Skid Row

So on Thursday evening I drove out to Pasadena. Pasadena is a really nice suburb of LA, although a town/city in it's own right.

It is not far from downtown LA, but is miles away in terms of the green trees and detached houses, and cutesy streets with little shops straight out of 50s America.

Anyway I went there to help with the Burrito Project. This is a charity that gets together once a month to volunteer to make up hundreds of burritos and then drive them to Downtown LA and hand them out to the people who live on the streets there in an area called Skid Row.

It being Christmas, many people had the same idea as my friends and I, and there were about 4 times the amount of people there are normally there. It was fun chatting to people and making burritos.

There was an assembly line and I was on the salsa. An unusual choice for me as I don't particularly like it. However I spooned it with the love and attention it needed. I was sandwiched between two very nice men. One of them was a mere 18 years old and was blown away by the fact I was English. He had joined the Marines 4 months earlier, and said he always though the first English accent he would hear would be someone in SAS. 
Of course he didn't say S-A-S, but 'Sass' so I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. When he said it again later and explained it to me, I explained we didn't pronounce it quite like that!!! Bless him. First generation American born from Cuban parents, so I told him all about my grandma living in Cuba till she was 16. He was an absolute sweetheart and I hope he doesn't get deployed to any war torn countries any time soon...but I digress. 

So we made the burritos, bundled up scarves, t shirts and socks that people had bought along and headed out to Skid Row - which takes up approx 50 blocks of Downtown LA. 

I really found out about Skid Row through the movie The Soloist a few years ago. It didn't do much as a movie, despite two solid performance from Robert Downey Jr, and Jamie Foxx, but it piqued my interest enough to find out more about the homeless of LA. Based on a true story, Downey Jr plays a writer on the LA Times who stumbles across Foxx, a gifted but down and out celloist who went to Juillard before suffering from mental illness.

LA is considered the homeless capital of the USA. I can understand why people come here - if you have no home wouldn't you prefer to be homeless in a mild sunny climate, rather than somewhere where it rains and snows? A quarter of a million people will experience homelessness in LA County (so much bigger than just Downtown) in any given year, and approx 51,000 people are homeless on any night. Over half of the homeless population is African American, despite them being only 9% of the make up of LA County. 20% of homeless people are War Veterans. 

So the 60 of us handed out all our booty to the homeless people who made up just a tiny part of  Skid Row. I had no idea that there would be so many tents on the streets. I also had no idea just how large Skid Row was.

What really struck me was the manners of everyone. I wondered if we might get a few snarls or grunts from people as thank yous, but genuinely everyone we spoke to was really polite and friendly. It knocked me for 6. I don't know if my manners would still be in tact if I were living on the streets in a tent. I think I would probably be feeling pretty bloody sorry for myself and rather annoyed with the hand that life had dealt me. If this is how people felt they didn't show it.

Of course we only touched the surface of the problem, but it felt really good to actually go out and do something and in a tiny way for one night make a difference with socks, burritos, water, scarves, t-shirts and fruit. There are many organisations that do stuff like this, along with the various missions that are permanently open, but it still isn't enough, and they always need more donations, resources and volunteers.

Of course I knew Skid Row was down here, but as we walked along I saw Coles, a joint I had been to for cocktails a few weeks ago. It was on the opposite side of the road, and I had come in and gone out a different way. But if I had just turned my head in the opposite direction to which I was travelling I would have seen rows of tents. Literally I was drinking on the boundary of Skid Row and didn't have a clue. 

The differences between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' seem more stark out here. I can't think of an area of London where it would be understood and accepted that every night people would sleep on the pavements and in tents within 50 blocks of the Downtown Area, because they had nowhere else to go.

I have suggestions, but no real answers on how to solve the problem of homelessness.

The night really made me think genuinely how lucky I am, and how lucky all of my friends are. I think it is very easy for all of us to get bogged down in issues that are actually very trivial, and get stressed out by things in our lives that are incidental. Seeing how tough their life is on the streets, re-enforced to me how privileged, fortunate and lucky I am to be loved by my family and many many friends, and have a lovely flat to go home to in London.

This time of year, more than any is a good time to reflect on what fabulous lives we all lead and spare a thought (and some change if you have it!) for people who are less fortunate than all of us.

As for me, I have volunteered to do some homelessness counts on a couple of nights in January, so the authorities have a really clear idea of the numbers of people we are talking about. 

Hopefully it will help them plan strategies for supporting and housing some of these people in the future...