To tackle homelessness, Los Angeles moves to centralize its response
A staff member for Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath emailed the county's newly established Emergency Centralized Response Center, asking for a cleanup of a reoccurring homeless encampment along a rail line in the San Fernando Valley.
Joshua Chung, an analyst with the Emergency Centralized Response Center, or ECRC, said he quickly got to work.
He contacted outreach workers at nonprofits in the area to compile names of people living at the Northridge encampment. He then coordinated with multiple county departments to see if there was a bed available for those individuals, and if they'd qualify for special services because of health problems or drug addiction.
It was all in preparation for the day in late July when crews would arrive to the train tracks and throw away tarps and tents, and remove a makeshift electrical line residents set up to siphon power from the grid.
Bernice Saavedra said she and her fellow outreach workers at the nonprofit LA Family Housing had around a month before the cleanup to contact residents and find them help. Before ECRC, she said they often had just a few days. Sometimes only 24 hours.
"The more time we have to engage, the more time we have to have thorough conversations," Saavedra said. "There's a better chance of getting people indoors."
L.A. County's Emergency Centralized Response Center launched in January with a goal of better coordinating the various efforts among different government agencies and nonprofits to clean encampments, get people healthcare and into temporary or permanent housing.
The dispatch center was established following a request from Supervisors Horvath and Kathryn Barger and is part of a larger stated effort to increase accountability and coordination when it comes to homeless services, including a new county homeless department that will launch next year.
In the supervisors' motion requesting the response center, they said there previously wasn't one entity tasked "to oversee and direct daily operations for unhoused individuals across Los Angeles County" — no small problem when different county departments, federal agencies, state agencies and 88 cities are involved.
Overlap and gaps in services were common.
When an encampment popped up, officials said multiple agencies would receive requests for service and then act on their own, resulting in multiple outreach teams dispatched to the same location, without knowledge someone else had been there before.
There were also jurisdictional issues.
Sometimes, a state agency would clean an encampment on its property, but not notify the local agency that owned the adjacent property, allowing residents to move their encampment there, said Donald Holt, principal analyst with ECRC.
Now, the county says ECRC overseas more than 150 outreach teams across 11 organizations and coordinates with multiple government agencies that offer housing and conduct cleanups to ensure they are working together.
Horvath said the effort is particularly important given the investment the public has made to get people off the streets and the ongoing budget constraints facing all levels off government.
"I am really grateful for all the ways we will now not only be able to deliver results but stretch those dollars further," Horvath said. "It wasn't until this center came together that that coordination was really put into action in the ways we all expected."
Read more: The real story of how L.A. became the epicenter of America's homeless crisis
Based in an office at the downtown Hall of Administration, center staff handle requests for service from elected officials, the public and government agencies and then coordinate cleanups and work to find housing, as well as needed medical care.
In addition to eight analysts dedicated to managing requests for specific regions of the county, workers at the center include staff from the county's Housing for Health, Department of Mental Health, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and the Department of Military & Veterans Affair, among others.
Chung, who previously worked at the nonprofit LA Family Housing, said finding housing for someone was once like a game of telephone. But with the government agencies that manage shelters now a few cubicles away, things have changed.
"Now I can just go over and talk to our [staff member] Josh... and say 'Hey Josh can you see if this [bed] is available?" Chung said. "That would have taken me six hours."
On a recent Tuesday, staff started the day in a meeting where they updated one another on requests for service, including instances where people were successfully moved into housing and others where the effort was still underway.
Chung told a group of roughly 20 about a person with autism who was anxious about living in a congregate shelter and is requesting a private room. Chung said staff was working on finding such an accommodation and in the meantime has tried to get the person open to living in a shelter that has availability.
Other staff members then chimed in to offer suggestions, including looking for family members or friends who might house them.
Shortly after the meeting, Chung's supervisor Lisa Speights stopped by the cubicle of Maribel Lozano-Hernandez with the county's Housing for Health program to discuss a housing request that came in within the last 24 hours.
"You mentioned that client can't go in until Monday?" Speights said.
Lozano-Hernandez said that yes, that housing site was likely full until Monday, almost a week later, but she had luck elsewhere.
"I called a different site and [they] can take her today," Lozano-Hernandez said.
"Oh nice," Speights responded. She texted the homeless individual's outreach person with an update.
Holt said ECRC also ensures when an encampment is located near multiple jurisdictions, representatives from those jurisdictions are present for cleanups.
"We are bringing them all together," he said. "We are going to have one operation on the same day."
That's what happened recently in the San Fernando Valley. The cleanup would show the benefits of coordination and challenges of making lasting change.
