SEEKING SHELTER

An account of homelessness and precarity as seen through the eyes of a woman and her family.

“Evelyn is really tired of the desert and its people.” Evelyn, a second-generation Salvadoran with a large extended family in the California town of Lancaster, is 29 when we meet her, with five children to take care of and a husband who is steadily descending into joblessness and alcoholism. Evelyn is nothing if not aspirational, and she has her eyes set above all else on living in a place with good schools for her children. The problem, as Hobbs notes, is that for working-class people, living in a place with good schools requires housing far beyond their means. A few aid programs exist, but, Hobbs adds, “the demand and supply within this effective but finite social safety net are increasingly imbalanced, the waiting lists in cities like Los Angeles tens of thousands of names long.” Racism, sexism, and classism complicate poverty—and in Evelyn’s case, so does a failed marriage: when she leaves her husband, taking the children, “they will not have a stable home again for nearly five years.” Hobbs, author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, follows Evelyn on a journey that finds her able to earn only enough to afford rent and utilities—or food for her family of six—until finally she finds assistance through a charity called Door of Hope, a door that opens only to a lucky few of what Hobbs estimates to be at least 120,000 unsheltered people in Los Angeles County. One reason, Hobbs notes, is that well-heeled neighbors don’t want group homes or section 8 housing next door, not even in progressive California.

A well-intended work of advocacy journalism that points to the endless obstacles attendant in helping those in need.