‘Team 2’ Takes You Inside the Palisades Homeless Count

By FRANCES SHARPE | Editor-in-Chief

Along the beach north of Gladstones in the pre-dawn hours, people snoozed in sleeping bags jammed against massive rocks shielding them from the din of morning rush-hour traffic on Pacific Coast Highway.

Three men could be seen washing up at the public showers and bathrooms at Will Rogers State Beach, presumably getting ready for a day of panhandling.

One woman leaned against a restroom wall as two large black dogs lay nearby. She waved and smiled peacefully.

“Look at her. Her face is so pleasant,” Glanda Sherman said to her clipboard-toting teammates, who were taking part with her in the 2016 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count in Pacific Palisades on Thursday, Jan. 28.

Making up “Team 2” of this year’s Palisades count were Sherman; John Piscitello, a Pacific View Estates resident; Andrew Aldama from Assemblymember Richard Bloom’s office; and El Medio Bluffs resident and Palisadian-Post editor-in-chief Frances Sharpe. Los Angeles Times photographer Al Seib also traveled with the team to document the count. (You can see Seib’s photos at latimes.com)

The team’s assigned coverage area spanned the beach from Gladstones to Coastline Drive in Sunset Mesa and also included lower Los Leones Canyon and Paseo Miramar.

“She probably has the dogs for her protection. Normally, you’ll see a female coupled with a male. Even if there’s violence, you know what violence is predicted. A female homeless alone is very vulnerable,” explained Sherman, who is part of a two-person outreach team from Ocean Park Community Center (OPCC).

Sherman and her partner Maureen Rivas have been working with the homeless in the Palisades since January in an effort to transition them into housing.

As the team trudged down the beach at about 5:30 a.m., people packed up their belongings and headed down the beach or on PCH toward Sunset Boulevard.

Some people the team saw were clearly homeless. Others required some discussion.

“What about him?” asked Piscitello, pointing to a man with a jacket and a hoodie in the crosswalk near Sunset at PCH.

“He’s carrying coffee and a bag—maybe he’s just going to work,” said another team member.

The group discussed the “ABCs” of how to identify a homeless person: appearance, behavior, condition.

According to a 30-minute Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) training video that all volunteers were required to watch prior to the count, signs a person is homeless include: poor hygiene, weathered skin, sleeping or lying on the ground or on a bench, pushing a cart, lots of belongings and wearing many layers of clothing or blankets.

“He’s wearing a lot of layers for someone who’s just going to work,” Piscitello said.

Eventually, after getting closer to the man, the team decided not to count him. Despite the layered clothing, he appeared to have good hygiene, his clothes were clean and he wasn’t carrying a lot of belongings.

Throughout the morning, Sherman, who has already met with almost 60 homeless people throughout the Palisades as part of her work for OPCC, recognized some of the homeless individuals the team saw.

“There’s Dennis. He’s a vet,” Sherman said, pointing to a bearded man sitting at the Chevron station at PCH and Sunset.

“That’s Clyde,” she said, passing by a man sleeping on the beach in the dark. “He’s been here for five years.”

After combing the beach, the team headed up to Los Leones Canyon to trek through the trails and brush.

“There are a lot more people and hidden encampments than you might imagine,” Sherman said.

Piscitello said he had seen about a dozen encampments along the ridge of Paseo Miramar in recent months, but they weren’t visible on Jan. 28, so they couldn’t be counted, according to LAHSA’s rules.

A couple of park rangers were making their rounds in Los Leones and greeted the team. The rangers had already completed the homeless count in Malibu that morning and decided to make a pass through the Palisades.

“The State Park is stringent about illegal campers,” said Tim Hayden, a California State Parks Ranger.

“We get a few on Tramonto—one or two—but no large encampments to my knowledge,” Hayden added, “unless they’re deep in the mountains. But we roust them out pretty well.”

On the Tramonto hillside, the team came across one unusual possible encampment—a pair of protected hut-like structures fabricated out of sticks.

In keeping with LAHSA’s instructions not to disrupt or engage with any homeless people during the count, however, the team didn’t go traipsing inside.

By the end of the morning, Team 2 had tallied 24 homeless individuals.