A week after 45-year-old Raz Chowdhury was moved off the streets into interim housing through an Inside Safe operation, he was found dead in his hotel room.
Chowdhury had spent years living on the streets of Koreatown, moving between encampments along Sixth Street and Wilshire Boulevard and Manhattan Place.
Sherin Varghese first met him three or four years ago. Chowdhury would reach out to Varghese, a volunteer with Ktown for All, an advocacy group that provides direct aid for people experiencing homelessness in Koreatown. He would ask her for tents, tarps, clothes and other supplies. More often than not, she said, they weren’t for him…