LOS ANGELES — It was the calm before another major rainstorm in Los Angeles, and members from Ktown for All, a group that provides outreach and services for people experiencing homelessness in Koreatown, were standing in a church parking lot.
In front of the group were heaps of supplies, including tarps, zip ties, rain ponchos, hygiene kits, water and food. Nicolas Emmons, who has been volunteering with the group for the past four years, stocked his wagon with a portion of the supplies and headed out on his route with two other volunteers.
Emmons says they hand out supplies and do outreach nearly every Saturday, but when the city braces for another powerful storm to bring rain, freezing cold temperatures and the threat of flooding and mudslides to the area, their work feels more vital.
“There are actually a lot of people in Los Angeles who might unfortunately get hypothermia when it rains and their clothes and belongings get wet,” said Emmons. “So the rain can be really really difficult for people.”
According to a report from the LA Times, more homeless individuals die of hypothermia in LA each year than in New York City.
Along his route, Emmons stopped to hand out supplies to Matthew, who says he’s been experiencing homelessness for the last five years. Matthew took a rain poncho and noted how it might help him during the next storm.
In severe weather conditions, when these supplies aren’t enough, Emmons says his group will try to secure temporary shelter for individuals like Matthew, who are experiencing homelessness. But during the last storm, Ktown for All says they struggled to access city and county resources.
Volunteers say they were on hold with the county’s 211 hotline for up to four hours, trying to secure a hotel voucher, or transportation, to get some folks to emergency shelters that were 15 miles away.
In at least one case, a volunteer with Ktown for All, who was trying to get a woman into shelter on Saturday before the storm, was told there were no more temporary hotel vouchers available.
Last week, LA City Councilmembers invited representatives with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and the county’s 211 hotline to respond to these concerns.
Miguel Fernandez who oversees LAHSA’s interim housing programs, says the agency’s Augmented Winter Shelter program — which expands the number of shelter beds available during storms by activating temporary motel vouchers — is still being built out. He said now that there is a dedicated team for the program and more funding in the future, the program will work more smoothly by the 2025 winter season.
“There are far more people experiencing unsheltered homelessness than there are resources to meet the needs,” Fernandez said. “The significant demand for these resources has led to long wait times to obtain hotel/motel vouchers.”
During recent storms, LAHSA says they were able to get roughly 1,388 people inside at seasonal shelter sites and through pop-up shelters operated by other service providers.
LAHSA and the county’s 211 hotline say they were also able to offer temporary shelter using hotel/motel vouchers to at least 372 individuals before the storm started, and a few hundred more vouchers were made available when the rain intensified.
“The call volume coming in was quite significant,” said Amy Latzer, who oversees the 211 hotline, with regards to the long wait times. “It was well over 13,000 calls coming in. And with only 13 people, we’re only able to answer about 5,700 calls.”
“That’s a very painful thing to say, and I appreciate that,” Latzer said.
Latzer noted that back in 2023, the hotline highlighted their concerns about understaffing in an after-action report that was sent to several city and county agencies — but they never heard back.
“We shared it with a lot of people. I don’t know if it got to all of your offices,” said Latzer.
“The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Homelessness Solutions has worked to make more hotel vouchers available than previously planned to encourage unhoused Angelenos to come indoors ahead of the storm,” LA Mayor Karen Bass’s office said recently.
But Emmons explained how the city and county leaders need to do more.
“Everyone deserves to have their basic needs met, regardless of everything else,” he said. “Everyone deserves housing and food and health care, and those are just basic human rights.”