It’s easy to overlook the white GMC cargo van parked at the intersection of Degnan Boulevard and 43rd Street, in the cultural epicenter of South Los Angeles’ Leimert Park. The artist inside, however, known in the community for her sharp tongue and generous heart, is anything but unassuming.

“They call me Yogi,” she says, a playful grin spreading across her face. “They see me and they yell, ‘There goes Yogi,’ and tell me whatever it is that they need.”

Yogita Ganeshan, a charismatic minimalist artist, always knew her future would involve service and art. Her guru told her so. She couldn’t predict how her passions would intersect when she moved to Los Angeles five years ago.

In 2012, Ganeshan obtained a film degree from the Academy of Art in San Francisco, where she became interested in the issue of homelessness. Due to the high amount of displaced people in Los Angeles, Ganeshan was drawn to the city. Here, she met Mata Priya, the founder of New Life Society, a nonprofit serving individuals experiencing poverty or homelessness.

“I make everything. I make dolls, mandalas, just whatever comes to my head, or if I’m lucky, to my heart”

— Yogita Ganeshan, artist

Ganeshan formed a close friendship with Priya. They both followed the Hindu faith and valued altruism above all else. For three years, Ganeshan was able dedicate most of her time to New Life Society. Then, Priya died in 2015, effectively putting an end to the nonprofit. But Ganeshan wasn’t deterred.

“You couldn’t find another woman like her, she was a force,” Ganeshan says, looking up toward the sky. “I had to do right by her.”

The artist continued Priya’s efforts on a smaller scale, working from her van in Venice and Santa Monica. The altruistic nomad later added Leimert Park to her route, providing food and clothing to those without.

Ganeshan sells her own artwork to fund her mobile lifestyle.

“I make everything. I make dolls, mandalas, just whatever comes to my head, or if I’m lucky, to my heart,” she says, opening the dual doors at the rear of the van, revealing the cluttered array of paper, fabrics and supplies. “I’m a starving artist,” Ganeshan says with a laugh. “So, I use pretty much any canvas that I can find.”

Eating well is its own art form — it gives you dignity,” Ganeshan says. The artist teaches her patrons to cook healthy meals with the vegetables she buys at farmers markets around Los Angeles. Photo Credit: Daniela Silva

Selling art also affords her the supplies necessary to tailor donated clothing and buy food for the homeless and impoverished.

“Everything goes back into this — it’s my life’s work,” she says, while organizing long, green pole beans and other vegetables in the back seat to deliver along her long route.

She starts her daily rounds in Venice in the morning. Ganeshan drives through the city’s back roads, assisting regulars and offering her services to any new faces who approach her van. By noon, she’s on her way to Santa Monica, stopping at farmers markets for inexpensive produce and scouting thrift stores for clothes to give out. The stops differ daily, depending on the needs of Ganeshan’s shifting patrons. Today, her last stop is in Leimert Park.

Ganeshan adjusts the tattered black scarf on her head so it shields her better from the blazing midday sun. She’s leaning into the belly of her van from the open back doors, organizing the used clothes that are strewn everywhere. She grabs a perfectly folded stack of clothing in the corner of the van.

This outfit, she says, has been tailored to fit a woman she works with who needs business-casual attire for an upcoming job interview.

Ganeshan sifts through the van’s clutter, the seats barely visible underneath crumpled pieces of paper. Gold bracelets engraved with Sanskrit clang together. She pulls out a colorful sketch of a mandala she recently made. It signifies her new mission, she says, to “challenge the root of violence and displacement.” Art is both her income and her outlet.

Ganeshan adheres to the Hindu principle of minimalism by working solely out of her van. Photo Credit: Daniela Silva

The artist intends for her work to emphasize mindfulness and self-betterment. Leimert Park has the seventh-highest crime rate in Los Angeles County, according to the Los Angeles Times. Ganeshan believes that here the key to change comes from within.

“People have to know how to live with each other, and then they’ll gain insight as how to live with themselves,”

— Yogita Ganeshan, artist

The theme of community threads most of Ganeshan’s pieces together. The next painting she pulled from the van is a vibrant watercolor of women walking to market with produce baskets tied to their heads.

