Advocates report at least six unhoused people died in just two days in Salinas.

Outside of a blue tent on Bridge Street in Salinas’ Chinatown neighborhood is an altar with candles, stuffed animals, a red heart-shaped balloon, and the word “rest” colored with chalk on the sidewalk. This place was home to a woman who went by the nickname Shorty, and she was Ronald James’ best friend.

“She spent Christmas Eve at my house and two days later she was gone,” James says.

With a breaking voice, James describes how Shorty agonized in his arms. James says she’d been having motor issues, and fell a couple times while picking up recycling. When he checked in on her Dec. 27, “Her body was there, but really only half of Shorty was there.” A health worker with Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas aided her, but Shorty died; the cause is unspecified.

The last days of December weren’t easy for those living on the streets of Monterey County. The first cases of the omicron variant of Covid-19 were confirmed, and nighttime temperatures were lower than usual, under 40 degrees. James says illnesses and possible drug abuse combined with the weather created a dangerous cocktail that took the lives of two of his friends, and four other residents of Chinatown.

“They lost the battle of survival,” he says. As for his own survival: “I don’t consider this living, just not dying.”

David Balch runs Closer Walk, an organization that provides aid and food for unsheltered people in Chinatown. On Dec. 29, he noticed several regulars were missing. So he started combing the area, asking about missing individuals. He and Roman Perez, program director for House of Peace transitional resident program at the homeless-serving nonprofit Dorothy’s Place, learned that at least six unhoused people died in only two days, Dec. 26 and 27; they personally knew three of them.

One was another friend of James, a man named Charles who lived near the train tracks with his girlfriend. James says Charles dreamed of opening his own recycling business.

Data at the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office does not reflect the numbers gathered on the streets. Darell Simpson, spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office, says only one report of a body in Chinatown was received that week. “We are not having a mass casualty of homeless people,” Simpson says.

Perez says it was shocking to find out that several people died, even amid the chronic health hardships of living without a home. “The hardest pill to swallow is they passed away by being homeless,” he says.