Skid Row’s Avengers: Water Drop LA, I love you 2000 gallons!
Every Sunday morning at 11, more than 30 vivid volunteers for the organization Water Drop LA gather to distribute more than 2000 gallons of water to the homeless people of Skid Row. I have had the privilege to work with Water Drop LA and hand out essential goods (mainly water jugs) for the last few weeks. Yet, even in the limited time that I have been there, Water Drop LA has given me a deeper insight into the necessity to engage in meaningful community service. For Water Drop LA, empathy, awareness, and action are the key factors when wanting to change people’s lives.
Water Drop LA was founded in 2020 by Aria Cataño, Avery Dukes, Catie Cummings, Kat Montanez, and Mayra Lozano as COVID-19 mercilessly hit the West Coast, heavily endangering both those who do not have access to housing and medical care. Since then, they’ve created a harmonic, lively organization that has handed out water for 169 consecutive weeks, fighting for the human right to water for the 60% of unhoused individuals in Skid Row who do not have access to clean water. Nowadays, hundreds of people rely on Water Drop’s weekly drops to safely access free, drinkable water.
When you cruising through Skid Row, you immediately hear the singing sounds of Spanish as soon as you walk the streets. Many homeless people are only proficient in Spanish, so basic Spanish skills are a valued asset when volunteering for Water Drop. It is crucial to understand people’s needs, so informing yourself on simple Spanish vocabulary (mainly centered around ground necessities) is something one should consider when signing up for Water Drop, ¡no tengas miedo!
When talking about helping people, respect needs to be mentioned. All the self-made tents and shelters you see on Skid Row may be intimidating and foreign at first, but they must be treated just like you would treat anyone’s home. One must be mindful of people’s space and respectful of their boundaries, as just like in any other house, people may be sleeping or away from home. In those cases, water jugs should be left outside in the vicinity of homes to be later picked up. This way, you can still meet people’s needs without disrupting their peace, time, and space.
Awareness of people’s needs is also crucial to Water Drop’s mission. Water Drop LA makes sure to have bigger or smaller water jugs available depending on how much people need and can carry. Water Drop LA has expanded, now additionally offering clothes and food. This addition is just one example of how Water Drop LA is continuously evolving its care to cater to the changing needs of the unhoused people of Skid Row.
On top of that, a very progressive and essential part of Water Drop’s work is attending to people struggling with drug use. Water Drop LA trains its volunteers in case of an encounter with someone experiencing a drug overdose. That way, volunteers are ready and prepared to listen to those in need and provide them with essential medication to combat the effects of the drugs they’ve taken.
This respect for the homeless living on Skid Row goes hand in hand with understanding their situation. Good service work requires understanding the root causes of the problems you’re trying to combat. Compassion is at the forefront when dealing with people who have likely been victims of our brutally capitalistic American society. Presently, prejudice towards people without homes has created a negative stigma around Skid Row. This distrust towards people experiencing homelessness must evolve into an empathetic view of the population of Skid Row. Realizing that the vast majority of homeless people are not on the street by choice is the first step toward that goal. Many believe in the stereotype that homeless people are all drug addicts and unproductive members of society, but that is far from the truth. The housing crisis in LA is the main reason many find themselves obligated to live on the streets. A 2020 report by the US Government Accountability Office revealed that for every 100-dollar increase in median rent, homelessness goes up by 9%, clearly showcasing the correlation between housing prices and homelessness. This increase has amounted to countless employed people living on the streets as their stagnating income cannot keep up with rising rents. Recent inflation has only made this effect worse.
Another issue at the forefront of homelessness is the systemic oppression of people of color, who are at higher risk of becoming unhoused. Historically, people of color are more prone to being refused loans and employment, directly leading to a higher risk of housing insecurity. Ex-convicts are also a group that faces high rates of homelessness, as ex-convicts are not often offered proper services to help them assimilate into society once released, potentially causing them to experience unemployment due to no fault of their own. However, it goes deeper than that, as even their prison time relates to higher rates of homelessness as the United States of America does not offer rehabilitative prison time, which plays into the difficulty of rebuilding a life for yourself as an ex-convict.
Water Drop LA recognizes that the systemic oppression of low-income individuals, people of color, and ex-convicts is at the center of the housing crisis. When volunteering for Water Drop LA, you are immediately confronted with this cruel reality. As soon as I handed out my first few water jugs, the first conversations and exchanges with the people of Skid Row made many walls I had concerning homeless people crumble. The people are kind, genuine, and open about their lives and struggles. Acknowledging that it is an enriching learning experience for you as a volunteer enables you to break away from the superiority complex often exhibited by those who have not had the chance to see Skid Row with their own eyes. Being aware of what society has engrained into our brains since childhood and being open to learning allows you to have eye-to-eye meaningful conversations with the residents of Skid Row. Ultimately, this is the only way you can ensure your service work can display significant results, as to truly support the people in need, you must be able to put yourself into their shoes and view them as equals.
In addition to compassion, awareness and action are essential to significant service. Distributing water and goods to people without homes is a meaningful and productive task, but going one step further will make for a well-rounded and multifaceted service work experience. Informing yourself about possible ways to resolve these systematic problems and advocating for these solutions is what Water Drop LA is all about. As Water Drop LA openly states, their goal is to live in a world where they are no longer needed, so the system must change. Advocating for renter’s rights, becoming an activist against white supremacism, and supporting rehabilitative imprisonment are some areas in which you could become active to contribute to changing a system that disregards so many of its citizens. Although there is no fast way to solve all the problems that Skid Row is facing, applying pressure on Los Angeles’ politicians to implement permanent drinking fountains, improve the quality of homelessness shelters, and offer social aid to those in need can help get the ball rolling.
Good service work at Water Drop LA goes beyond simply handing out water jugs to homeless people who don’t have access to drinkable water. It is about connecting with the people of Skid Row, grasping their needs, using compassion and respect, and each volunteer becoming aware that there is always room to grow and learn from the people of Skid Row. Out of this eye-opening experience, motivated volunteers can go beyond Water Drop LA and become active fighters against the homelessness crisis in LA.
