When the landlords of Pamela Walls’s low-income apartment terminated her lease in December 2001, the back then 42-year-old actress essentially had four options: find a new affordable housing unit, fight the eviction in court, move back in with her mother or become homeless.
She tried the first, yet dropped it after finding out that the waiting list was two years long. She tried the second, but a judge denied her claim. She tried the third; her mother wouldn’t take her back in. She’s always been the “black sheep” of the family, Walls says. Finally, after she had moved from motel to motel for a couple of months but eventually ran out of money, she ordered her 15-year-old son a cab to bring him to her mother’s house, packed her few belongings in a shopping cart and settled for the last option — being homeless.
For the next five years and three months, she would live all around Los Angeles, in parks, under bridges, in shelters and on more than 35 different couches friends and family members offered her.
Walls lives in stable housing now, she’s taking art classes and working on her career as an actress again. But it took her much effort, help and patience to get back on track. For Los Angeles’s ever-growing homeless population, the future looks rather grim instead. Despite Mayor Eric Garcetti declaring a “state of emergency” for the city’s homelessness problem in September 2015, little has changed.
In the city of Los Angeles alone, the number of homeless has, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) annual homeless count, jumped from 25,686 to 28,464 in one year alone. That’s an 11 percent increase.
Listen: Pamela Walls Tells Her Story
The most notable shift, however, was to be observed within the gender distribution of the population: Women now make up about one-third of the city’s homeless — they’re the fastest growing share of L.A.’s homeless population.
“Homelessness doesn’t discriminate anyone. It can happen to anyone from men to women, rich and poor and any race,” says Christina Verjan, who works at First To Serve, a South L.A. shelter and rehab program with a female-only branch. Yet, according to Verjan, “homeless women are extremely vulnerable. At times women can become victims of vicious acts of rape, harassment, crimes and drugs.”
In the South L.A. area of Vermont Square, framed by I-110 in the east, Florence Avenue in the south, Arlington and Van Ness Avenue in the west and Martin Luther King Boulevard in the north, there has been an even steeper increase. While in 2015, 780 homeless people were counted in the area, that number almost doubled to 1,296 within one year. In accordance with overall city data, more than one-third of the homeless in Council District 9, which Vermont Square is a part of, are female.
Walls has learned what it mean to be a woman on the streets. She often felt scared and helpless when sleeping alone under bridges or in parks, the now 57-year-old says. In shelters, on the other side, she has experienced scenes of sexual assault and violence. “A man tried to put his hands down my pants one time, and I fought him off,” Walls recalls. “I thought he was going to stop when I was … holding his hand, but I had to kick him and punch him.” Another time, when she was living at the Weingart Center, a shelter on Skid Row, a man attacked her and tried to fight her, she says.
First To Serve attributes the increase in women on the streets to several factors. “One is domestic violence,” says Verjan. “Women who flee their situation often become homeless because they flee without having any place to live. They must make a life-or-death decision to survive.”
It’s a vicious cycle of violence women on the streets typically endure: According to a 2016 need assessment survey by the Downtown Women’s Center, a day care shelter in the heart of Skid Row, 90.8 percent of homeless women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. About 55 percent are survivors of domestic abuse, the study says, and 39.4 percent are survivors of sexual assault.
As a possible solution, the Center is arguing for more single-gender housing and shelters. Walls supports this approach. It was in a mixed-gender shelter where she experienced sexual assault, after all.
Besides domestic abuse survivors, female convicts also often have no place to go when they finish serving their sentence, Verjan says. Mental health problems and drug abuse further contribute to the sharp rise in females on the streets. “Many of the women don’t know of the services that are available to them that can assist them. That causes them to become homeless,” says Verjan.
The city has recognized the special attention homeless women need to get back on their feet. In November, Councilmen Jose Huizar and Marqueece Harris-Dawson signed a motion to examine whether the city should direct additional funds from the recently approved Measure HHH to housing programs and shelters targeting women and families.
LAHSA, in the meantime, appointed an ad hoc committee on women’s homelessness. Its first meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday.
Walls warns, however, that the work isn’t done with setting up new shelters or finding housing for homeless women: “You’re disillusioned if you think everything is going to be great once you get in your apartment. The transition itself is a hard thing.”
