Some Examples

A woman in her 60s who works the night shift at a local grocery 5 nights a week. She’s been trying to get housing for 5 years, spent 2 years in a shelter, but is still waiting for permanent housing. As the sweeps happen early in the morning and often people don’t know when, several times now she’s come back from work only to find all her stuff gone.

A woman whose husband died of cancer while in Bridge Housing. She just got a job at an Amazon warehouse. which she’s very excited about.

A female social worker from Texas. From what we hear, they arrest homeless people and throw them in jail for extended periods of time at $100,000 a year plus, when a trailer in Texas costs $15,000. Everything’s bigger in Texas, but apparently not the brains of the officials in charge.

An aspiring hip hop artist. He works night shifts as a security guard in Hollywood and is working on his art, performing on the boardwalk as much as he can. He says he’d love to be in affordable housing. Venice used to be a community of artists, it is what made it Venice.

A guy in his 60s who is from Venice. Has a deteriorating case of dementia. When the sweeps come, he’s often too confused to secure his belongings and every time he loses them he gets more confused. We’re worried he may wander into the street and get hit by a car.

A pregnant woman in her mid thirties She lost her medication and her phone in a sweep and thus her connection to her social worker. It took us 3 months to get that medication back for her. She went to being suicidal and we had to call an ambulance. In the meantime, we have been able to get her her medication back and she’s improving quite a bit. We’ve trying to get her housed through outreach workers, but thus far no success. We hope she won’t have to give birth living in the street.

A man from Venice who’s 75.

A woman who’s working 2 jobs who was sleeping in her car to save up for rent, but her car was taken. She bought it, but didn’t know it had tickets on it. She didn’t feel save enough to be in a tent, so Garry lets her sleep in his car.

She’d be happy to pay for affordable housing, but driving 90 minutes to and from work would cost her a considerable amount of her salary through gas, not to mention a 3 hour commute for minimum wage is not easy.

There are many people who serve the local community as grocery store clerks, dishwashers, delivery drivers who live in the street or in their vehicles because of the high rent.