Hilary took L.A.'s scattered homeless population by surprise, says volunteer

As It Happens6:01Hilary took L.A.'s scattered homeless population by surprise, says volunteer

People living on the streets of Los Angeles were not prepared for tropical storm Hilary, says an outreach worker who blames it on the city's controversial approach to tackling the homelessness crisis.

Hilary, which wasdowngraded to apost-tropical cycloneon Monday, crossed from Mexico, where it killed one person, into the United States on Sunday afternoon, becoming the first tropical stormever recorded in San Diego County andthe first to pelt Los Angeles County since 1939.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Mondayfor much of Southern California, where flash flooding is still possible, and U.S. President JoeBiden ordered federal agencies to move personnel and supplies into the region.

The storm is one of several climate disasters to wreak havoc across North America this summer, including a deadly hurricane-fuelled wildfire on the Hawaiian island of Mauiearlier this month,and a recordwildfireseason in Canada, with major evacuations underway in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories.

• Track wildfire smoke, active fires and air quality across Canada

Hilary was particularly brutal for the Los Angeles county's 75,000 homeless people, many of whom have scattered to low-lying areas to avoid police and government sweeps of encampments, say advocates.

CBC has reached out to the city for comment.Mercedes Mrquez,chief of housing and homelessnessin the mayor's office,told USA Today the citybegan storm outreach to unhoused people inlow-lying areason Friday.

Andreina Kniss, a volunteer with the homeless outreach group Ktown for All, spoke to As It Happens guest host Katie Simpson on Monday. Here is part of their conversation.

Tropical storm Hilary has passed through Los Angeles. What is the city looking like right now?

There are a lot of collapsed tents. So a lot of people basically gave up on keeping their tent dry because the rain got so bad overnight that they, you know, have abandoned their tent and sought refuge elsewhere.

[There are] lot of people that are wet. Even if they stayed in their tent and, you know, tried to keep dry, the water penetrates very easily.

So we were out there replacing clothing, replacing blankets, trying to warm people up this morning.

What are you hearing from people who didn't have access to housing during this storm?

The vast majority of people had no outreach, so the vast majority of people did not know the storm was coming as of Saturday,when we were out there giving people tarp and tents to prepare with.

And a lot of people didn't know where they would even start to look for shelter. They hadn't heard from any official sources. No one was out there doing outreach, informing them of their options if there were any options.

A lot of the help was our direct aid, and what we had heard to inform people about. So we have friends that work for shelters who had told us they had some openings and we were telling people about those. But we didn't get any official, you know, guidance or aid out there.

How did people react when you were doing that outreach and letting them know that the storm was coming?

A lot of people immediately got to work, you know, fortifying their tents, putting the tarp up as soon as we gave it to them. We told them, like, if they got too bad, that they should call 211, the official services hotline here in Los Angeles. And a lot of people responded with skepticism that that would lead to any help.

In Los Angeles, there are concerns among advocates among how the city has treated the unhoused population when it comes to sweeps in the city targeting unhoused people. What are the concerns when there is a major weather situation like this in the context of those sweeps?

Los Angeles has really aggressively changed to a policy of criminalization with the unhoused recently. There's some areas that we service that get swept every week. So that means every week police and sanitation show up and throw people's stuff away. And that, in itself, forces people to seek refuge in more desolate locations and more dangerous places as far away from being noticed as possible, just looking for some stability.

People who otherwise we could reliably find for years in their little communities now have to move constantly. Cellphones get thrown away, ID cards get thrown away, birth certificates get thrown away, which are like the basics that you need to access any services.

WATCH | Hilary hits California:

Tropical storm Hilary batters Mexico, California

12 months ago

Duration 2:12

Tropical storm Hilary battered parts of Mexico before moving into Southern California, bringing heavy rain, flooding and the potential for devastating mudslides in some regions.

So when you're dealing with a significant issue like a storm that is expected to have some significant consequences, how much harder does it make your job to deliver outreach?I

It makes it extremely difficult. We can't reliably [know] which encampments are going to be there or not anymore. Sometimes we show up and we're like, "Well, last time it was completely empty. I'll take two or three hygiene kits with me and check it out." And there's 40 people there.

And sometimes you show up expecting those 50 people and the entire street is desolate because sanitation and the police just came by and threw everything away. So it's made our job predicting demand for our materials hard.

It's made it impossible to connect people with social workers and doctors and services like that. Because it takes the city weeks to send a social worker out. And in between those weeks that the social worker is coming out, two or three sweeps happen and people are forced to move along.

Which means that people who we could [usually tell], "Hey, can you tell your camp that there's going to be a storm coming?" before, we can't do that anymore. The cellphones don't exist or they're forced to keep moving so they can't build reliable communities where they communicate with each other. It's become a very unpredictable environment out there.

For yourself, personally, what has it been like to sort of experience the past couple of days?

It's really sad. The desperation this morning for fresh clothes, because people have been sitting in their [wet clothes] for 24 hours, is really inhumane.

We live in one of the richest cities in the world and we have 40,000 people out here on the streets living in disgusting, you know, just deplorable conditions right outside of all our homes and buildings.

Thejuxtaposition and witnessing such revolting conditions that people are forced to live in is really heartbreaking.