More than 40 people showed up at the Hope Lutheran Church on Melrose Avenue last night to help count the homeless in our neighborhood. The count location, one of hundreds around the city, was organized by Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council board members Tammy Rosato and Max Kirkham.
“We had a really great group. We had enough teams to count all the neighborhood [census] tracts, and overall it went very smoothly,” organizer/volunteer and La Brea Hancock resident Tammy Rosato told the Buzz this morning.
“We even rescued a dog,” added Rosato. Apparently, Rosato’s husband Frank and several other volunteers found a King Charles Spaniel running in the streets while driving through Hancock Park. They brought the dog back to Rosato, who was manning the command center.
“We posted a photo of the dog on Nextdoor, to let the owner where we had it since it didn’t have a chip or a tag. Fortunately the owner saw the post and came to get the dog,” said Rosato, adding, “All in all, it was a very productive night.”
Rosato said that most volunteers saw very few unsheltered people. While she doesn’t have the actual numbers from her location yet, she feels like it will still be an increase over last year.
According to Rosato, once the total count is done, LAHSA will conduct extensive interviews with 10 percent of the people in the total count in three locations. Rosato would like see LAHSA interview people in more locations so there’s greater geographic representation of the people that are unsheltered.
This year, the count included vehicles. Rosato explained that this is good because last year there were more than 15,000 families living in their vehicles.
“It’s a very challenging situation, and we all have to do whatever we can to help reduce homelessness. Participating in the count is a very important step,” said Rosato.
Please write your County Supervisor and ask them to open up the 1.2 million square foot iconic LA County General Hospital. We could bring 100 people per week there, every week, and more as we ramped up. Systematically, we’d work on hygiene, nutrition, medical exams and mental illness and substance abuse help. We could find their families, get them jobs, new wardrobe,transition them to the housing that is available depending on their independence capacity. We have everything we need but it’s impossible to get anyone to answer the phone. Try calling 211 or LAHSA. LAHSA pays hundreds of people on payroll to count homeless. And they CAN compel people to leave the street. Did you see DTLA at the Women’s March. Perfectly clean…no homeless…unless you drove two blocks away. We can solve this problem, we have the resources and I know how to put them together.