On the streets of Westwood: stories of the homeless

One a.m. hits hard for those who live on a corner in Westwood. After spending a good portion of the night looking for food, many of the Village’s homeless wander through the streets searching for company or a doorpost to call home for the night.

Among the upscale shops and restaurants of Westwood, there lives a small underground community of homeless people – as diverse as the student body with whom they share the streets.

Westwood business owners often complain about the homeless, who they say are growing in numbers in this area. In fact, the homeless situation has been a key topic in numerous Westwood business and community organization meetings lately.

But potential harm to business and property values is just part of the story. If asked, the 20-30 homeless people in Westwood can each give richly colored narratives about their lives. Some speak about their families. Some speak extensively about politics – ranging from domestic issues like racism in the United States to foreign concerns such as the situation in the Middle East.

Within a half mile of campus, there is a middle-aged man hunched over a trashcan, a pan-handler with alcohol on his breath who leaves the area as soon as the students do, and an elderly woman wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket, sitting quietly on a blue bench.

Gino Veintimilla, who says he has been homeless for the past 20 years, approaches this woman with a pizza box in his hand. We got lucky tonight, he tells her as he gives her half of his food. Their “luck” is that the food they shared was still warm when it was given to Veintimilla.

The causes for homelessness are as varied as the homeless themselves, and include mental illness, job loss, lack of affordable housing, substance abuse, abandonment, lack of education, years of institutional living, family deterioration and domestic abuse, according to Shelter Partnership, Inc.

But all the homeless share a lack of consistency and stability. A transient population, they are always on the go, usually not knowing where they will get the money to survive.

For Veintimilla, this means 20 years of constant moving and wandering. He finds a place to sleep on the ground outside of a church on Wilshire Boulevard, but is told to leave at 6:15 the next morning. Later that day, he passes by a donut shop on Little Santa Monica that he says used to give out day-old donuts for free. But lately they, too, have been kicking him out, he says.

“If there was only one homeless person, it would be OK, but there are too many of us,” he says.

Veintimilla excuses himself and walks to a nearby alleyway to relieve himself. Many shops won’t let him use their bathrooms either.

And so, Veintimilla, and thousands like him, live day-to-day, constantly wandering.

Robert Smith relates to this lack of stability and consistency well.

Fifteen miles away on Skid Row, he is now busy as an administrator at the Union Rescue Mission, which offers services to the homeless – the largest mission of its kind.

But it wasn’t that long ago that he was on the other side of the building, amid the rows of cardboard boxes, dilapidated apartment complexes and hopeless faces of East Los Angeles’ most crime-ridden section.

Smith was among the nearly 236,400 people who are homeless over the course of a year in Los Angeles. This includes the up to 84,000 homeless people living on the streets of Los Angeles each night.

Though he worked from the age of 16, a drug addiction left Smith homeless. When he ran out of money, he resorted to stealing and hustling on the streets to fuel his habit.

“On some days, I wouldn’t have enough money for food, but I’d spend a couple hundred on drugs,” Smith said.

“A desire to live” brought Smith off the streets and into a program at the Mission.

There, Smith joined one of the Mission’s programs geared toward taking homeless people off the streets for good.

After an initial nine-month program where he took classes, learned marketable skills, and most importantly, stayed free of drugs and alcohol, he entered a transition phase where he stayed in the Mission, but learned how to go out in the world once more.

Now, a happier Smith says he has finally gotten his life back and found peace within himself. Instead of living each day as it comes, he has a steady job and concrete goals – including a desire to start a family sometime in the near future.

He wishes that all the people living the way he used to would find help within the Mission, but added that “it’s an individual choice.”

For one reason or another, many people don’t want to enter a shelter or seek help from a mission. Some homeless people say they are skeptical about the effectiveness of their programs. Some police and mission workers say that people with drug addictions may not be ready to enter the drug/alcohol free zone of a shelter.

And so, even with help so close by, many of the homeless live in tents propped up against the walls of the Union Rescue Mission instead of in beds within them.

Though the mission does not perform outreach into the community, it will never turn away anyone seeking help, said Karen Kilwein, the Mission’s Director of Public Relations. Alongside an intense program aimed at getting homeless men off of the street – there isn’t enough money for a comparable women’s program – anyone can use the Mission’s emergency services where men, women and accompanying children can get a bed, meals, showers, clothes and medical care.

According to Michael Moore, the senior lead officer of the West Los Angeles Police Department who has dealt extensively with the homeless in Westwood, resources are available for any of the homeless “to get their act together.”

Meanwhile, throughout the city, many people are still on the streets.

One man in Westwood says he “rolls with the punches,” and does whatever he needs to do to keep money in his pocket.

Hardened by life on the streets and in prison walls, he says he doesn’t expect anyone – including the government – to help the homeless. He says he has lost faith in everyone and everything except God.

“You want to know why we are here?” he asks, getting up from a bench outside of Rite-Aid.

He starts singing, “Because no one gives a ... about us.”

But his song soon turned him to tears as he walked away. Moments later, he walked back to the bench, and back on the street.