“You have to ask yourself, why is it that every other day, I feel like it’s just me alone in the world?” she says. “Maybe if you investigate what’s going on with you, you’ll be better off.”

Ganeshan’s manner of speaking is like performance art. She was born and raised in Guyana. Her indigenous Wapishana heritage is audible in the tall vowels of her words. As the muscular woman, clad in a self-tailored gold, satin dress, preaches to an audience of one, her hips sway, every word punctuated with a powerful, melodic cadence.

While growing up in Guyana, Ganeshan says she learned the most important community is the one at home, the family. She pulls out another didactic painting. This parchment paper watercolor illustrates a hen feeding her chicks, a depiction of the symbiotic relationship between a parent and their children.

“I don’t care if you got money or not. That’s key — I don’t care if your parents were drugged out. I don’t even care if you were a victim of compromise,” she says. “Once you can forgive, you can heal.”

“Feed them Right” painting by Yogita Ganeshan. Photo Credit: Daniela Silva

New Life Society used to feed up to 100 people every day of the week. These days Ganeshan helps roughly half as many, but with the extra time she includes lessons in self-care, a practice she believes transcends basic necessities.

The film student turned craftswoman hopes to do more under the moniker New Life Society.

“The goal is always to help more people, but to help them in a way that’s sustainable. If I cook for them, they end up back where they started. I do something different — I teach them to help themselves.”

Other artists in Leimert Park are thankful for the woman in the van. Ganeshan drives business to their shops, and they say she often rolls down her window to yell affirmations at their customers.

“Yogi is a light, she brings something unique to Leimert Park,” says Aminah Muhammad, from Queen Aminah Fashion. “She’s just highlighting all of the good that already exists. She’s bringing it forward.”

Ganeshan waves at Muhammad as she pulls out of the Leimert Park parking stall. She can’t stay any longer. First there’s that job interview outfit to drop off and then early to bed. Her delivery route starts again at dawn.

McDonald's restaurants don’t usually vary much from place to place, but one Leimert Park location serves up chess matches along with the usual coffee and fries.

Both seasoned and first-time chess players have been meeting up here every day for more than five years, all for the joy of the pastime. On busy evenings, you can find at least six chess games going on at the same time.

"Everyone has gotten to know who's good and who's not," said Robert Osby, one of the club's founders. "Everybody's friendly, we like to keep a mellow crowd," Osby said.

Osby said the club started with just a couple of friends playing chess.

“We’ve been getting together, another guy and I,” Osby said. “Then people started coming to play us, and that’s how the whole thing got started.”

The McDonald’s has welcomed the club wholeheartedly, even redecorating the restaurant with chess decor.

“It keeps things kind of in order, and it keeps some of the riffraff away,” Osby said. “It’s like a community center, a semi-community center.”

“You meet good people, you learn chess and it’s a good relaxation. That’s what chess will do for you.”

— Robert Osby, chess club founder

Most members have been enjoying chess for years.

“I’ve been playing chess since college,” Osby said. “That’s about -- wow -- that’s about 40 years.”

The McDonald’s isn’t the only place in Los Angeles where chess enthusiasts can meet up; another popular spot is the Starbucks on Centinela and La Tijera.

“It gets competitive at the Starbucks over at La Tijera; we’re more about casual chess,” Osby said with a laugh. “We’re more of a friendly chess game.

The chess club in the Leimert Park McDonalds is always welcoming news members.

“You meet good people, you learn chess and it’s a good relaxation,” Osby said. “That’s what chess will do for you.”

Javier Avalos, Michelle Segura, Heymi Aguirre and Jose Contreras have spent the majority of their lives in the United States. All four arrived in the country illegally as children.

Now they're young adults, living in South LA and pursuing higher education — an opportunity made easier by the Obama-era program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA.

But after the Trump Administration announced in September its plans to end DACA, the so-called Dreamers' futures became less clear.

“My parents brought me to the United States in order for me to complete a better and successful future for myself,” said Heymi Aguirre, a high school senior with aspirations to study criminology.