Located along a dirt path on the northside of an in-use rail line, the encampment was on land owned by Union Pacific. Step over the tracks, to the south, Metrolink is the owner.
Three weeks ago , outreach workers from LA Family Housing, arrived to speak with residents, remind them of the following day's cleanup and encourage them to sign forms to get into housing.
Outreach workers had already been on site around five times and had already located housing options for some of the people living in roughly 10 tents and makeshift structures.
Today, among the team there was a substance abuse specialist, a mental health specialist, as well as a worker who previously was homeless to provide emotional support.
Residents Jose Duran and his partner Melanie Morales said they moved onto the streets a few months ago when they couldn't pay rent after Duran fell from a three story building and could no longer work construction.
Outreach workers hadn't been able to find a bed for the couple, but learned information they hadn't before.
Speaking as trains zoomed past, Duran said after he fell from a ladder, his foot became infected and he received skin grafts to fix it, but still needs another surgery.
He pulled up his pants to reveal a bulging ankle and said he hadn't heard from his doctor about when he could get it fixed.
"We have a medical group that can come help you," Saavedra told him in Spanish.
"Thank you," Duran replied.
The next day, workers swept through the encampment and moved people out.
By 10:30 a.m., the encampment was gone. The dirt path on both side of the rail line was clean. According to a county spokesperson, workers removed "four makeshift shelters or tents and ten cubic yards of debris."
Duran and Morales weren't housed that day and said they were told there wasn't beds currently available. While deciding what to do next, they waited in a parking lot behind the dirt path they called home a few hours before.
They said cleanup crews didn't give them enough time and threw out many of their belongings, including a backpack that held a photograph of Morales' now deceased mother.
"It was the only one I had," Morales said, holding back tears.
Rachel Kassenbrock, the county spokesperson, said on the day of the cleanup ten people from the encampment weren't immediately able to be housed, but put on a wait list until beds became available, including Duran and Morales.
In addition, she said four others were moved into interim housing that day, including Jose Quinonez.
The day before the cleanup the 48-year old said he had spent two years on the streets, with drugs and marital problems contributing.
He said he was excited about "starting a new life."
"I want to fix myself," Quinonez said. "None of us want to be here."
Two weeks later, the encampment had repopulated.
Late Wednesday morning, there were about 10 tents and makeshift shelters adjacent to the rail line.
As the temperature neared 90 degrees, one resident sweated as he stripped an electrical wire for copper to sell.
Duran and Morales were there too, asleep inside an orange tent, a black tarp draped over it for shade.
Kassenbrock, the county spokesperson, said ECRC is continuing to work with remaining residents to get housed.
That hasn't yet included Duran and Morales, but Kassenbrock said since the cleanup an additional three people have moved inside.
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘This land's meant to burn': SLO County town is now front line of Gifford Fire fight
The Gifford Fire has inched north day by day toward the town of Santa Margarita — but residents say they don't fear the flames. Over the past week and a half, the small town has suddenly become a hotspot of activity as fire crews from across California assemble at a nearby emergency fire camp where firefighting efforts are staged. With nearly 5,000 firefighters currently working to stop the fire — of which around 3,000 are staying in the fire camp — the normally quiet town has seen a flurry of activity, with fire crews and equipment becoming a common sight on El Camino Real as water-dumping helicopters race overhead to douse the flames. For Santa Margarita resident Shawn Dugan, who formerly worked for Cal Fire as an aerial firefighter, the sight of fire crews rushing to and fro is reassuring in the face of California's largest blaze this year. Dugan said many of his firefighter friends are facing the 130,000-acre fire and are putting their lives — and their best efforts — on the line to keep it from threatening population centers such as Santa Margarita. 'This land's meant to burn,' Dugan said. 'The guys who do fire control here in California are incredibly intelligent.' Schools don't expect major disruptions Dugan, who has two children enrolled at Santa Margarita Elementary School, said he's not worried about the fire's pace, even as its growing smoke plume moves slowly toward the school. 'There's a ton of Cal Fire families here,' Dugan said. 'Cal Fire's simply blue-collar and hardworking and smart, and whatever this community is, it attracts them.' That sentiment was shared by many parents of Santa Margarita Elementary School students, who were picking up and dropping off their kids for the first day of school during a hectic week of fire-related activity. Carley Souza, whose children are enrolled in the elementary's transitional kindergarten and first-grade classes, said the advancing fire has created some day-to-day anxiety but hasn't affected school activity much yet. Aside from disruptions to traffic, Souza said she and her family have welcomed the fire camp's presence near their home. 'Honestly, it's been pretty cool for the kids to watch all of the helicopters,' Souza said. 