who have been homeless and whose stories illustrate how important early support for people who are experiencing housing insecurity can be.
What Happens When Support Comes Too Late
Tom, 70, lives in a tent on Main Street after losing housing and struggling to restore the Social Security benefits he depends on.
Tom is 70 and lives in a tent on Main Street. He told me he showed promise in middle school:
“My favorite class in school was electronics,” Tom said. “My teacher said that in the 40 years he’d been teaching, he’d never had an ‘A+’ student. He said my soldering was better than his. A lot of my classes in middle school were like that.”
But, he added, “when I got to high school, I was bored. I started flunking.”
In 1974, he moved to Santa Monica and took classes at Santa Monica College; however, he said, “the classes were too expensive, so I stopped.”
Tom started working at the Pier—the games, and the bumper car rides—and also for the city, maintaining parking lots near the Pier. He was barely supporting himself when he caught a break: a local family took him in. “They treated me like one of theirs, even though they had 3 other children,” Tom told me. “I called them mom and dad.”
The family’s business was renting skates and bikes to tourists, and Tom helped with it. The relationship was reciprocal. Years later, Tom said, the couple’s wife “told me that, after [they took him in], her husband never took another drink. So we saved each other.” Tom added, wistfully: “That family was good to me.”
A Life That Unraveled Without a Safety Net
But then Tom lost the support he had come to depend on.
“I was living in the back of the family business until three years ago, when dad died,” Tom said. “The building was taken over by other people, so I had to leave it.”
I asked Tom what he’d been doing for the last few years. His reply: “Kind of dealing with it, I guess.”
Things unraveled from there. He got hit by a car when he was riding his bike, and, when he was in the hospital for a month, Social Security cut him off, because they thought he’d moved. Now he’s waiting for those benefits to resume.
But, even then, he admitted, he’ll find it difficult to get off the street. He hasn’t worked for years—because, of course, he works all day long to survive, in his tent. If the city had interceded and helped Tom earlier, through free tuition at SMC, for example, or through transitional housing after his residence was sold, or, later, even through a more dependable way to access his Social Security benefits, his life might have taken a different turn.
What Early Support Can Change
ME, 24, says support from Safe Place For Youth helped him find stability after leaving home at 18 and experiencing homelessness.
On the other end of this spectrum, we have a young person like ME, who is 24 years old and originally from New York. ME had a difficult upbringing.
“My childhood was a lie,” he said. “It felt like strangers living in a house. We didn’t talk to each other. We didn’t communicate… It felt like random roommates together, in a random building, on some street.”
His parents were not supportive: “I was into the arts, but my parents couldn’t understand it. They didn’t think I was talented enough. ‘You should do something else,’ they told me.”
ME knew he had to leave, so he waited until he was 18. Then, on July 1: “I woke up at 6 am and packed a bag…” He left his family a note: ’Just to let you know, I hate all of you. Goodbye.’”
An intense statement, but ME said that’s just “how I felt.” He added, “I was so lonely. There was no one to talk to. Anything I would say was ‘annoying.’” He elaborated: “Not having normal conversations meant not having normal attachments. Eventually, I came to understand that my parents are just people—just human beings. They make mistakes, like anyone else does.”
ME took a bus to Ohio. Leaving New York, as ME crossed the Washington Bridge, he said he “caught a reflection of myself in a mirror, and I saw that I was smiling, so big. I didn’t realize I was smiling before I saw it in the reflection. I was smiling so hard that my cheeks hurt. I thought, wow, you really needed to leave.”
Those first few nights were difficult for ME: “I slept under the stairs of a stadium parking lot, in a trash bag, and on some cardboard. I wore 4 shirts, 2 pairs of pants, and 2 hats—but I was still cold. When winter got closer and closer, I knew I had to leave.”
The Power of Early Intervention
Eventually, ME made his way to Los Angeles. He opened Google Maps and typed “homeless youth.”
“That’s when I heard about Safe Place For Youth (SPY),” he later recalled. “They gave me some food and let me see a doctor and a dentist.”
He added, “These are all the things parents should help you with.”
SPY proved to be the turning point for ME, supporting him in ways his parents had not, and keeping him off the street. Admittedly, it has not been easy for ME since then, and he’s made some mistakes.
“That first year, I made some money working in fast food, and I got an apartment in the Sawtelle neighborhood, but I spent all my money, so I lost the apartment,” he said. “Things my parents didn’t tell me: You need a good credit score to get an apartment.”
But, thanks to SPY’s early support, ME added, “I’ve been saving money since then, and each new job I get pays me more than the last one did.” He said, “I’m in retail now. It’s a 2-hour bus ride to get to work, but it’s a good job, so I’m okay with the commute.”
After losing the Sawtelle apartment, ME moved into a SPY-sponsored housing facility, but he said, “I’m close to getting my own place again.” Perhaps even more importantly, he said: “I feel stable now—finally. I used to think I could lose everything at any moment. I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel the ground underneath me.”
Prevention Is Cheaper, and More Humane
This is what early, consistent support can mean for our vulnerable neighbors—feeling secure, that everything won’t all fall away in an instant. This is why more, not less, money should be spent on homelessness services.