{"id":381456,"date":"2026-07-01T00:44:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T00:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/381456\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T00:44:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T00:44:19","slug":"searching-the-streets-of-fresno-for-unhoused-survivors-of-domestic-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/381456\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching the streets of Fresno for unhoused survivors of domestic violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the second story of a three-part series about the intersection of domestic violence and homelessness in Fresno. This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism\u2019s Domestic Violence Impact Reporting Fund and was originally published by\u00a0The Intersection.<\/a><\/p>\n

On a Saturday morning in April, Lethal Gee stands beneath a tent near Roeding Park, sorting through garbage bags stuffed with makeup and secondhand clothes \u2013 summer dresses, winter coats and a random variety of shoes.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see that big mirror that somebody donated?\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m going to take that out to the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gee, who agreed to talk under her street name because her privacy has been compromised in the past, works at the San Joaquin Valley Free Medical Clinic and Needle Exchange in Fresno, a mobile facility, where every Saturday people line up for health care and resources. They come for screenings, immunizations or just the gear they need to more safely manage their addictions. Most are unhoused, and once Gee\u2019s work at the site is done, she hits the streets looking for women who can use the items donors have dropped off.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone on the streets will be able to feel just that much more beautiful because they had a better mirror to work with putting their makeup on,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

As a street-level outreach worker, Gee specializes in supporting people who are unhoused, including women who experienced domestic violence before they lived on the street.<\/p>\n

Domestic violence is a common precursor to homelessness in California. A recent University of California San Francisco study<\/a> showed that nearly 10% of unhoused survey participants in the state had experienced domestic violence, and among unhoused cisgender women, that number about doubled.<\/p>\n

But in the Fresno area, only one shelter exclusively serves women escaping domestic violence. It\u2019s called the Marjaree Mason Center and it can house up to 40 families. In Fresno County, which has one of the highest rates<\/a> of calls to law enforcement for domestic violence in the state, that\u2019s not a lot.<\/p>\n

Around 11 a.m., Gee settles into her car alongside the clothes, bottles of water and sunscreen, donated food, tents and safety vests to prevent people on the street from being hit by cars.<\/p>\n

Finding people on the street can be tough. Changes to Fresno\u2019s encampment policies have led to more sweeps in recent years, and kept more unhoused people on the move. To stay safe \u2013 from abusers, predators, or even the police \u2013 unhoused women sometimes have to switch up where they sleep and keep their things.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been hearing from people that the city\u2019s been taking all of their stuff and throwing it away,\u201d Gee says. \u201cSo it\u2019s always nice to be able to replenish that when I run into them throughout the week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The San Joaquin Valley Free Medical Clinic and Needle Exchange offers donated items, such as these shoes, in addition to health care.<\/p>\n

Once Gee locates someone she can help, the work becomes highly individualized. One person might need medical attention. Another could be looking to get back into a shelter. Or someone could need a new government ID because the last one got tossed out during a sweep. And if that means standing in line with a client at the DMV, then that\u2019s the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s perfectly fine, perfectly fair if a full-grown adult needs their hand held,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Once Gee is able to find the appropriate resources, she might then have to find the person again, which can also be tough.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just do outreach all week,\u201d she says. \u201cMost of my hours outside of the Saturdays is spent on the streets\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

The people she finds there tend to have been through a lot. Some have diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health issues, but others have just experienced painful hardships that resulted in their housing troubles and damaged their overall wellbeing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of people experiencing homelessness have had some precipitating trauma that has contributed to their homelessness,\u201d says Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. \u201cEither it\u2019s exiting the carceral system, it\u2019s fleeing domestic violence, it\u2019s having some major disruption with family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visotzky says any of those experiences can make it hard for someone on the street to trust police, or even social workers trying to help them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very possible these folks have been burned before by a public system,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

To counter that dynamic, Gee relies on her own lived experience. She says she grew up in a family that struggled with housing instability, and knows firsthand how to access services from nonprofits and government agencies. She knows which kinds of foods, clothes and survival gear are practical for people living outdoors, and which are unusable. Almost no one on the street, for example, wants a dress. But if someone did, Gee would know who because she tracks the names and stories of the people she meets as she makes her rounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just keep like a little rolodex in my head and it makes it really easy to navigate people to things and also care for them a little better,\u201d she says. \u2026 \u201cI know how to talk to people. I know what it is that they need to hear. Not everything needs to be so clinical, so professional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another common barrier to helping unhoused people is, of course, funding \u2013 most of which comes from the state and federal governments and can fluctuate with changing budgets, policies and political will.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s very few sources of stable funding for outreach services, for case management services, and that contributes to a dynamic where these jobs are often very low pay,\u201d Visotzky says. \u201cThese are also very hard jobs to do, so you see a lot of turnover in frontline jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visotzky says moving locations on the streets has become an even greater necessity for unhoused people since 2024, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on City of Grants Pass v. Johnson<\/a>, opening the door to laws banning camping and sleeping in public spaces. Fresno officials at the city<\/a> and county<\/a> levels followed quickly with anti-camping ordinances. In 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom used state funding to encourage California cities<\/a> to conduct more sweeps.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s pushing folks experiencing homelessness into more and more places where they\u2019re trying to remain less visible\u2026out of the public eye,\u201d Visotzky says. \u201cSo they might not be on that same street corner where you\u2019re used to seeing them on. They might have moved into the woods, into a waterway, onto the side of a [highway] ramp.\u201d<\/p>\n

