For years, Aracelly Cauich has been a well-known presence at Hollenbeck Park in Boyle Heights, connecting unhoused neighbors to food, services and shelter just steps from her own home.
Cauich is passionate about her work and painfully familiar with the experience.
She vividly remembers nights spent sleeping on a park bench in Koreatown, shielding her two young children, then ages 3 and 4, from the cold.
As a single mother living without family in Los Angeles, Cauich could no longer keep up with her rent and mounting hospital bills after her young son fell ill. One night, she came home to find that the locks to her apartment had been changed.
“That’s when I understood,” Cauich said in Spanish, her eyes welling up with tears. “That’s why I don’t judge homeless people, because you never know what someone is going through.”
Today, Cauich draws on that lived experience to support unhoused residents living in and around Hollenbeck Park, across the street from the Boyle Heights home where she has lived for eight years.
Though homelessness in Los Angeles has gradually decreased citywide over the past two years, residents on the Eastside have raised concerns about growing encampments in their neighborhoods.
Residents like Cauich address the issue by building trust with their unhoused neighbors.
Building a network of trust and mutual aid
She knows many of the unhoused residents near the park by name. When they cross paths, she stops to ask how they’ve been or why she hasn’t seen them in a while. Often, she is the first person they call when they need help.
“Sometimes she brings groceries, she tells us she’s bringing apples, pears, or something like that, and sometimes she makes food for us,” said Carlos Arevalo, who sleeps near the park and has known Cauich for five years. He said Cauich has also advocated for unhoused residents when they’ve had issues with the police.
Arevalo is part of a network of mutual aid that Cauich has created over the years, made up of neighbors, unhoused residents and local organizations. He helps clean up trash around his encampment and reports illegal dumping under the nearby freeway overpass.
In a typical week, Cauich might connect unhoused neighbors to services, field calls from organizations offering leftover food from distributions, set up a table in the park to offer haircuts, recruit volunteers to help her pick up trash, or call her government representatives to discuss a change she wants to see.
Turning care into an organization
She does this work through her nonprofit organization, Hummingbird Hope LA, which she started a few years ago to give her work structure and gain access to city funding. The organization supports community cleanups, workshops related to mental health, domestic violence prevention and immigration, as well as cultural events in the park.
Formal cleanups and regular events have slowed over the past two years because Cauich has lacked the bandwidth and financial support to keep them going. But the quieter day-to-day work she does in her neighborhood has paid off.
Cauich recalls repeatedly calling former District 14 Councilmember Kevin De León’s office to advocate for mobile showers at Hollenbeck Park. Now, the Shower of Hope sets up there every Tuesday.
She was also an early advocate and supporter of increasing housing for the unhoused, including the Boyle Heights Tiny Home Village, which opened in 2024 and brought 72 new housing units into the neighborhood.
Over the years, she has seen people she supported turn their lives around, secure jobs and eventually find permanent housing.
What it takes to create change in a community, Cauich said, is someone who simply cares and a local government willing to listen.
“I’m doing what I can; nobody pays me. I’m doing this because I want to see things get better,” she said.
She continues that work as vice president and homeless liaison of the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council.
What grassroots success looks like
“That’s the thing about the grassroots organizing that people like Aracelly and myself do,” said Shmuel Gonzalez, longtime Boyle Heights activist and former neighborhood council president. “We’re able to react to things in the community faster than the government and the system is able to fill in those gaps and then see how we can bring models of success into the official system.”
For years, she has seen issues like public safety, traffic safety and street safety affect her neighborhood. The lack of streetlights near her home has caused her to use a phone flashlight while walking at night. She often hears gunshots outside her window. She has seen unhoused people she knows die from drug abuse and car accidents.
These days, Cauich often wakes up with soreness in her arms and legs, slowing down her usual ambitious spirit. But she doesn’t lose hope.
Recently, her son asked her a question while massaging her arm.
“Why do you still do this?” she recalled him asking. “You get hurt, you don’t get paid, you get frustrated, some people don’t even appreciate it.”
“That might be true,” Cauich said. “But someone has to do it.”
Learn more about Hummingbird Hope LA:
Follow them on Instagram @hummingbirdhope_la or reach out directly at (323) 247-4142.
