Brooke Carrillo’s family used to call her “monster baby.” It was the 70s, and she was wild.

She would run around in her diaper interrupting her brother’s hangouts with his friends.

“Back in the 70s it was different,” said Carrillo. “I was still little at the time. We used to have parties all the time, there were kids always at the house. I was always in the mix, my mindset was kind  of that mindset of a ‘free for all,’ but it really wasn’t. I got kicked out of Head Start on the first day.”

Carrillo grew up in Chatsworth, California, and was the youngest of nine kids. Her mother had four jobs, and was constantly working.

“She was always there to cook dinner,” said Carrillo. “Always had stuff in the refrigerator for when we got off of school. My sister basically was always in charge of me.”

When she was growing up, Carrillo recalls orange trees all over Chatsworth. Now she is living behind the industrial buildings that have replaced them.

“In suburban life, we are scrounged about,” said Carrillo. “They think that we’re that person like the one on Skid Row. Trying to explain that to them makes us mental, we try to explain to them that not all of us are like this.”

“This is Jordan, this is my street,” said Carrillo.

Carrillo has become the queen bee of her encampment on Jordan Avenue. Carrillo has been unhoused for nine years, and has found herself in a community of people who are respectful of the space they live in and the people around them.

“The last thing we want to do is disrespect anybody. All of my folk here on Jordan, we respect the businesses, who don’t want to see us at all. But they at least want to see some sort of respect for ourselves.”

Carrillo has shaped a group of unhoused individuals into a group that sticks together and stays out of trouble. Most of her rules are based around mutual respect. She has facilitated polite interactions with police who patrol her area. The police still notify the encampment of any complaints issued against them, but also make routine stops to check on the wellbeing of the members in Carrillo’s encampment. Carrillo has had previous negative experiences with new officers unfamiliar with the encampment, but tries to enforce self-policing amongst the encampment to avoid altercations.

“We have our own policing. We police each other. If someone’s doing wrong, someone is going to say something about it and it doesn’t have to be the police. Because then it just brings harassment to everybody.”

In this encampment, people are expected to respect themselves and the rest of the group. She believes this is the best way to create a more positive perception of the encampment to outsiders.

“If this is how it’s going to be, then you respect yourself,” said Carrillo. “Respect your area, respect the ones next to you, respect the ones that view you, respect the cars that are driving by you.”

Self-respect can stem from a simple shower most housed individuals take for granted, Carrillo believes. Although it’s not a privilege extended to the unhoused on a daily basis, Carrillo enforces a shower routine on a weekly basis.

“How do you change somebody's way of living? By giving them the provisions to live,” said Carrillo. “I make these guys take showers on Saturdays at the church. Everybody’s name’s on the list. And they feel better about themselves, which makes them feel better about the way they’re staying, and others around you.”

There are 18 people living on Jordan Avenue. She had previously only allowed 12 people to stay around her, but has since invited six more people to join the encampment from the railroad tracks nearby.

Brooke allows newcomers to stay within her block, while maintaining the social distance of six feet during the time of COVID-19. She insists everyone in the encampment keeps their area clean, and gives them a broom and dustpan.

People living in Brooke’s encampment can’t hoard or bring recycling to their shelters for days on end. Gutters around them must be cleaned out.

“They go through thorough evaluation before I say it’s okay,” said Carrillo. “The first time you’re out of line I’m going to bring it to your attention. If it doesn’t change, you’re out of here.”

“There’s no cockroaches on this street, there’s no ants on this street. I don’t dig ‘em and I don’t like them.”“We have the cleanest street out of every homeless encampment in the valley,” said Carrillo. “This is coming from the police, from different advocates. You could sleep on this street just on the sidewalk, it's so clean.”

Every person in Carrillo’s encampment carries with them their own skills and stories that make them useful and unique to the encampment. Like Victor, the handyman of the bunch.“I have one little particular problem at the end, named Victor,” said Carrillo.

“His dirtiness could be reprimanded more, butI’ve got to give him a break. He’s a little slow but he’s so smart.”

Victor will fill everybody’s generator with gas, and fix electrical problems with lamps and batteries. Victor will dig through trash cans to find what people ask him to find.

“Everyone goes to Victor if they need help with anything, because he gets it done,” said Carrillo.

Carrillo had asked Victor to help her find a TV. Even if the TV’s he brings to her turn out to be broken, people in the encampment will take parts to get recycled and get money back.

“My one friend, he takes pieces of gold out of computers,” said Carrillo. “He just pulls all these strips of gold out of the prongs on a motherboard.”

He uses magnifying glasses and tweezers to pick apart the precious metals, melts it down in a metal cup, and ends up with a ball of gold only slightly bigger than a marble. The process takes two months. The first time he went through this tedious process, a pawn shop appraised it and bought it from him for $1,000.

“He does it all night and all day,” said Carrillo. “Very Intuitive and very resourceful.”

Carrillo has found a family within her encampment as well, in the form of a father figure.

“He’s my street dad, he’s been my godfather forever. He’s homeless as well. He’s right down the street from me, five tents down.” Carrillo received government assistance, and was able to move into an apartment for three years. Unfortunately, after living on the streets for so long, it was hard for Carrillo’s father to transition into living in a home.

“I told him, ‘You have your own key, just open the door to your own place. You can go upstairs, take a shower, as many times as you want,’” said Carrillo.

Carrillo’s father told her it felt like a prison. It took six months for him to learn how to feel comfortable living indoors.

“He had to re-learn from himself. Because he used to have that, so he didn’t have to be taught. But he had to re-learn.”

Eventually, Carrillo and her father found themselves unhoused again. She tried to help other unhoused people feel at home, letting them stay with her until it led to her own eviction.

Carrillo continues to help her friends on the street, and acts as a resource within her encampment to keep themselves safe and inform them of their rights as unhoused individuals. A mutual friend was a victim of domestic violence.

“I had this girl who was being abused by her boyfriend, who busted her two front teeth out with the frame of a bike. Everybody would see it and watch it, and I couldn’t watch it no more,” said Carrillo.

After calling around to multiple shelters for victims of domestic violence, Carrillo couldn’t find one with an open space for her friend. She searched every city and state, and ended up finding an open bed at a shelter in Baltimore.

“She was going to die. She had to make a decision, I asked her ‘do you want to keep getting beat up, or do you want to have your son identify you in a morgue?”

Multiple people from her encampment pooled their funds to get this woman a one-way ticket to Baltimore, where she was able to hide from her abusive boyfriend.Now doing much better and keeping safe, Carrillo’s friend is staying in transitional living. She has no desire to get back with her ex-boyfriend and has started working at a new job.

“She’s a success story coming from homelessness,” said Carrillo. “I don’t think if it wasn’t for me she wouldn’t be here right now.”

“It’s a little community, we’re a little family,” said Carrillo. “Even if I don’t like somebody, I still help that person out. We have enough respect for everybody, and we’re not these bad people that everybody thinks that we are.”

“Society made these homeless people,” said Carrillo. “So if we could re-educate society as well, it’d probably be a lot better. We’re not going to stop living. We can’t. We take care of each other.”