They begin their shift at 3 a.m. when LA Metro subway stations are closed.
At the locked gates a four-person team from the statewide non-profit People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) finds unhoused people waiting to get into the 7th St/Metro Center station in downtown Los Angeles where they find temporary shelter. The PATH’s Metro outreach team, which has a contract through Metro, breaks the ice by offering them drinks and clean socks.
Their goal is to find those who are ready to take PATH’s help.
PATH’s early morning Metro outreach team begins their day outside the 7th St./Metro Center in Los Angeles where people gather to sleep and wait for the gates to open at 4 a.m. The team works to house Metro’s homeless population. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
A person waits outside the gates of the 7th St./Metro Center station in Los Angeles where people wait for Metro police to open the gates at 4 a.m. PATH’s early morning Metro outreach team works to house Metro’s homeless population. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
A unhoused person beds down in the 7th St./Metro Center in Los Angeles minutes after it opened at 4 a.m. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
When the gates to the Metro station open at 4 a.m., the unhoused and the PATH team enter. Some PATH workers ride the trains, and each encounter with a homeless person is documented, names and phone numbers collected.
Before sunrise the team huddles to decide the best option for each person who is ready to leave the Metro station. The PATH workers make phone calls to find interim housing and shelter beds, and they even contact their families when possible.
“We have to evaluate. Every story is different,” said case manager Patricia Guzman.
The four PATH members combine their backgrounds in substance abuse, counseling and domestic violence, and they are familiar with shelters and services throughout the Los Angeles region. And spread across the Metro region, similar PATH teams like theirs reach out to help the homeless who sleep, and even live, in the transit system.
In the early morning hours this PATH team relies on “safe landing sites” that offer recuperative care and a pathway to interim housing. Safe landing sites are open 24/7 and take walk-ins, such as Exodus Recovery Safe Landing in Hawthorne.
One woman is sent home to her family on a Greyhound bus. Then the team drives two men to Hawthorne, to the Exodus Recovery Safe Landing: Brandon Nesloney, 43, who says he has been homeless in Los Angeles for 18 months and hopes to get back to his kids in Florida; and Alexis, 25, who had been riding the Metro trains for a week with a duffle bag.
While the two men wait to be checked in at Exodus Recovery Safe Landing, Steven Brown walks into the waiting room with a big smile after seeing Harold Ringgold, one of the four case managers on the PATH team.
Ringgold had taken Brown to the safe landing site a few days earlier, and he wanted to keep in touch with Brown to follow up on his progress in getting interim housing. But Brown did not have a phone.
So while Nesloney and Alexis were being checked in, Ringgold and Brown drove to the Department of Public Social Services building not far from Exodus and found a street vendor who was able to issue Brown a free phone and tablet.
“A lot of these places we put them in, some of them have case management,” Ringgold said. “But some of these places don’t. So the ones that don’t — we want to do follow-ups to make sure we’re still able to get them what they need, which is providing services.”
Austin Perry — who is bent over, has a hard time speaking, and carries no belongings — approaches the team in the 7th St./Metro Center station downtown. He’s part of Krista Lewis’ case load and he’s ready to leave the Metro station. He wants to go to the L.A. Grand Hotel, a former hotel now used as homeless housing where, he explains, he stayed during COVID but lost his room after a hospital stay.
Lewis has been trying to help a young transgender woman who is hanging around the station and Lewis knows just the place for her to stay in the San Fernando Valley. But the woman soon disappears on a train.
“I would love to retire saying that I was a part of stopping homelessness, but I know that is not going to happen,” said Lewis, who loves her job. “I am a part of making things happen, so that’s a good thing.”
The team has dubbed case manager Demetric Woodard “the urban renaissance man” due to his multiple degrees in psychology and his vision to end the revolving door between detention and homelessness.
Woodard, a case manager with PATH’s early morning Metro outreach team, makes contact with a woman named Randi as she rides the trains.
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“There’s so many different people out here,” Woodard said, “just all over the place, that just need housing help.”
They decide to take Austin Perry, who has trouble talking, to the L.A. Grand Hotel, which is housing the homeless under L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program. With Perry, they enter through the glass doors, but because there is no supportive care manager on site in the early morning, Perry and the team are turned away by security.
Lewis consoles Perry as they take him to Wesley Health Centers’ Safe Landing adjacent to the downtown Cecil Hotel, where he is quickly taken in.
The PATH team tries to find a place for each homeless person they find who is willing to leave Metro behind.
And then the team does it again, tomorrow.
Harold Ringgold, a case manager on PATH’s early morning Metro outreach team, brings Steven Brown back to Exodus Recovery Safe Landing in Hawthorne after helping him get a new phone and tablet from a street vendor. Ringgold bought Brown to Exodus days earlier and wanted to keep in touch with him. The team works to house Metro’s homeless population. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)