If you're one of the many who sleep outside and use fast food restaurants or libraries to keep warm and dry during the day, and be near a bathroom, then you know that it's extremely cold outside in southern California with the REAL FEEL close to freezing some nights in the last week or so. One of the problems here is that not too many people keep winter clothing like they do back east. So that means that donated coats, hats, scarves, gloves, rain boots, warm boots that you can walk in (homeless women do not need spike heels) are few.
Some long term homeless do acclimate to the colder temperatures but usually the cold brings with it bad health.
Last year a homeless man we met, who had lost a house on the West Side, then been evicted when he and his room mate failed to pay the rent, lasted about 6 months outside before he died. He was in a car in someones back yard that didn't run for a while, and then on a screened in sun porch that hid him but had no heat. Depressed or maybe without the resources to pay for medicine, he went without. This man looked for work using public computers every day and managed to shower and keep himself looking clean (not homeless looking) through the use of public showers such as at the gym and the roving shower truck.
Cold weather shelters can help, but many people who have never been on the street are afraid of them, don't like their family separated within the shelter, or use them only when they can't take it any more, or do not want to give personal information in order to stay in them. We believe that every city should have its own year round shelter rather than expect homeless, especially not newly homeless, to move to skid row in downtown.
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