In the heart of Skid Row, the sun is reaching its afternoon peak. The asphalt glistens, concrete sizzles and shoddy tents rustle from a scattered breeze. Clusters of homeless men and women trudge along the downtown street, weaving through makeshift encampments seeking shade from the beating heat. There is a sense of trauma and hopelessness in the air, marked by a suffocating dryness.
But a block away, a very different scene is underway. Here, too, homeless people are gathered, but one wouldn’t know from looking. Groups of women sit in a communal cafeteria, smiling, laughing, and socializing with one another. The kitchen is abuzz with pots boiling and sinks splashing. One woman enters the cafeteria, jet black hair glistening wet.
"How was your shower?" the receptionist asks her, juggling a phone call and a Girl Scout tour that just walked in.
The woman flashes back a knowing smile. "Great, she says. "See you tomorrow." For her and the 200 other women that come through the Downtown Women’s Center every day, it’s not just a pit stop, it’s home.
The nearly forty-year old institution perched in the shadow of Skid Row is an amalgamation of resources for homeless and poverty-stricken women in Los Angeles. Serving nearly 4,000 women a year, it offers three meals a day, onsite medical care, permanent housing and a day center, among other services.
It is meant to serve as first a respite and then a long-term solution to the thousands of women suffering from homeless in Los Angeles.
And since first opening its doors in 1978, the need has only risen. Last month, the City Council declared a state of emergency regarding homelessness, pledging $100 million to combat a civic problem that leaves nearly 26,000 Angelenos living on the streets each night.
But the monetary sources for the pledge in budget-strapped Los Angeles are still a mystery, and no concrete plan to attack the issue has been released yet. For some homeless women at the downtown center, there’s a fear it’s nothing more than empty words and lofty promises.
"The city and county do a lot of talking, and they throw money at homelessness, but there’s no real action," said Taneka Poarch, 42, a former homeless woman who now volunteers at the center. "I don’t see any progress happening."
The city’s move is meant to confront a grim reality: homelessness in Los Angeles has risen 12 percent in just the last two years. The issue has become so extreme that now it might take more than just what the city is promising.
"In Los Angeles County, we’re lacking 500,000 units of affordable and low income housings," said Amy Turk, chief programs officer for the center. "$100 million is important in our first steps in that effort, but it’s not enough; it’s not sufficient." Turk cited it cost the center $35 million to renovate its San Pedro Street location five years ago, one of its two sites in downtown Los Angeles. The six-floor building, which includes a day center and onsite health clinic, currently houses 71 women.
"When you know that we ended homelessness for 71 women with $35 million dollars, it’s going to take many more millions of dollars to end homeless for everyone in L.A. County," she said.
Those who run the center are pushing for the city to emphasis a housing first solution, a practice that works to get homeless people immediately off the streets into permanent housing, rather than graduated transitions from shelters to temporary housing and so on. Pam Wells, a peer leader and volunteer at the center, was homeless for much of the last fifteen years. Now living in her own apartment, she said finding permanent housing through the women’s center was more important than any shelter or employment.
"I always thought, if I had a job, my life would get back to normal, but that wasn’t true," Wells said. "My life was never going to be the way it was." Between its two locations, the center provides permanent housing to 119 women, and it’s rarely a flawless process. Turk said many of the women that come through the center’s doors have chronic mental and physical health conditions, which makes the path toward living independently much more complicated.
"For many people that have addictions, it’s not realistic to expect sudden sobriety," Turk said. "In fact, that could be a set up for losing housing." As the city works to finalize their plan toward emergency shelter, the center has a seat at the table. They are sitting in on focus groups to advise courses of action and are pushing for the money to focus on expanding permanent, affordable housing and mental health care focused on trauma.
But for now, maintaining the community the center has fostered over the past few decades remains the top priority. For those like Wells, it’s the most important thing. "The way I survived — it was something that happened when I came to the women’s center," she said. "It made me feel like something was changing in my life. I didn’t know what, but something was different and I felt better, I felt part of life, that I wasn’t a nobody or invisible anymore."