And regardless of how often people on the streets are moving around, he says, survivors of domestic violence can be especially difficult to maintain contact with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese dynamics of distrust, of hesitation of sharing your information with a public entity are there for everybody, but they\u2019re just magnified for those folks that are fleeing violence and are trying to keep themselves, and maybe their children, safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018We were looking for you for like a year\u2019<\/p>\n

Gee is not the only person in Fresno working to locate people in homeless encampments.<\/p>\n

Kevin Little is an attorney in Fresno who specializes in human rights cases. Several of his clients are unhoused and about once a month he goes looking for them.<\/p>\n

On a weekday afternoon in April, he starts at Roeding Park, where people living on the street often congregate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t get hassled there,\u201d he says, \u201cbut additionally, there\u2019s trees, there\u2019s shade, there\u2019s water fountains.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says he finds the people he\u2019s looking for about half the time. It\u2019s harder now than it used to be because of Fresno\u2019s new ordinances.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think this was the goal of the ordinance, right?\u201d he says. \u201cMake folks be invisible. Make them hide and go underground, so to speak, so that we don\u2019t really have to be reminded as much about the awful inequality that we have and how many people are just not able to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fresno City Council President Mike Karbassi disagrees with that assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of this ordinance [is] to end the status quo and do something,\u201d he wrote in an email to The Intersection<\/a>. \u201cThere are some passionate advocates who want us to just turn a blind eye to this issue and allow unhoused persons to keep living in squalor anywhere they please. We also have the added responsibility of ensuring that public spaces like parks, sidewalks and bus stops are accessible to all, not just one person or group, no matter who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

After scanning the park and finding none of his clients, Little moves on to an apartment building that provides transitional housing. He doesn\u2019t go inside, but he does talk to a few people hanging around outside.<\/p>\n

Just then, he spots one of his clients, Julie, walking toward him from across the street carrying just a school-sized backpack that appears to have almost nothing in it. She doesn\u2019t have a tent or any food to get her through the day.<\/p>\n

Little heard about Julie a few years ago after a car ran into the tent she and her partner were sleeping in. Her partner was killed and Little went looking for her to see if she wanted legal representation. That lawsuit is ongoing, and today, Little and Julie recall the first time they met.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were looking for you for like a year,\u201d he says to her.<\/p>\n

Safer on the streets<\/p>\n

Lethal Gee parks her car under a highway overpass, where just a few people sit eating, surrounded by their things. She greets them by name and one, Dawn, gives her a hug.<\/p>\n

Dawn just turned 30, and says they\u2019ve been on the streets for about five years. They had hoped to be housed again before that milestone birthday. Their story includes intimate partner violence.<\/p>\n

Dawn stays at shelters occasionally, but usually avoids them because the experience can be emotionally heavy and unsettling. They say they don\u2019t trust that shelter employees are equipped to handle the \u201chypersensitive mental health issues\u201d that some visitors face. They also feel they haven\u2019t gotten much meaningful help from shelters and that staying the night in one usually means being separated from their partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s easier when you have someone else doing it with you,\u201d they say.<\/p>\n

So, Dawn stays mostly on the street. For them, sleeping outside and losing their belongings during routine sweeps beats staying in a shelter where they don\u2019t feel safe or supported.<\/p>\n

Gee comes through this part of the Tower District multiple times each week and sees Dawn frequently. Gee knows what Dawn likes \u2013 they\u2019re the rare person who will want the donated dresses.<\/p>\n

Before Gee arrived, Dawn just had the clothes they were wearing. Now, they have a couple of new outfits and a faux fur jacket that will make the cold, spring night a little more comfortable.<\/p>\n

Dawn also accepts the mirror. Now they can see their face when they do their makeup.<\/p>\n

Megan Myscofski is an independent reporter covering health care and state politics. She is based in Sacramento.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the second story of a three-part series about the intersection of domestic violence and homelessness in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[4749,112,114,113,1493],"class_list":["post-381456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-domestic-violence","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-homelessness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}