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Pregnant, homeless and living in a tent: Meet Mckenzie
The daytime bustle on Sunset Boulevard was giving way to nighttime flash. Netflix employees were badging out of the Icon, the streaming giant’s cantilevered glass tower. The tire shop was closing up, and tenants at the Harold Apartments were climbing the spiral staircases to their rooftop decks.
Nearby, Mckenzie Trahan stood outside the Denny’s restaurant, sobbing into her phone.
Gale Holland
Wed, July 13, 2022 at 3:00 AM·46 min read
Chapter 1
The daytime bustle on Sunset Boulevard was giving way to nighttime flash. Netflix employees were badging out of the Icon, the streaming giant’s cantilevered glass tower. The tire shop was closing up, and tenants at the Harold Apartments were climbing the spiral staircases to their rooftop decks.
Nearby, Mckenzie Trahan stood outside the Denny’s restaurant, sobbing into her phone.
A hole in a chain-link fence around the restaurant parking lot opened onto a ragged train of tents. They clung to a steep embankment above eight lanes of whooshing traffic on the 101 Freeway. From her vantage point, Mckenzie should have been able to see her encampment.
But while she was in court, a Caltrans crew had cleaned her out. Everything was gone: the tent with built-in lights, a blow-up mattress, a new laptop, her birth certificate, housing papers and prenatal vitamins.
“I was like, ‘No, no, no, hell no,’ ” Mckenzie said, recalling that August 2018 evening. “It’s like my whole city was against me.”
Mckenzie was 22, and 6½ months pregnant. Her boyfriend, Eddie, 26, was HIV-positive, although his viral load was undetectable and he could not transmit the virus through sex.
A pregnant Mckenzie Trahan, top, with boyfriend Eddie near their tent on the streets of Hollywood. She wants the baby, but the odds are heavily stacked against her raising the child to adulthood. Above, the couple take shelter under a tarp in Hollywood. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Two weeks before she learned she was pregnant, they had broken up. He was not himself; at times he walked around the Denny’s parking lot talking to himself. (The Times is withholding his full name to protect family members’ privacy.)
"It's like he's there but he's not," Mckenzie said.
She made an appointment for an abortion but couldn’t go through with it. Still, she remained "terrified" of having the baby. The odds were heavily stacked against her raising her child to adulthood.
Mckenzie's family came out of poverty in Louisiana's Cajun Country, and for three generations had been buffeted by domestic violence, mental illness and homelessness, and caught up in child welfare cases. Her mother, Cynthia “Mama Cat” Trahan, was taken from her mom at age 5 and placed in foster care. Mckenzie and Cat were homeless on and off during her childhood, and Mckenzie was also put in foster care.
Young adults after such are at serious risk of repeating the cycle of homelessness and losing their kids to foster care. 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.
"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.
Mckenzie is clear that she has made bad decisions. She ran away at age 11, started using drugs, and was in and out of juvenile hall and foster care placements. As an adult, she racked up three felony convictions for possession of meth for sale and receiving stolen property. 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.
The daytime bustle on Sunset Boulevard was giving way to nighttime flash. Netflix employees were badging out of the Icon, the streaming giant’s cantilevered glass tower. The tire shop was closing up, and tenants at the Harold Apartments were climbing the spiral staircases to their rooftop decks.
Nearby, Mckenzie Trahan stood outside the Denny’s restaurant, sobbing into her phone.
Gale Holland
Wed, July 13, 2022 at 3:00 AM·46 min read
Chapter 1
The daytime bustle on Sunset Boulevard was giving way to nighttime flash. Netflix employees were badging out of the Icon, the streaming giant’s cantilevered glass tower. The tire shop was closing up, and tenants at the Harold Apartments were climbing the spiral staircases to their rooftop decks.
Nearby, Mckenzie Trahan stood outside the Denny’s restaurant, sobbing into her phone.
A hole in a chain-link fence around the restaurant parking lot opened onto a ragged train of tents. They clung to a steep embankment above eight lanes of whooshing traffic on the 101 Freeway. From her vantage point, Mckenzie should have been able to see her encampment.
But while she was in court, a Caltrans crew had cleaned her out. Everything was gone: the tent with built-in lights, a blow-up mattress, a new laptop, her birth certificate, housing papers and prenatal vitamins.
“I was like, ‘No, no, no, hell no,’ ” Mckenzie said, recalling that August 2018 evening. “It’s like my whole city was against me.”
Mckenzie was 22, and 6½ months pregnant. Her boyfriend, Eddie, 26, was HIV-positive, although his viral load was undetectable and he could not transmit the virus through sex.
A pregnant Mckenzie Trahan, top, with boyfriend Eddie near their tent on the streets of Hollywood. She wants the baby, but the odds are heavily stacked against her raising the child to adulthood. Above, the couple take shelter under a tarp in Hollywood. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Two weeks before she learned she was pregnant, they had broken up. He was not himself; at times he walked around the Denny’s parking lot talking to himself. (The Times is withholding his full name to protect family members’ privacy.)
"It's like he's there but he's not," Mckenzie said.
She made an appointment for an abortion but couldn’t go through with it. Still, she remained "terrified" of having the baby. The odds were heavily stacked against her raising her child to adulthood.
Mckenzie's family came out of poverty in Louisiana's Cajun Country, and for three generations had been buffeted by domestic violence, mental illness and homelessness, and caught up in child welfare cases. Her mother, Cynthia “Mama Cat” Trahan, was taken from her mom at age 5 and placed in foster care. Mckenzie and Cat were homeless on and off during her childhood, and Mckenzie was also put in foster care.
Young adults after such are at serious risk of repeating the cycle of homelessness and losing their kids to foster care. 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.
"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.
Mckenzie is clear that she has made bad decisions. She ran away at age 11, started using drugs, and was in and out of juvenile hall and foster care placements. As an adult, she racked up three felony convictions for possession of meth for sale and receiving stolen property. 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.
