“The county definitely brings resources,” Uribe said. “That’s very different.”
Some cities are saying no to those resources. Both West Covina and Norwalk city councils rejected the county’s proposal to open a Pathway Home hotel there after community backlash.
But the program has made a big difference in Signal Hill, a small city of fewer than 12,000 people near Long Beach. In March, LA County helped Signal Hill move approximately 45 people from the camp directly into permanent housing.
As a result, the city has achieved the elusive Moby Dick status of “zero functionality.” This means that people who become homeless have the ability to quickly find housing.
“Right after the surgery, it was literally zero because everyone I knew was housed, including people living in their cars,” Signal Hill City Manager Carlo Tomaino said. “It was literally everyone.”
Tomaino said the city began trying to move people indoors a year ago, and the outreach team was building relationships with everyone living on the streets. But Signal Hill doesn’t have its own homeless shelter, so it wouldn’t have been able to house them all without county resources.
Since then, the city has remained in a state of zero functionality.
One couple falls through the cracks. others get housing
Los Angeles County began its Pathway Homes program in August 2023 by clearing an encampment known as Dead End along a cul-de-sac in unincorporated Lenox near the airport. The operation resulted in 59 people being moved indoors.
On a recent Tuesday, more than a year later, that stretch of road was empty and there were no tents in sight.
But nearby, several people had pitched tents under the 405 Freeway overpass. Jennifer Marzet, 52, sat on a milk crate on a hill above her tent, eating Burger King for lunch with her partner, Enrique Beltrán, as cars passed by.
The couple lived off and on in the Dead End encampment for about eight years. But when county officials came to transfer the camp residents to hotels, Marzet said she was told she and Beltran were not on the list. She suspects they probably weren’t in the tent when staff first came to collect the names.
So they still sleep on the streets, blocks from their former camp. They try to get into housing or shelter together, but they keep failing. Marzet said they received housing vouchers, but they expired in January without finding an apartment that would accept them.
She said she was told she could move into a family room at Exodus Recovery’s Safe Landing shelter in February or March. But they were two hours late for their appointment (Marzette said the complexities of life on the street sometimes make it difficult to get to their destination on time) and lost their spots. Then, earlier this month, a caseworker said she would get a room at a local hotel. Marzette said that attempt was unsuccessful, but she claimed it was a misunderstanding during an argument with Beltran, and that police learned she had been arrested for domestic violence and briefly jailed in December. She doubts that.
“The other day I was crying,” she said, recounting all the missed opportunities to have someone help her. “I…felt exactly like that.”
Chris Felts had a much different experience. He had been homeless for 20 years, sleeping on sidewalks, in parks, and on porches when it rained. The 68-year-old tried to get into housing several times, but it always took too long and he became discouraged and gave up. In February, the county moved him through Pathway Home to a hotel in Santa Monica. And in June, he got his own studio apartment with the help of a rental voucher.
Now he’s relearning how to live indoors. He practices cooking and takes care of his health by walking 5,000 to 7,500 steps around his neighborhood every day.
But the best part, Felts says, is that you can finally have some privacy.
“I have a chance to be alone,” he said. “When you’re homeless, you don’t really have that opportunity. There’s always people around you.”