'Thankfully, we've kind of kept out of their way, so it hasn't impacted us too much.' Santa Margarita Elementary School Principal Marshawn Porter said she and Atascadero Unified School District Superintendent Tom Bennett are monitoring the fire closely, but they are not immediately concerned that it will pose any threat to the school or town. Porter said she remembers the last time a wildfire threatened Santa Margarita around 10 years ago, when her child was attending the elementary school. During that fire, which came all the way up to the boundaries of Santa Margarita, the elementary school delayed its first day of school due to the danger of the 1,000-acre fire, but that's not likely to happen this time, Porter said. 'We would treat it just like a rainy day, and we'd keep the kids in classes because our filtration systems will keep the air quality good in the classrooms,' Porter said. 'If it was so bad that the district needed to take further steps, that would be something that would be decided on by the superintendent and his cabinet.' Business slows as fire camp grows In town, even as a column of smoke advances from the south and fire trucks trek back and forth along El Camino Real, it's business as usual for many of the town's shops and restaurants. The only real change has been the appearance of a pair of pop-up vendors on El Camino Real selling Gifford Fire commemorative merchandise, catering mostly to fire crews looking for a souvenir from their work here. Holly Rae, owner of vintage clothing and decor store The Giddy Up, said while the stress of being in the path of a wildfire can 'feel crazy,' she's glad to have fire crews so close to keep homes and businesses safe. Rae's home on the southern outskirts of Santa Margarita is in the fire's path and has been a growing point of stress as the fire grows. 'It's unnerving because you just don't know if the winds are going to shift or whatever,' Rae said. 'I feel really confident that they have tons of experts working on this and people watching this situation, but it's also kind of crazy having to figure out, 'OK, what should I pack up of my life, just in case?'' Though the sudden appearance of thousands of fire crews has been reassuring, she said their presence hasn't made much of a dent in business at her shop and others like it, with the exception of the nearby liquor store where fire crews go to get energy drinks, water and ice, Rae said. If anything, the ever-changing road conditions and danger of fire have kept customers at home, she said. Still, she said it's been inspiring to see the Santa Margarita community band together in the face of a natural disaster. 'To see how everybody comes together and looks out for each other and their neighbors, I feel really grateful to be here, to have a business here,' Rae said. 'It's a difficult time, but you always see how strong a community is when things like this happen.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
The meaning — and myths — behind 'mankeeping'
The Stanford researcher who helped coin the hot-button term says "mankeeping" is about more than bad partners. Since the term "mankeeping' was introduced in a 2024 research paper by Stanford University sociologist Angelica Ferrara, it has landed squarely in the 2025 zeitgeist. Referring to the emotional labor that women often do for their male partners, the concept has since polarized the sexes, sparked TikTok debates and inspired comment-section screeds. Think: wives who are their husbands' best friends, romantic partners and therapists. After learning about mankeeping from social media or buzzy articles, many women have felt seen, vindicated — finally, a word to describe the hard-to-quantify exhaustion of being in a heterosexual relationship! Many men, on the other hand, felt that they were being unfairly accused of over-burdening their female counterparts — or that normal relationship behavior was being vilified (comments sections offer evidence). For academics like Ferrara and her research assistant, Dylan Vergara, it's a big deal for their study to become part of the cultural conversation. But alongside the hype come myths and misunderstandings. We examined the comments from men (and women) and spoke to Vergara, a 21-year-old (male) Stanford student getting his bachelor's in political science and his master's in sociology, simultaneously, about the meaning of mankeeping. The meaning Mankeeping, as Vergara and his mentor defined it, is an outgrowth of a much older term in sociology: kinkeeping. That term was coined in 1985 by Carolyn Rosenthal, whose research showed that women were far more likely to do the largely 'invisible' labor of household chores, child care and simply keeping the family together and in touch with one another. It's a familiar phenomenon that hasn't gone away and, some research suggests, only intensified with COVID and remote work. Mankeeping is the work of the same nature that women do, but in support specifically of their husbands or male partners, rather than the whole family. Specifically, it's about the way that men '[rely] on women as their predominant source of emotional support, creating undue labor on the part of women,' Vergara tells Yahoo. He and Ferrara have interviewed nearly 100 men from around the world, 'and we see that men far and wide, when naming their top five sources of social and emotional support, label their wives, girlfriends or partners as their number one,' he says. And perhaps more importantly, 'a lot of times men don't even have a top five,' he adds. So instead of having that one friend you call about your romantic woes, that other you text whenever your boss is being difficult and a sibling you vent about your parents to, for many straight men, those people are all the same person: their female partner. 'There often comes an inflection point when I'm interviewing a man when they realize, 'Oh, wait, this is a lot'' that they're asking their female partners to do, says Vergara. Myth #1: Mankeeping is just describing a normal relationship It's a sentiment Vergara reports that he hears repeated frequently. 