2025 Long Beach Homeless Count

On an unusually warm winter morning, Frank and Les again joined a group of more than 300 volunteers to conduct the annual homeless survey. Les partnered with an experienced city employee to lead the count in the Shoreline Village area. Many people shared their personal and often painful story of how they became homeless.

Les interviewed an immigrant from Guatemala who worked his way to become a property manager, but was ironically evicted during the pandemic housing crisis. Another promising young man who has a degree in organic chemistry who fell to hard time due to unemployment. The homeless population is not just our neighbors, but they could be our friends and family members. They seldom get treated with respect, and the police chased them from one spot to the next so it was impossible for them to sleep at night.

Learning about their plight allowed us to be closer to our own humanity.