LOS ANGELES — If you had driven through Skid Row until about a year ago, Salvadorian immigrant Julio César Rivera would have been one of the thousands of people you would have seen sleeping on the streets.

“If you are lucky you find a blanket, and then for a pillow you can use your shoes, but you have to be careful because they can get stolen,” Rivera said in Spanish.

What You Need To Know

  • The Ron Beasley Wellness Center in Skid Row has one of the first walk-in mental health facilities in the area and provides mental health services in Spanish

  • About a quarter of Skid Row’s population is Hispanic, according to the Greater LA Homeless Count of 2020, although the data does not say how many of them are Spanish-only speakers

  • Only 5.5% of psychologists speak Spanish, according to a nationwide poll by the American Psychological Association

  • Spanish speakers are often forced to rely on translators in order to access mental health services, and this can make accessing therapy virtually impossible

For 15 years, he slept on the streets, using cardboard as a mattress; tents and tarps when he could find them. Trauma and depression fueled his drug addiction. He felt hopeless.

“Sleeping on the streets was the worst. Sometimes I felt like I’d rather die,” he said.

With no money to get help, nonprofits tried to provide him with therapists, but the language barrier made it impossible for him to make progress.

“I had a therapist, but she only spoke English, and I only speak Spanish, so we couldn’t understand each other. We needed a translator, but when there wasn’t a translator available, they would have to cancel my appointment,” he said.

About a quarter of Skid Row’s population is Hispanic, according to the Greater LA Homeless Count of 2020, although the data does not say how many of them are Spanish-only speakers.

“A lot of people like me, that only speak Spanish, don’t have access to therapy,” Rivera said.

But that is changing, because The People Concern’s newly opened Ron Beasley Wellness Center in Skid Row, is one of the first walk-in mental health facilities in the area and part of its focus, is to provide mental health services in Spanish.

The facility has 20 on-site mental health professionals and another 60 that will provide services on the streets.

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Daisy Solis-Montoya is a bilingual associate clinical social worker at the center. Aside from individual consultations, she has started a weekly group therapy session in Spanish.

“It’s really important for these services to be here in the community, especially in Skid Row. Here, there is a population of Spanish speakers from all over Latin America,” she said.

Solis-Montoya said the biggest challenge is finding bilingual service providers. Only 5.5% of psychologists speak Spanish, according to a nationwide poll by the American Psychological Association. So, she hopes more people will enter the profession and help people like Julio Rivera, who, since finding Solis-Montoya, has cleaned up and is now on the waiting list for a home.

“My life has changed a lot,” he said. “I would be on the streets if it wasn’t for her. I don’t know if I would even be alive.”