Help for the Homeless?

By Adeline Bunje ’23 & Veronica Mason ’23

     In an attempt to slow the spread of Covid-19 throughout the homeless population, Los Angeles officials have been moving the homeless into shelters and temporary housing, but they are also cleaning out encampments, sparking recent protests in Hollywood.

     As of 2020, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority estimates the number of homeless in the City of Los Angeles at 41,290. In Los Angeles County, the homeless population is approximately 66,436. 

     According to health officials, the city’s homeless population is susceptible to contracting the Covid-19 virus due to close living quarters in encampments as well as the lack of options to keep safe and clean. Since the start of the pandemic, L.A. city officials have tried to solve this problem by sending medical personnel to encampments and by bringing the homeless to shelters and other temporary housing situations. 

     However, even these solutions cannot accommodate the sheer size of the homeless population, and with the homeless encampments in Hollywood being torn down, many homeless have nowhere to stay. Recently in Hollywood there were protests in an attempt to keep the encampments there. 

     A few blocks from the Immaculate Heart campus, there is a homeless encampment where many people live. The pandemic could be deadly to those who live there, but it is also their only place to stay.

     If the next time a student drives to school and the encampment has been cleaned out, it would be devastating to think about all the people who now have nowhere to go. As a student of Immaculate Heart, what do you feel would be a successful solution for helping the homeless people of Los Angeles during the pandemic?

     If you have an idea for a possible solution to this issue, email either abunje2023@ihs.immaculateheart.org or vmason2023@ihs.immaculateheart.org and your proposal will be published in The Bamboo.

Featured photo from Los Angeles Times.