Carlous and Charltece are homeless sleeping on the beach in Venice, California. They moved to Los Angeles from Texas back in 2008 and ended up on the streets. Carlous and Charltece were housed in 2013. All was good until their landlord sold the apartment building they were living in.
Even though Carlous and Charltece have been homeless for only a few months this time, they told me they are concerned about getting used to homelessness. No one wants to be homeless. What happens is there is not enough support for all the people that need help. People new to homelessness fight to better their situation but without resources like a shower, clean clothes, transportation, food, a good nights sleep, and the fact that homeless services do not make it easy for people to get out of homelessness, learned helplessness sets in. People get used to their situations in all socioeconomic levels and that included homelessness too.
The good news is Carlous and Charltece are connected to St. Joseph Center. Carlous says she is soon to start in St. Joseph Center’s Culinary Training Program. St. Joseph Center is a good place and hopefully, Carlous and Charltece will be back in housing soon.
The bottom line is we need more support services to get people off the streets and into housing. The social services sector needs to aggressively work to prevent homelessness in the first place from ever happening, but when someone ends up on the streets we need to get them the help they need quickly before they get used to life on the streets. No one should get used to homelessness. You can help make that happen by supporting your local homeless services.
***Please forgive the fluctuating focus problems. Often like in this situation, the conditions to record video are far from perfect. I believe strongly that documentarians should not interfere with the environment they are trying to capture. We should do our best to document life as it really is. I try hard to make quality content but because some of the situations I find myself in I don’t have the time to set up properly or I may have to hurry because of safety concerns, issues like focus may not be perfect.
