Wayne and his family lost their apartment in June after falling behind on their rent. They stayed in motels across L.A. county with about 40 days worth of vouchers \u2014 32 days from the CalWorks program and 8 days through 211.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Despite touting progress on helping unhoused individuals over the last year, the city and county Los Angeles has not made progress on helping unhoused families.<\/p>\n
But they haven\u2019t been able to get any more since, and the family shelters they turned to have been full<\/a>. They pawned off some items, like a guitar, to help stay indoors, but that only helped in the short-term. He says it\u2019s been a struggle to find a safe place to sleep with a young child.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first time we slept in the car it was really, really hot, and he ended up with heat rashes all over his back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n They had money saved up<\/p>\n In April of last year, Wayne was laid off from his job in A\/V tech support. His partner has a chronic illness so he\u2019s the sole earner. Up until then, he had saved up for a rainy day situation. He\u2019d invested in retirement, and even had some stock.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a dad now \u2014 obviously it\u2019s such a different way of thinking about the short term, future term, long term,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He had $30,000 saved up, enough to stay afloat for about six months to eight months\u2026 but then, he couldn\u2019t find a job. By November of last year, they had run out of money.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s been awful. Most of the jobs now are like part-time or temporary positions,\u201d Wayne said. The jobs didn\u2019t offer enough to sustain a one-bedroom apartment in L.A.<\/p>\n Wayne’s family got a stack of papers to resources from a recent visit to PATH, a homeless services provider. Providers say they haven’t been able to offer housing assistance to new families seeking help because of recent cuts. <\/p>\n In order to reasonably afford a one-bedroom in the L.A. area, workers need to earn at least $40.02 <\/b>per hour, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition<\/a>.<\/p>\n Aside from the job searching process, Wayne has spent most of his days trying to find a meal or two for his family \u2014 and on the phone trying to find any other resources. He\u2019ll also take his son to the park or the library.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most important thing is trying to make sure he basically is comfortable as much as possible, that he’s [having] fun, that he’s not really understanding what’s going on \u2014 which I think we’re doing a good job [at] so far,\u201d Wayne said.<\/p>\n Trying to find housing<\/p>\n Recently, they went to a family solutions center at PATH, a homeless services provider in LA. There was no housing assistance available, so they gave Wayne a list of other places to try. He and his family had already tried those resources.<\/p>\n Wayne\u2019s car has a stack of papers like these ones, pointing to laundry services and food banks and Medi-Cal resources.<\/p>\n Sasha Morozov, regional director of services at PATH, says that\u2019s what her agency has had to do in recent months, as they\u2019ve been unable to take on new families due to recent funding cuts. She said they\u2019ve had to change their strategy from trying to get people housed imminently to connecting them to other resources \u2014 such as childcare or school-based help.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aThat really has shifted, not because people don’t want to help, but the resources aren’t there. It\u2019s heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n Recent funding cuts include a 71% reduction in state dollars that have helped families <\/a>experiencing homelessness. Morozov said <\/b>she\u2019s worried the situation will get even worse with new federal cuts<\/a> as well as a proposed cut of $300 million<\/a> to county funding for homeless services next fiscal year. LAist reported in August that homelessness among families with children has been rising<\/a>.<\/p>\n Data from 211 LA<\/a> show that calls for emergency shelter from January this year to early September were up by more than 20,000 calls, compared to the same time period last year.<\/p>\n For Wayne and his family, they\u2019re now looking to move out of state. After a year and a half of job searching, he recently got a job offer from a company out in the Midwest. Though he\u2019s grown up in California, he says he has to leave.<\/p>\n He said he was disheartened to see the mayor and other officials tout recent homelessness count numbers<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt like a slap in the face,\u201d he said. \u201cMost people can’t afford a one-bedroom on a full-time job here. There’s nothing to celebrate. Everyone is closer to homelessness than they are to stability. Most people who are working class, especially young people, probably 40 and under, cannot afford a one bedroom<\/a> by themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n His new job is supposed to start in January. He said as soon as he can save up enough money for a security deposit and rent a new place out of the state, they\u2019ll be driving out there.<\/p>\n Wayne says his son doesn’t understand what’s going to happen next, but says he’ll adjust quickly.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as he has, like, ice cream and the snacks that he wants, he’s happy to go anywhere,\u201d he said. \u201cHe loves when we drive around. I already know on the road he would absolutely love to see all the change in the scenery and he’s gonna be excited.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles celebrated progress on homelessness. This family calls that a slap in the face L.A. County is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":401435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,32459,7265,190053,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-401434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-homeless-shelters","11":"tag-homelessness","12":"tag-housing-los-angeles","13":"tag-la","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115605057258130125","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n