'We are not saying you shouldn't go to your partner for emotional support. Of course you should,' he says. Instead, the problem of mankeeping arises when men only talk vulnerably with their female partners. 'Because men just tend not to have as many people they can go to for support, it's creating a burden on the women in their lives, specifically,' says Vergara. 'Obviously, communication is key to a healthy relationship. But it's also important to ensure that you're not creating some extra labor on the part of the woman.' And it's not just the mankeeping paper that indicates it's good to have multiple people you can talk to — or that men tend to go to their partner for support first. The Survey Center on American Life found that 85% of married men go to their spouse for personal support before talking to any friends or relatives, compared to 72% of married women. And while emotional connection and sharing are part of good relationships, research suggests that at a certain point emotional labor can exhaust people and put them at greater risk of mental and physical health problems. Conversely, people with more close friends are less at risk for depression, multiple diseases and death, from any cause. In other words, there's evidence to suggest that more friends would be good for men, and distributing the emotional support would be good for their female counterparts. Myth #2: Mankeeping is the result of personal failings It's easy to blame the individual men for leaning too heavily on their female partners, but the researchers think the root cause of mankeeping lies beyond their control. 'We too often view isolation as something that's an individual's fault,' says Vergara. 'But it's more of a structural issue.' Mankeeping, he and Ferrara argue, is a result of the much-talked-about male loneliness epidemic. Vergara points out that there used to be many men-only social spaces: barbershops, men's clubs, pubs, fraternities. 'Although we don't endorse patriarchal structures that exclude women, the degradation of those places has had a key detrimental effect on men's ability to seek out friendships with other men,' he says. What was once a bustling social infrastructure for men's friendships has all but disappeared. 'That's led to this female curation of male social and emotional well-being,' says Vergara. The point then is that men's loneliness isn't simply an isolated failing of each guy, nor even of the male species as a whole. Ferrara and Vergara's research — which started by tracing male friendship and social habits throughout history — suggests that it 'affects women and the entire infrastructure of men and women together,' says Vergara. And, other scholars have argued, while women certainly can (and arguably should) care about men's loneliness problem, that doesn't mean they are responsible for fixing it. Myth #3: Men who respect women never mankeep Vergara is a student of feminist literature (among other things), and describes himself as 'very fortunate' to have grown up with parents who each have their own close social circles. Though he did feel lonely when he first arrived at Stanford, Vergara considers himself highly social and has a robust circle of friends. But after he and his mentor published their paper, one of Vergara's male friends called him out: 'He said, 'You also do mankeeping!'' recalls Vergara. The friend pointed out that Vergara told details of his life to a female friend he'd only known for six months that he'd never shared with him, a friend of several years. 'I was relying on my female friend to be that emotional support. I was being that guy,' says Vergara. The moment inspired Vergara to try to treat both his male and female friends better, by opening up more to the men in his life, and burdening the women less. How does he burden the women less? How does any man do it? There isn't a terribly specific prescription yet (though there are men's retreats, and lots of online support groups to sift through). But Vergara, personally, is trying to build a strong foundation. 'I'm trying to just watch myself for moments when I might be guilty of mankeeping,' he says. 'But the deeper strategy is to formulate and maintain close bonds with people other than your partner.' Vergara doesn't have a partner, but he's building the friend sector steadily and practicing being the first one to reach out to male friends in particular. 'I think that goes a long way to ensuring you have multiple pathways for emotional support, so you're not burdening one specific person. I think that's my path forward,' he says. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
California Lottery Powerball, Daily 3 Midday winning numbers for Aug. 13, 2025
The California Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here's a look at Aug. 13, 2025, results for each game: Powerball 04-11-40-44-50, Powerball: 04, Power Play: 3 Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here. Daily 3 Midday: 1-9-4 Evening: 4-5-1 Check Daily 3 payouts and previous drawings here. Daily Derby 1st:10 Solid Gold-2nd:1 Gold Rush-3rd:9 Winning Spirit, Race Time: 1:43.10 Check Daily Derby payouts and previous drawings here. Fantasy 5 14-18-24-32-33 Check Fantasy 5 payouts and previous drawings here. Daily 4 3-4-0-3 Check Daily 4 payouts and previous drawings here. SuperLotto Plus 12-15-21-26-36, Mega Ball: 11 Check SuperLotto Plus payouts and previous drawings here. Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Desert Sun producer. You can send feedback using this form. This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: California Lottery Powerball, Daily 3 Midday winning numbers for Aug. 13, 2025 Solve the daily Crossword
