LOS ANGELES — Apart from his backpack and bicycles, army veteran Julian Saucedo doesn’t have much to call his own. When you live on the streets, he said, traveling light is par for the course.
“Right now, I’m just kind of bouncing around, you know, bouncing around from place to place,” Saucedo said.
Saucedo served several tours in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, enduring brutal warfare. When he returned home in 2006, he said the battle didn’t end there.
“It was a shock, you know, going from the battlefield straight to like… civilian world,” he said.
On any given night in Los Angeles, more than 3,000 veterans are sleeping on the streets. As nights get colder, some of them seek shelter at the tiny-home sheds on the West LA Veteran Affairs campus. But with only a handful of beds available each night, a spot isn’t always guaranteed.
Unable to get his own bed tonight, Saucedo said he’ll have to use blankets to stay warm.
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