LOS ANGELES — Statistics from LA County show the homeless crisis in San Gabriel Valley is worsening, but a Baldwin Park program hopes to change the situation.

Esperanza Villa is a tiny home village for 25 formerly unhoused people. It’s been a year and a half since the pilot program launched and now it’s serving as a prototype for other cities looking for new ways to address this crisis. 

As he unpacks the last of his clothes in his new home, Joe Quijas thinks back to just last month when his entire house was the size of the closet he has now. He’s overcome with emotion as he moves in to the apartment he’ll call his own.

“It’s hard for me to believe. I have more room than I ever dreamed of,” Quijas said. 

But even if that wasn’t the case, Quijas was just as grateful. He was among the first residents to move into San Gabriel Valley’s first tiny home village back in Nov. 2021.

They gave him the first bed he had slept on in nearly a decade.

“I was a long time without anywhere to live, so I just thank God that my turn came up,” he said through tears then. 

Living in Esperanza Villa was only supposed to be temporary, but three months turned into a year and a half as he waited for housing.

In the meantime, Quijas says he showered and ate three meals a day and slowly felt like himself again.

The 71-year-old physically stands taller now. He had been living in his truck for over 8 years before moving in to the tiny home village.

“I’ve come a long way from sleeping in that front seat, to where I live now,” Quijas laughed. 

Marisa Crater, executive director of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments, says Quijas is one of 47 success stories in the three shelters now housing over 150 people.

She says they address several regional challenges and formed a housing trust to develop affordable housing and shelters after seeing the homeless numbers continue to grow.

The 2023 count showed just over 5,000 unhoused people are living in San Gabriel Valley, a 7.5% increase from 2022. 

But Baldwin Park, where Esperanza Villa opened as a pilot program back in 2021, saw a decrease by more than half in its homeless numbers during that time. Since then, Crater says they’ve opened two more shelters in San Gabriel Valley.

“The bigger picture is that I very much know that we’re keeping people alive,” Crater explained. “There’s people that we, if we didn’t get them into these shelters, although the goal is to get them permanently housed, they would die on the street.”

She says wrap around services helps to remove each resident’s individual barriers. Some are getting consistent mental health counseling to prepare them for independence, while others just need assistance getting the proper documentation for apartment applications.

Though the target stay for residents is just three months, for most like Quijas, it’s been a much longer process.

Still, he says the village had everything he needed to get back on his feet.

“I couldn’t ask for anything better. Being alive, being healthy, that is number one. That is the main thing,” he said as he settled in, for good this time,” he said.