420 iReports 2010

    The park in downtown Long Beach is a hangout for homeless people like Preacher. Today is Oct. 6, 2009.

            The troupe does not carry a stench.

            They say they do not abuse drugs or excess in alcohol.
            One looks as fresh as a college student, sporting a backpack and cell phone with an earpiece.
            “This is what I say, don’t judge a book by its cover,” says Preacher, the name he goes by  around these parts. His real name is Tony Cornelius.
            Cornlius, 44, says he once worked as a Transportation Security Administration agent, a federal job, at LAX.
            Anti-stereotypes appear more common. A fellow homeless man, appearing clean-cut, passes by greeting his friends as he carries a laptop.
        Three-thousand nine-hundred and nine homeless people reside in Long Beach, according to the City of Long Beach 2009 Homeless Count Statistics.
           Tony Cornelius and his troupe are just a handful among the latest homeless. Each of them are victims of the recession-era.
    A rise in homelessness has created a choke on resources. At the same time, dwindling resources have also created more homelessness in a cycle of inequities.
            In 2003, Long Beach’s homeless count, compiled by the Department of Health and Human Services, was 5,845. The count in 2007, with 3,829 homeless, represented a 34 percent drop.
            But in 2009, with a spike from the recession, the homeless count rose 2 percent, according to count statistics.
            That 2 percent represents another 80 men, women, and children ventured into  uncertainty.
            According to additional information, provided by Christine Jocoy, an assistant geography professor at CSULB who works on the count, Long Beach counted 452 homeless children.
            One hundred thirty-three homeless children were unsheltered while 13 were unaccompanied.
            But the latest count only reveals what has been recorded for January, 2009.
            Since then, Los Angeles-Long Beach area foreclosures have totalled about 19,000, according to the RAND Corp., a California think tank.
            The first half of 2009 has already seen 82,337 bankruptcies, making up 78 percent of last year’s 106,090 total bankruptcies.
            “We’re not lazy,” says Bruce Morales, another homeless within Cornelius’ closer circle. “I’m actually a professional carpenter,” he says.
            Morales, 30, says he sleeps along Long Beach streets with his partner of nine years, Karina Garcia, 24.
            Morales says he and his partner take showers everyday. After waking up, “I go to the library and use a computer to find work,” he says.
            Xavior Jacobs, a 30-year-old well-spoken Navy veteran, and Jean Choy, a former pool man who says his trust fund was stolen, are also part of Cornelius’ circle.
            “I lost my house, I lost my cars,” Choy says. “The trustee sold the house,” he says, “everything was in the trust.”
            He says lawyer costs also helped him run out of money. He had lived in Encino.
            Each one of Cornelius’ friends had a home. They had an income. Some even have kids. But the economic trough struck hard and they now find themselves roaming Long beach streets.
            Morales was laid off from his carpentry job and was not able to pay Garcia’s schooling at the Educational Cultural Complex in San Diego.
            “She was about to graduate, but I couldn’t pay for the third semester,” he says.
            The two then moved to Los Angeles to look for work, where Morales had become on and off employment.
            “We had a house, two dogs, everything,” he says about life before homelessness. “We had it really made,” he says.
            Jacobs, who had 14 years in the workforce, says he applies for jobs three times a week, spending a significant amount of his general relief on job hunting.
            It does not help that he spent 22 months in prison.