Losing your home is hell, but so is being unhoused in a wildfire (Mother Jones article) [View all]

[PedroXimenez]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/los-angeles-fires-unhoused-homelessness-crisis/

The ongoing Los Angeles wildfires have reportedly killed at least 5 people and destroyed thousands of structures, leaving entire neighborhoods in heaps of ashes.

With stately homes burned to the ground, or too damaged to imminently return to, wealthy Angelenos reportedly fled to hotels or other cities: Those who could afford the nightly rate of more than $1,000 stayed at the posh Beverly Hills Hotel, according to a Wednesday night dispatch from the LA Times. Others, the New York Times reported, went to the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood, where Thursday night’s cheapest rate was listed online at $512. Some drove the 30 miles southeast to the city of Anaheim, where several hotels are offering discounted stays.

But the plight of people experiencing homelessness in the city—reportedly more than 45,000 as of last year, which marked a decrease from 2023—have been comparatively invisible in the wall-to-wall coverage. On Thursday afternoon, I called up John Maceri, the CEO of the People Concern, a social services organization in LA that oversees 700 shelter beds, to learn more about the barriers facing unhoused people trying to flee the wildfires. Their struggles, he said, range from lacking cell phones and Internet access, which can prevent them from learning about evacuation orders and resources, to coping with health issues from all the time spent outside inhaling wildfire smoke. With homelessness reaching record levels in the US last year and natural disasters increasing as a result of climate change, the challenges Maceri outlined seem less like anomalous hardships and more like harbingers of what’s to come as more Americans grapple with the dual housing and climate crises.

This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.