Los Angeles Confronts a Spike in Homelessness Amid Prosperity
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
New York Times
JUNE 12, 2015
LOS ANGELES — Construction cranes dot the sky from Century City to the Sunset Strip. Once-downtrodden blocks downtown and in Venice are bustling with restaurants, coffee shops, sparkling new condominiums, theaters and office construction. The unemployment rate has dropped to almost half its double-digit high of five years ago. Much of Los Angeles these days seems the portrait of prosperity.
But a sweeping census of the homeless population in Los Angeles County released last month came as a jolting rebuke to the charities and officials who have proclaimed a mission to end the region’s stubborn problem of people living on the streets. Their numbers spiked 12 percent in two years, cementing Los Angeles’s reputation of having the most intractable homeless problem in the nation. It is a place of unsettlingly stark class contrasts, on display every day with a staggering number of people living around the clock on the streets, without the extensive network of temporary overnight shelters provided in cities like New York City.
The report, by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, has set off a wave of concern and frustration among officials here and raised questions about the widespread gentrification that has transformed parts of Los Angeles. The urban transformation, while bringing new life and prosperity to formerly bleak streets, has helped fuel some of the highest housing costs in the country, while removing inexpensive rentals from the market.
“It’s all being gentrified,” said Alice Callaghan, an advocate for the homeless, as she walked past people hidden under pieces of cardboard on Skid Row, an area in downtown Los Angeles. A few blocks away are stores like Big Man Bakes, with its promise of “fresh, moist, fantastic cupcakes” on a once bedraggled block of Main Street.
“Where are these poor families going to go?” asked Ms. Callaghan, who has worked on Skid Row for 34 years. “It can’t be a surprise to anyone at City Hall that these numbers are increasing. It’s not drugs that are putting these people out on the streets — it’s the housing. Sidewalks in this city are the de facto housing.”
The homeless census, based on a three-day survey by 5,500 volunteers in January, put the official homeless population for Los Angeles County, which includes the city of Los Angeles, at 44,359. The report confirms what is anecdotally obvious: People are sleeping on sidewalks up and down Sunset Boulevard, living in cars in South Los Angeles and huddling in the kind of tent cities once confined to Skid Row, which the report found had substantially grown.
New York City has a larger homeless population, but most of its homeless people live in shelters, not outdoors. “The sheer number of people living on the streets and out of doors makes L.A. the homeless capital of the nation,” said Jerry Jones, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.
That distinction, to a considerable extent, is due to a temperate climate that has long been a great draw of Southern California, for those with or without homes. Unlike in New York City, there is relatively little risk of dying from exposure here for people who make the streets their home. And from a municipal perspective, it takes some of the pressure off governments to act.
“I mostly came for the weather,” said Gloria Davis, 57, who said she was facing eviction and a return to the streets from her latest low-cost apartment just off Skid Row. She smiled up at the warm afternoon sun. “Give me this weather all year round,” she said. “You can’t find this in New York. You can’t find this in Miami.”
As in New York, various factors contribute to homelessness here, but the biggest one may be the huge gap between housing costs and income. The Los Angeles City Council voted recently to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, but that can go only so far.
“People are out there mostly because they can’t afford a place to sleep,” Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, said in an interview. “We may technically be out of a recession, but typically after a recession you’ll have three to five years when people are still hitting the streets. And No. 2, it was a rough winter in other parts of the country, and that always drives people to places where the weather is better.”
There seems to be no shortage of other explanations: a cutback in state redevelopment funds that paid for low-income housing development; California’s effort to reduce the population of its overcrowded prisons; and, as always, mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction.
The rising homeless population amounts to a setback for Mr. Garcetti as he enters his third year in office. He said he was distressed by the census results, even as he expressed confidence that policies being put in place now — including $10 million to be spent on housing and raising the minimum wage — would turn things around.
“These are my people as much as someone living in a mansion in Bel Air,” Mr. Garcetti said. “These are our fellow brothers and sisters on the street, and I feel a sense of responsibility to them. It saddens me that so many people are out there.”
