Mountain lions and other rough sleepers in the City of Angels

Saturday, 4 July 2026

Mike “MOD” O'Donnell is a US-based commentator with extensive experience as a director and adviser to New Zealand businesses. He is currently NZTE’s regional trade director for North America. This column represents his personal opinions.

OPINION: One of the biggest surprises about living in Los Angeles has been the amount of wildlife living off the streets.

We have a pack of coyotes that has taken over a shrub bank not far from us, and we regularly see them prowling the neighbourhood at night looking for whatever they can find. Raccoons, squirrels and the occasional badger also manage to eke out an existence on the leafy streets west of Highway 405.

A couple of weeks ago that menagerie expanded to include a fully grown female mountain lion. She was first reported wandering behind some shops in Santa Monica before eventually settling down for a nap in the backyard of a family home.

America, being America, responded with a television news helicopter overhead and enough government agencies to invade a small country.

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Fortunately, a veterinarian with an accurate tranquilliser gun — a device invented by Timaru inventor Colin Murdoch more than 60 years ago — managed to safely sedate the cat before she was relocated to a national park north of the city. Not before the media had exhausted every Wilshire Boulevard cougar joke imaginable.

Wildlife aren't the only creatures living on the streets.

Homelessness in Los Angeles is nothing new, but living amongst it has been confronting. It has also been an education in just how diverse homelessness can be.

Our apartment isn't far from the UCLA campus. In a country where tertiary education doesn't come cheaply, homelessness affects a decent number of California students, with between 10 and 19% identifying as homeless depending on the type of institution they attend.

For these young people, sleeping rough or living in vehicles is often the only way they can afford to complete a degree. It’s a conscious choice as well as a temporary one.

Along arterial streets such as Montana Ave you'll see backpacks and suitcases padlocked to parking meters. Their owners head off to lectures during the day, return in the afternoon to use the free Wi-Fi outside Starbucks or the public library, then make their way to the beach to sleep the night. The following morning they use the beach showers before locking everything up again and heading back to class.

Then there are the car-sleepers.

Early in the morning, when I take Bowie the pointer for a walk, the number of people sleeping in cars is inescapable. Many in tired old station wagons and hatchbacks, but not all. At the end of our street is a fellow who lives in a 2023 Porsche Boxster — hardly the most commodious of automotive accommodations or the cheapest. It's hard not to wonder about the story that put him there.

Mind you, Los Angeles is the capital of backstories and off-piste dreams, so he's in good company.

As Kiwis it's difficult not to notice how effortlessly this society accepts people sleeping rough in alleys behind $30 million mansions.

But what has surprised me is how normalised living in a vehicle has become for some people who are still working, studying or beginning their careers.

With house prices and rents remaining stubbornly high, particularly in coastal California, some Americans have reached the conclusion that the fastest way to get ahead is to stop paying rent altogether. A car, van or SUV becomes temporary accommodation while they complete a degree, serve an apprenticeship or save enough money to take the next step.

It isn't a comfortable existence, and nobody would choose it for the long term.

Beach showers replace bathrooms, libraries become study spaces, cafés become offices and finding a safe place to park becomes part of the daily routine. Yet for many it is viewed less as homelessness than as an uncomfortable but deliberate financial strategy.

National newspapers write about this emerging group of “working homeless” Americans - people earning too much to qualify for assistance but nowhere near enough to comfortably afford housing in the more expensive cities. Online forums are full of apprentices and students swapping advice on the best backseat mattresses, how to keep clean and how long they think they can stick it out before they've saved enough to move into more permanent accommodation.

Whether that represents resilience or resignation probably depends on your point of view. Either way, it illustrates just how profoundly housing costs have reshaped the decisions young Americans are making as they try to build a life. And the sheer gumption of those choosing to do it, bless them.

The urban mountain lion is now back in a national park north of Los Angeles, which is undoubtedly a better outcome for both her and the residents of Santa Monica.

The people sleeping in cars are a different story. Some have clearly fallen on extraordinarily hard times. Others are making a conscious calculation that a cramped back seat today might give them a better future tomorrow.

After living alongside both for almost a year now, I've learned that from the footpath it can be surprisingly difficult to tell which is which.