“All we knew was that education would kind of set us free,” said Michelle Segura, who is in the process of completing her degree at Los Angeles Trade-Tech College. “Even if I do decide to continue my Master’s, I’m going in there just blind.”

“If you had a daughter, you had a son that you brought illegally to another country — what would you want for them? Would you want them to suffer?”

— Heymi Aguirre, a high school senior

Jose Contreras, who plans to get his Master’s degree in Physical Therapy, and Javier Avalos, who wants to become a registered nurse, also expressed unease about the times ahead. “It’s just -- that’s everything that I’ve know,” Avalos said of living in the United States.

“Put yourself in our shoes,” Aguirre said. “If you had a daughter, you had a son that you brought illegally to another country -- what would you want for them? Would you want them to suffer? Or would you want them to have a better future than yourself?”

Shoes have supported Stephen Randolf’s family for more than 60 years. His grandfather opened the first Chambers Shine Parlor & Shoe Repair & Dying in 1955. For owner Randolf, “shoes is life.”

Chambers, located in the Windsor Hills Area of Los Angeles, has called 3923 West Slauson Avenue home for 30 years.

“Our original store was in South Central,” Randolf said. “My grandfather, he kind of moved here from Alabama, after World War II. My dad started this store in 1988. More black people started living on the west side, so we saw our customer base kind of shifting so we needed to bring a facility to meet their needs closer on the west side of Los Angeles.”

“We kickstarted a lot, a lot of people’s working careers because we just gave them a sense of responsibility, or a sense of self- worth: shine some shoes, make some money, and help support their family.”

— Stephen Randolf, owner of Chambers

Entering the shop, past the bright blue exterior, an environment as lively as the hue outside is revealed. Shelves lined up with sets of shoes, autographed sports memorabilia, and photographs illustrating the history of Chambers gives the establishment a unique mom and pop character that continues to bring its regulars back. The center of the store includes a row of shine chairs that provides a workplace for a set of employees invested in the stories of its customers, who they call family.

Chambers has provided a sense of stability for the surrounding community that has experienced a lot of change in recent years.

“If you guys were ever to be around you'd just hear like ‘oh I used to work at Chambers’ or ‘oh I started at Chambers,’” Randolf said. “We kickstarted a lot, a lot of people’s working careers because we just gave them a sense of responsibility, or a sense of self- worth: shine some shoes, make some money, and help support their family or support whatever other needs they have in their lives.”

Plumbing and construction boss Jonathan Griffin has been a customer of Chambers for 15 years. He heard about the shoe shine and repair shop at his church, where he noticed the shining shoes of his fellow congregants. The “barbershop stories” and what’s going on in the community are always shared at Chambers, a place where he said there are no secrets.

“I consider Chambers a black ‘Cheers’, ‘Cheers’ the 80s sitcom, because it's one of those places where you come in and everybody knows your name,” Randolf said. “We want you to feel comfortable when you come into Chambers, no matter who you are.”

Four people live in a cluttered tent tucked into the back corner of a park in South Los Angeles’s Baldwin Village.

One of the residents is a 30-year-old transgender woman who gave her name as Moriiah. She is among the more than 34,000 people who are homeless in Los Angeles, according to a report released in September by City Controller Ron Galperin.

“I’m waiting for my section eight apartment to be ready, so until then, I would like to live in peace,” she said. “But you can’t with a lot of people who are judgmental and racist. They don’t want certain people around so they go snitch and tell and laugh behind your back and things which makes it hard for me to stay where I want to stay.”

Moriiah’s struggle for permanent housing is a hardship an increasing number of Angelenos are facing. The population of people without adequate housing has increased by 80 percent since 2009 for a variety of reasons, ranging from mental illness to exorbitant housing costs, according to Galperin’s report.

The solutions listed in the report vary, but include such things as storage units for the homeless, helping to pay for transportation to storage facilities and using city land as emergency campgrounds and shelters.

But those solutions are intermediate and superficial, said several leaders of community groups that help people who are homeless. Solutions should address the larger problems of housing availability and affordability, they said.

“From the philosophy we take on assisting homeless individuals, this solution would not work for us,” said Candace Leos, communications manager for Midnight Mission, a South Los Angeles community organization that helps those experiencing homelessness. “We believe in giving people the tools that will set them on the bridge to self-sufficiency.”