The gentrification has only increased the anxiety and despair that have long been common on Skid Row.
Ms. Davis, holding on to a walker as she moved down the street, said the landlord of her tiny $418-a-month room at the Baltimore Hotel had informed her that her rent was going up imminently. Because she relies on government assistance checks and cannot afford to pay more, she faces the prospect of winding up back on the streets.
“They want $675 a month,” she said. “They are trying to make me leave. The building is going to be turned into apartments. What else?”
Some business leaders and neighborhood groups dispute the idea that gentrification and rising housing costs are the main causes of the increase in the homeless population. Carol Schatz, the president of the Central City Association of Los Angeles, a business group, said much of the problem was caused by a judicial ruling that restricted the hours that the police can enforce laws preventing people from sleeping on sidewalks.
“We do not share the view of some advocates that everybody wants to be housed,” Ms. Schatz said. “That is simply not our experience over the years. A lot of these people have been living on the street for a very long time because of mental illness and addiction.”
The homeless tally had one notable bright spot: The number of homeless veterans — a prime target for federal officials and Mr. Garcetti — remained stable at 4,016, even as 10 more veterans a day, on average, became homeless. To lower that number, nearly 7,500 beds were created for homeless veterans over the past two years.
Robert A. McDonald, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, moved quickly after taking office last summer to steer more funds to help homeless veterans in Los Angeles. Ending a long and bitter lawsuit between homeless advocates here and his department, he also entered an out-of-court settlement to build housing for veterans on a 387-acre campus in West Los Angeles, where many of the buildings had been rented to private corporations.
”You can’t solve — I can’t solve — veteran homelessness nationally unless we solve it in L.A.,” Mr. McDonald said in an interview. “Veterans are smart. If they are going to a place to be homeless, they are going to want to go to a place with nice weather like L.A.”
Asked if his goal of ending veteran homelessness this year was achievable, he responded: “I am not giving up. That is still my goal.”
Christine Margiotta, who runs Home for Good, a United Way homeless program, said organizations were struggling to keep pace with new people becoming homeless. “We have housed over 20,000 people over the past four years, and yet the numbers are up,” she said. “People are becoming homeless at a higher rate than we’ve seen in the past.”
Tensions have risen in recent weeks after two homeless men, one in Venice and another downtown, were shot and killed by the police as officers tried to arrest them.
“The homeless population is being pushed around,” said Robert Cole, the director of the Emmanuel Baptist Rescue Mission on Skid Row, where dozens of men stood eating breakfast before returning to the streets.
Peter Lynn, the executive director of the Homeless Services Authority, noted the difficulty in counting the homeless, given the fluidity of the population. Still, he said, the trend is clear.
“We have an increase, and the magnitude of the increase is important,” Mr. Lynn said. “I don’t think that anybody was surprised, but everybody is disheartened.”
New York Times
JUNE 12, 2015
LOS ANGELES — Construction cranes dot the sky from Century City to the Sunset Strip. Once-downtrodden blocks downtown and in Venice are bustling with restaurants, coffee shops, sparkling new condominiums, theaters and office construction. The unemployment rate has dropped to almost half its double-digit high of five years ago. Much of Los Angeles these days seems the portrait of prosperity.
But a sweeping census of the homeless population in Los Angeles County released last month came as a jolting rebuke to the charities and officials who have proclaimed a mission to end the region’s stubborn problem of people living on the streets. Their numbers spiked 12 percent in two years, cementing Los Angeles’s reputation of having the most intractable homeless problem in the nation. It is a place of unsettlingly stark class contrasts, on display every day with a staggering number of people living around the clock on the streets, without the extensive network of temporary overnight shelters provided in cities like New York City.
The report, by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, has set off a wave of concern and frustration among officials here and raised questions about the widespread gentrification that has transformed parts of Los Angeles. The urban transformation, while bringing new life and prosperity to formerly bleak streets, has helped fuel some of the highest housing costs in the country, while removing inexpensive rentals from the market.
