As you drive westbound on Katella Avenue in Los Alamitos toward the center of town you may have noticed some purple flags and a large banner facing the street, hanging from the St Isidore’s Historical Chapel. And if you are slowing for the red light ahead you may even be able to read the banner and count the purple flags flapping in the breeze. They are not there for decoration.
Their purpose is to draw attention to this one week of the year designated across Orange County as Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, and to those among the unhoused who have passed away on the streets of Orange County in 2025. The flags represent individual homeless deaths in the West OC area during the year, and the banner hopefully informs and confronts us, as we hurry along our holiday way, that the homeless are still among us. Yes, even here in Los Alamitos.
At last count, almost 300 homeless individuals passed on the streets in this county this year so far, a number derived from the OC Coroner’s Office, a number surely to grow in the last few weeks of 2025. We know there are some from Los Alamitos on that list. We know they die at a rate five times the overall population death rate. Yes, we know some die directly or indirectly from substance abuse, but far more die from exposure, from untreated illnesses, from exhaustion, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, pedestrian accidents and human predation. And by and large, they die alone. They die alone because in this county there is precious little housing to provide them, and even fewer available shelter beds to warehouse them. And this year, not even one overnight cold weather walk up to protect them from the elements.
Housing Is a Human Right OC joins dozens of other Homeless advocacy groups, faith-based congregations and secular charities this month to call attention to the growing plight of our unhoused brothers and sisters across this wealthy county, culminating in a reading of names on the “ Longest Night”( Dec. 21) of all those who passed in ’25 Without Fixed Abode (viewable on HHROC’s YouTube channel and website).
With over 20 of these purple flag installations now on display in various location across the OC, we hope, at least for one moment, to draw attention to the unhoused suffering playing out every day on the streets and in the darker corners of the county, and give us all pause to remember in these longest and coldest nights of the year “there but for the grace of God go I.” And in so reflecting, consider that those who died were not just statistics on the balance sheet of progress, they were individuals who had lives and stories and hopes of their own, like us. And then, just maybe, if our busy schedules allow, we might find a way to turn that compassion into action for those we see on the streets whose lives still hang by a thread “there but for the grace of God.”