The Mission helps people with medical, mental and addiction problems. They also provide education and career counseling, and support while individuals save money and transition into housing.

Leos said she worries a city camp could damage the relationships the homelessness organization makes with the people they are trying to help get back on their feet.

“Right now, when someone comes into our facility for even a meal, it’s a chance for us to connect with them, for us to get to know one another and build trust,” she said. “If you took people and put them into an area, they probably wouldn’t come into our place and wouldn’t have the opportunity to connect with the help that they so desperately need.”

“Based on our organization’s nearly 40 years of service in the community, we know that permanent solutions, such as permanent housing accompanied with supportive services, is the only way to end homelessness,”

— Candace Leos, communications manager for Midnight Mission

Leos is also apprehensive about the potential living and health conditions in an official encampment. A city-sanctioned camp does not equate to secure, permanent housing.

“I think without adequate controls and police, these [camps] can become quite out of control and dangerous,” she said. “People don’t deserve to live like that either. We need affordable housing. People deserve to have a roof over their heads.”

The desire for a permanent solution was echoed in an email from Rachel Kassenbrock of the Downtown Women’s Center, an organization dedicated to providing support for women dealing with poverty and homelessness.

“Based on our organization’s nearly 40 years of service in the community, we know that permanent solutions, such as permanent housing accompanied with supportive services, is the only way to end homelessness,” she said.

John Fields, an employee at the Salvation Army Hope Harbor in South Los Angeles, said in email that he worried about the health conditions at city-sanctioned encampments.

The recent outbreak of hepatitis A among the homeless population in Southern California has a lot of residents concerned. Hepatitis A is an extremely contagious viral liver disease. The best defenses against its spread are vaccination and washing hands with soap and water, according to the LA County Department of Public Health website.

Fields wondered how the city would manage trash and collection at city-sanctioned camps. “It is my experience that the amount of trash that is accumulated by each person is enormous,” he said.

Waste management in a city with a rapidly growing homeless population has become an increasingly difficult challenge. LA’s 15th Council District, overseen by councilmember Joe Busciano, includes Watts, San Pedro and Harbor City.

Busciano’s website lists several steps for clearing unsanctioned homeless encampments reported to the city, including city workers sorting through items and then requiring the owner to pick them up at a Downtown location.

Providing sanctioned homeless encampments on city property could help districts control waste and the spread of diseases like Hepatitis A by offering a secure and sanitary living environment. Many cities across the country are grappling with a meteoric rise in homeless residents. Seattle and Portland have had city-sanctioned camps for years.

“People are super grateful to be off the streets and be safe. We have seen a huge success”

— Amy Gonyeau, Alpha Project’s chief operating officer

Los Angeles is one of several municipalities in California considering similar setups including Oakland, San Jose and Sacramento. San Diego County opened its first official homeless encampment near Balboa Park in the beginning of October and is planning to add more.

The county provides social services and staffing at the new camp that is operated by the Alpha Project, an organization that has been dedicated to helping the homeless for more than three decades. The Balboa Park encampment provides tents, showers, food and restrooms for roughly 350 people.

“People are super grateful to be off the streets and be safe,” said Amy Gonyeau, Alpha Project’s chief operating officer. “We have seen a huge success. The goal with the project is that they stay less than 120 days. The goal is to find permanent housing.”

While Leos from Midnight Mission in South LA has some reservations about the possible impact official city camps could have on nonprofit relationships with homeless patrons, Gonyeau said the San Diego encampment has actually helped foster bonds between organization employees and the homeless people living there.

According to Gonyeau, having a central, controlled location for those without homes to camp makes it easier to manage sanitation, stay in contact, provide services and security.

“We are always at capacity here,” she said. “It’s a need, let’s put it that way. We need to get them off the streets to stay safe. It’s a lot easier when they’re in one spot.”

Like Moriiah, people facing housing insecurity in South LA and the rest of the city, will have to endure as best they can until government leaders implement better processes to help or, ideally, come up with a permanent solution to the current crisis.