LA County’s 70th Pathway Home operation on December 10, 2026, offered 26 unhoused people in South Gate safe interim housing and the opportunity for a fresh start and a pathway to a permanent home.
To pick up Karicha and her partner, Anthony, at their shelter near the Rio Hondo riverbed, outreach workers drove along the path of an embankment and made a hair pin turn onto a lower path. From there, they crossed a shallow stream of water. Then they turned down another path that led to a wide arch of an underpass beneath Telegraph Road. Karicha, 48, and Anthony, 35, were waiting with bright yellow storage bags already packed with their belongings.
Karicha’s life has been filled with as many twists and turns as the road down into the riverbed to her shelter site. Living in an apartment with family members in Stanton in Orange County, they lost their apartment when her father died then moved into a hotel room. Her teenage daughter was placed in foster care. Karicha ended up homeless, first in Orange County and then Los Angeles. A few years ago, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She also wrestles with depression. And she fears seeing a doctor. “I’ve been putting it off because I don’t know how bad it is… I don’t want any treatment.”
Both she and Anthony, her boyfriend who is taking college courses online, are ready to leave their stark encampment site where nights are sleepless, and you are always watching your back.
“It was so freezing out here in the last two days. I barely got out of the tent. My hands went numb,” she said.
Their dog, Alize, scampered around them energetically. “She’s my protection,” Karicha said of the dog. “If I didn’t have her, I don’t know what I would do.”
“A lot of people don’t understand — we’re not bad people,” she said.
“All they need is a little bit of help,” said LAHSA outreach worker Marco Garcia. “They’re trying to get back on their feet. I think this will propel them on that path.”
At first Anthony was skeptical that Garcia had much to offer: “But he did make a little more of an effort. He did say he was going to do certain things—which he obviously did.”
Anthony said he looked forward to sleeping when he got to the motel operating as interim housing. “I’ve got about 10 years of rest I can catch up on.’’
At the Pathway Home staging area, a man named Hector–“I think I’m like 56”— waited for a ride to a motel. He had spent a little over 10 years homeless in LA County, he says, most recently living in the riverbed.
Hector was working in a refinery around 2008. “I was one of the last hired, first fired kind of guys.” He ended up homeless and lost his sight in his right eye. He was sleeping outside when a spider bit his eye.
What kind of spider? “An eye-killing spider,” he cracked. He hopes to get a job and a permanent home.
Nearby sat Casey and Monique waiting for a ride to their new interim housing in Santa Fe Springs. One cat, Charley, sat on Casey’s lap while their kitten, “Just”, sat in a soft-sided carrying case. “I want to thank them for letting me have my cat,” Casey said. “If I couldn’t have left with my cat, forget that.”
Casey and Monique have been together since Monique left a situation of domestic violence and found refuge with Casey.
“He always made sure I was fed and had a place to sleep. And had water to shower with. I love this man to death,” she said. “Not too many people out here care.”
“I have a ring though. We just haven’t made it there, yet” she said. “I wouldn’t go nowhere without him.”
They had a Section 8 voucher and lived in an apartment for a couple of years before the landlord forced them out in September, they said.
“We still have the voucher,” said Casey.
“We’ve just got to find somewhere,” said Monique, 50.
Yessenia Sigala, the Pathway Home director for Whittier First Day, essentially manages more than 100 residents at a motel in Santa Fe Springs where many would move. Each person has a case manager and access to physical and mental health care, job counseling, housing navigation, and other services.
“The way we look at it, the client is the driver of their own journey,” said Sigala. More specifically, the goal is for each to get permanent housing and a start on a new life. Some will need more encouragement to explore the programs and services available. “We need to meet them where they’re at, but they have to show up,” she said.
For Anthony and Karicha, just being inside is a luxury. “Having a bed in a room with a roof over heads,” said Anthony as Alize, the pup, played on the bed. “I’m just taking this all in.”
Karicha said, “I almost gave up on someone coming through.” Now she said, “My focus is on seeing my daughter and my grandkids.”
Casey and Monique also settled in, feeling tired but content. “I just want to get housed and use my Section 8 voucher,” said Monique. “It’s a chance for us to get back on our feet and work on our goals—to get back into society.”
Their kitten, Just, poked his head out from under the bed, and their cat, Charley, curled up in an open cupboard beneath the nightstand.
This operation was the 70th overall Pathway Home encampment resolution since the Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative launched the program in August 2023. More than 1,800 Los Angeles County residents have come off the streets through Pathway Home. Of those, more than 450 are now permanently housed. These operations have also removed more than 1,000 RVs from the streets.
