![]() The group had a big homeless following 15% of those surveyed at a Los Angeles youth drop-in center in 2016 identified as Juggalos. ![]() She was one of the face-painted fans known as Juggalos who followed the outsider band Insane Clown Posse. From a home for troubled girls in La Verne, she caught a bus for Hollywood. She went AWOL from one foster care group home after another. As an adult, Mckenzie would be diagnosed with severe anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. ![]() Mckenzie was molested by a friend’s stepfather, according to Ventura County Superior Court criminal records, and landed in a psychiatric facility and then a group home, her mother said in a civil lawsuit. The next year, she and Cat moved to Ventura for a fresh start, but the suburban beach culture was a tough fit for a girl from a poor, semirural Southern background, who by her own description dressed like a little boy. “A baby could represent new possibilities … something unsullied by all the tragedy the individual has experienced,” said Khiara Bridges, a UC Berkeley law professor who has studied poverty and pregnancy.Īt age 11, Mckenzie ran away, started using drugs and landed in juvenile hall in Nevada. And some women with troubled domestic histories feel a deep pull to create the happy family they never had, one they believe will not be ripped away. Young women may take on partners to protect against rampant sexual assault in the streets, and many of their partners don’t wear condoms. Families and partners who don’t want the worry of a child sometimes throw women out when they become pregnant. Planning of any kind, including reproductive, is uncommon for those in the grind of homelessness. More than 4 in 10 homeless women in Mckenzie’s age group - 18 to 25 - were pregnant or already mothers, according to a nationwide survey released in 2018 by Chapin Hall, an independent policy research center at the University of Chicago.Įxperts cite several dynamics at work. Homeless young women are nearly five times more likely to become pregnant - and more likely still to experience repeat pregnancies - than those who are housed. But for young women with backgrounds like Mckenzie’s, homelessness and motherhood are often less a decision than a destiny.Įddie makes a Hello Kitty drawing for Mckenzie on her birthday. That’s how she survived that and the support of her friends - mainly homeless teens from the foster care or juvenile justice systems, scarred by economic marginalization, and some by racism as well.įinding a homeless woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy in a tent in the heart of Hollywood’s real estate boom is shocking. Mckenzie talks freely about dope dealing in the past to support her meth habit, about people she‘s beaten up and others she‘s protected since she landed on the streets of Hollywood at age 13. Her street name was Stitches - because that’s what you get if you mess with her or her friends, Cat said: “She’ll bust you up, but she’s compassionate.” She wore a ’90s-style punk choker and a necklace with a pendant shaped like brass knuckles. ![]() Now 7½ months pregnant, she had developed a serious respiratory infection three of her homeless friends moved into her tent to help her recover. She had shot up meth for two years before stopping several months before she became pregnant, and was still on probation in one case when she got the news.ĭespite L.A.’s stifling September heat, she was wrapped in a heavy pink sweatshirt, sniffling and blowing her nose. As an adult, she racked up three felony convictions for possession of meth for sale and receiving stolen property. She ran away at age 11, started using drugs, and was in and out of juvenile hall and foster care placements. Mckenzie is clear that she has made bad decisions. “The homeless system is not designed to address and unpack all of the other systemic failures that have led somebody to where they are today,” said Heidi Marston, who resigned in May as executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. It’s an ominous harbinger for Los Angeles, where multigenerational homelessness is not uncommon - and the system is not equipped to meet the needs of people with such profound struggles. Young adults who age out of foster care after such heightened trauma are at serious risk of repeating the cycle of homelessness and losing their kids to foster care. Los Angeles Times wins Pulitzer Prizes for covering homelessness and City Council leakįor coverage of two of the most troubling and intractable problems facing Southern California - homelessness and racial division - the Los Angeles Times won two Pulitzer Prizes.
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