Little devil inside skidrow9/4/2023 A man she had lived with at a nearby single room occupancy died in October, and she could no longer afford the rent. She wore large, men’s sneakers on her feet, and a light blue floppy hat on her head to hide her eyes, so people couldn’t see her cataracts. One afternoon, Donna Barkauskas rested outside the Midnight Mission, with two big duffle bags beside her. There is always a shortage of beds, especially for women. If not, they’ll sleep in a crowded courtyard, or a tent or doorway. Others sit on their suitcases or bags in front of the cluster of shelters hoping to secure a bed for the night. On any given morning, around the homeless missions, women, some barefoot because they’ve traded their shoes, sleep alone and exposed along street curbs. Few women like to admit they use buckets in their tents.Ĭounty officials earlier this month were asked to dig deeper into Measure H funding to support a minimum of 200 crisis housing beds for women. It’s for women who sleep in tents and are too afraid to use a public toilet in the middle of the night, she said. She held up a prototype of her own invention: an adult diaper with three maxi-pads taped inside, for extra absorbancy. “A lot of us invent ways to take care of ourselves,” said an older woman one morning as she folded her clothes inside a laundromat run by the nonprofit Lamp Community on San Pedro Street. Most of the women of skid row - 60 percent - are 50 years old and older.More than half of them - 55 percent - said finding a clean, safe restroom was difficult.20 percent reported trading sex for money, alcohol, drugs, shelter or food.40 percent of the women who sleep in shelters or on the streets report they had experienced physical or sexual abuse. Almost always, those ghosts leave trauma, exacerbate mental illness, or fuel drug addictions and drinking.Ī recent study conducted by the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition found that about 68 percent of the 371 women surveyed on skid row are survivors of child abuse. Skid row is a man’s world not just visually, but because most of the women who live on its streets or sleep in its shelters almost always bring the ghost of a man with them: the father who abandoned them physically or emotionally, the husband who beat them, a boyfriend who sold them, a stepdad or an uncle or a family friend who touched and used them as little girls. Related Story: 3 reasons why so many are homeless in LA County.Countywide, nearly 18,000 are women, a 16 percent increase.Īround skid row, long considered ground zero for transient men who fall on hard times, women who can’t find shelter sleep within the rows of tents and amid a mishmash of sagging tarps, piles of soiled clothes and pieces of old suitcases lining the sidewalks. Homelessness surged across Los Angeles County’s neighborhoods and suburbs this year compared with 2016, with more than 58,000 people sleeping on sidewalks, in their cars, or along the Los Angeles River, according to results released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. But those numbers keep rising, especially among older women. About 30 percent of an estimated 2,000 people who sleep on skid row’s streets or shelters each night are homeless women.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |