Across the country, one in 10 young adults aged 18-25 experience some form of homelessness in a given year. An estimated one third of them live in California.
Were California its own country, it would have the fifth largest economy in the world, just behind Germany and ahead of the United Kingdom. It’s a “nation state,” as Governor Gavin Newsom often refers to it, that occupies an outsize influence on the the nation as a whole; not just writing the television shows and movies people watch, or inventing the technologies in their pockets, but also growing and producing a substantial portion of the fruits, nuts and vegetables in their supermarkets. For better and for worse, some experts have pegged California as being, politically, 15 years ahead of the rest of the nation, and an indicator of forthcoming national trends.
As the country grapples with the questions surrounding reopening and contemplates what it might look like to return to some semblance of normal life — if we can safely return to some semblance of normal life — so, too, are some of its most vulnerable young people. And for those in California, that means navigating a global pandemic amid the state’s long standing homelessness crisis.
“I thought it was a joke,” Lauren Bridges told Teen Vogue, when she first started hearing about COVID-19. Prior to being placed in housing last year through Youth Emerging Stronger, an organization offering comprehensive support services to homeless and foster youth in Los Angeles County, Lauren, 20, and her girlfriend had been living together in their car. Prior to that, the two had spent time living outside, sometimes sleeping on the beach.
Lauren saw false claims about the novel coronavirus on social media — one video she saw claimed the virus turned an infected person’s blood purple — but when she saw an article that someone had contracted the virus in Orange County, where her sister lives, it made her pause. “After that I got more worried...like, to catch this would be something serious.” When we spoke, Lauren was awaiting the results from her own COVID-19 test, after another family member she had been in contact with tested positive.
According to the most recent data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are approximately 151,278 unsheltered and sheltered homeless people across California, the highest rate of any state in the country, and over 86,000 more than in New York, the state with the next highest rate of homelessness. Of those in California, an estimated 12,396 were unaccompanied homeless youth in 2018. Across the country, Black, Latinx, LGBTQ and pregnant or parenting youth are disproportionately at higher risk for homelessness. Stay-at-home orders have upended people’s lives and livelihoods across the United States and around the world. But for homeless youth, these orders mean something entirely different.
“One of the things we’ve learned through...this crisis is how unprepared we were for something like this...Our service system was just stretched as thin as it possibly could be,” Robin Petering, founder and senior researcher at LensCo., a Los Angeles-based research firm that focuses on homeless youth, told Teen Vogue.
Bill Bedrossian, CEO of Covenant House California, which operates three shelters in the Bay Area and Los Angeles for homeless youth ages 18-25, and another in Oakland for ages 13-18, notes that while his organization has not had to lay off any employees or reduce their services, many other organizations in the state have, creating an increased demand. “We have more young people coming to us than ever,” Bedrossian said, “especially...for just the basic needs and necessities.”
For homeless youth in housing, being confined indoors may prove challenging in other ways. As at Covenant House, youth in shelters must often remember to wear masks in communal spaces. Petering points out that a shared kitchen can present a danger in and of itself, and not knowing how to cook, or not having sufficient pots and pans, may further complicate preparing food or groceries. There are other dangers, too. Since the start of the pandemic, Bedrossian reports that, based on his observations, sexual and labor trafficking has “blown up” and that his staff have begun walking the block around their respective shelters to look out for potential traffickers.
Per the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, unaccompanied homeless youth across the country are 50% more likely to be unsheltered than all people experiencing homelessness. In California, an estimated 80% of homeless youth are unsheltered, as of 2018. For those in the most dire of circumstances, the closure of communal gathering places, such as libraries and churches, have made it a struggle to find a place to even charge their phones, a critical social and informational lifeline, not to mention to take vitally important hygiene measures. “Showers, clean hands, personal protective equipment, access to that for young people is very challenging right now,” Jevon Wilkes, executive director of the California Coalition for Youth and himself a survivor of youth homelessness, told Teen Vogue. Preliminary data from two studies recently conducted by Petering’s firm showed that 27% of homeless youth surveyed in Santa Clara County, which includes the city of San Jose, reported it was extremely hard for them to access clean water and soap to wash their hands throughout the day. In Los Angeles, 19% of homeless youth surveyed rated accessing clean water and soap as a 10 on a 1-10 scale of difficulty.
At the beginning of April, Governor Newsom launched Project Roomkey, making California the first state in the nation to secure approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house members of its homeless community in empty hotel and motel rooms. The program, which aims to secure 15,000 hotel rooms across the state to help house the homeless, has garnered national attention, but has come under fire from local governments and residents resistant to the plan, as well as from activists who say that its rollout has been delayed. And, while activists acknowledge homeless youth are not Project Roomkey’s target demographic, there is concern about whether the novel program is sufficiently reaching the entire homeless population.
Wilkes, at the California Coalition for Youth, spoke directly about his concerns.“Project Roomkey is going to become the projects...To me, growing up and knowing people who live there, it was basically where you dropped them off somewhere...and you leave them and there you go.” Wilkes anticipates it will be the nonprofit sector that steps in to not only ensure that people are not only able to secure temporary housing during the crisis, but create plans for people to move into permanent homes.
Community leaders are also expressing worry as to whether the program is sufficiently reaching young people. In a May 11 letter submitted to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Coalition for Homeless Youth, a group of 40 organizations serving the city’s youth homeless population, including, Lens Co, Covenant House, and the Los Angeles LGBT Center, raised concerns that only 2% of those participating in the initiative in Los Angeles were young people. According to the letter, between 2018-2019 the city saw a 24% rise in youth homelessness with 67% of those young people reported as unsheltered. According to a 2019 report compiled by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, Los Angeles has the highest rates of homelessness in the state, and second in the country overall.
The risk of homelessness is only growing. Money was running dry for Nick when he found a job during the pandemic at a California grocery store. Nick, 20, who is currently living at a shelter in the greater Los Angeles area , says he was directed to go to a training class with more than 30 people in Downtown LA. He refused, citing guidelines issued by President Trump to limit gatherings to 10 people or less and directives from the state to limit gatherings. “I didn't want to get sick...It's not just affecting...the older generation, it's everybody if you're not careful. I can't be doing that,” Mapiz said. When he refused to attend the training session, he was fired.
A recent report from UCLA predicted that the state would face two years of high unemployment and that burden would fall disproportionately on young adults, Latinos, and those working in the personal care, janitorial and hotel industries. The same surveys conducted by Petering’s firm among homeless youth found that 49% of those surveyed in San Jose reported that employment was their biggest concern about the impact of COVID-19, while 35% said the same about housing. 30% of youth surveyed in Los Angeles reported being unemployed in the wake of COVID-19.
Bianca Christian, program manager of the California Youth Crisis Line, told Teen Vogue that, “With any of the services that we open we really need to look at providing very strong trauma-informed approach and trauma-informed care, because this has been a huge traumatic event for a lot of us...We need to be prepared on all levels of care and service that we are giving people the safest, and maybe even in some cases the softest place to land.”
“I have lived experience through a lot of traumas,” her colleague, Wilkes, agreed. “This is very, very different and it's very, very challenging.”
Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: The Coronavirus Pandemic Demonstrates the Failures of Capitalism
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