A Futile Search for Low Profile

Although the hidden homeless try to keep a low profile, they have attracted the attention of people who work with the homeless as well as police and city officials in more affluent areas.

Officers in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills said they are aware these people live in their neighborhoods. They “drive their cars around in the daytime (and) we see them parked on streets at night,” said a Santa Monica police sergeant who asked not to be identified. “We don’t usually bother them as long as we have no complaints and they are not doing anything illegal.” He said that residents sometimes call about suspicious cars parked outside their houses. Officers are sent to tell the car’s occupant that a city law restricts overnight parking.

Michele Merrill, Beverly Hills cultural services manager, says she is “shocked to see the number of homeless who daily use the library as their shelter.” Merrill, whose office is in the city’s new public library, says the homeless “use the (bathroom) facilities for whatever hygiene they need. I’ve seen them washing themselves and their clothing in the sink, brushing their teeth there, etc. Most don’t look very well-groomed, but some really look good. . . . until you look down and see they’re carrying their life in a shopping bag.”

These women are not just found on the Westside. Margaret Stone, volunteer coordinator for the North Hollywood Interfaith Food Pantry, said she has run across several of them.

One is “the wife of a minister,” Stone said. “She has an MA degree and all sorts of credentials. But she became homeless when her husband ran off with someone else and left her destitute. She had the house, but she couldn’t keep up the payments and wound up living in her car. We have lots of hidden homeless families as well.”

Many are middle-class, out of work and living in cars. “They have been laid off from their jobs, and the only work they can get is so low-paying that they can’t live on it.”