The Trend

When you live in this community, you receive a $15 stipend a week. The houses don’t have heat. Money that would go toward operating a furnace instead goes toward food and shopping carts for the poor.

The Los Angeles Catholic Worker receives no funding from the church and doesn’t cost taxpayers anything either.

Checks arrive in the mail and keep the place going, somehow, for more than 40 years now.

Within the community, there is what’s called the core community members, who have been a part of the place for at least several years. Catherine Morris and Jeff Dietrich, former nun and former hippie, respectively, are the longest-serving community members, arriving in the early 70s.

There are also the formerly homeless folks called house guests, including those who stay a little while to get clean or heal an injury, or to die, and those who have stayed more than a decade.

And there is the transitory community of hippie volunteers who stay for a year or two, or less, or more, before moving on to volunteer or just live simply elsewhere in the world. Some plan a come-and-see visit before moving in. Some show up on the doorstep and take a chance, as much of a chance as the community takes on them.

I have found community life to be a wonderfully evolved way to live, but it’s not without the obvious challenges that sharing bathrooms and a kitchen and common space, as well as chores, brings.

Although the police haven’t showed up for a couple weeks, my friends aren’t optimistic that their breakfast giveaway, which has provided oatmeal and coffee for 24 straight years, will survive the judgment of the city. Eliminating and limiting access to food is part of the playbook for many cities dealing with those without homes, not just Los Angeles.



This is Part 8 of the city's effort to criminalize feeding the homeless in Skid Row. Here's Part 9.