“It’s all being gentrified,” said Alice Callaghan, an advocate for the homeless, as she walked past people hidden under pieces of cardboard on Skid Row, an area in downtown Los Angeles. A few blocks away are stores like Big Man Bakes, with its promise of “fresh, moist, fantastic cupcakes” on a once bedraggled block of Main Street.
“Where are these poor families going to go?” asked Ms. Callaghan, who has worked on Skid Row for 34 years. “It can’t be a surprise to anyone at City Hall that these numbers are increasing. It’s not drugs that are putting these people out on the streets — it’s the housing. Sidewalks in this city are the de facto housing.”
The homeless census, based on a three-day survey by 5,500 volunteers in January, put the official homeless population for Los Angeles County, which includes the city of Los Angeles, at 44,359. The report confirms what is anecdotally obvious: People are sleeping on sidewalks up and down Sunset Boulevard, living in cars in South Los Angeles and huddling in the kind of tent cities once confined to Skid Row, which the report found had substantially grown.
New York City has a larger homeless population, but most of its homeless people live in shelters, not outdoors. “The sheer number of people living on the streets and out of doors makes L.A. the homeless capital of the nation,” said Jerry Jones, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.
That distinction, to a considerable extent, is due to a temperate climate that has long been a great draw of Southern California, for those with or without homes. Unlike in New York City, there is relatively little risk of dying from exposure here for people who make the streets their home. And from a municipal perspective, it takes some of the pressure off governments to act.
“I mostly came for the weather,” said Gloria Davis, 57, who said she was facing eviction and a return to the streets from her latest low-cost apartment just off Skid Row. She smiled up at the warm afternoon sun. “Give me this weather all year round,” she said. “You can’t find this in New York. You can’t find this in Miami.”
As in New York, various factors contribute to homelessness here, but the biggest one may be the huge gap between housing costs and income. The Los Angeles City Council voted recently to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, but that can go only so far.
“People are out there mostly because they can’t afford a place to sleep,” Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, said in an interview. “We may technically be out of a recession, but typically after a recession you’ll have three to five years when people are still hitting the streets. And No. 2, it was a rough winter in other parts of the country, and that always drives people to places where the weather is better.”
There seems to be no shortage of other explanations: a cutback in state redevelopment funds that paid for low-income housing development; California’s effort to reduce the population of its overcrowded prisons; and, as always, mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction.
The rising homeless population amounts to a setback for Mr. Garcetti as he enters his third year in office. He said he was distressed by the census results, even as he expressed confidence that policies being put in place now — including $10 million to be spent on housing and raising the minimum wage — would turn things around.
“These are my people as much as someone living in a mansion in Bel Air,” Mr. Garcetti said. “These are our fellow brothers and sisters on the street, and I feel a sense of responsibility to them. It saddens me that so many people are out there.”
The gentrification has only increased the anxiety and despair that have long been common on Skid Row.
Ms. Davis, holding on to a walker as she moved down the street, said the landlord of her tiny $418-a-month room at the Baltimore Hotel had informed her that her rent was going up imminently. Because she relies on government assistance checks and cannot afford to pay more, she faces the prospect of winding up back on the streets.
“They want $675 a month,” she said. “They are trying to make me leave. The building is going to be turned into apartments. What else?”
Some business leaders and neighborhood groups dispute the idea that gentrification and rising housing costs are the main causes of the increase in the homeless population. Carol Schatz, the president of the Central City Association of Los Angeles, a business group, said much of the problem was caused by a judicial ruling that restricted the hours that the police can enforce laws preventing people from sleeping on sidewalks.
“We do not share the view of some advocates that everybody wants to be housed,” Ms. Schatz said. “That is simply not our experience over the years. A lot of these people have been living on the street for a very long time because of mental illness and addiction.”
The homeless tally had one notable bright spot: The number of homeless veterans — a prime target for federal officials and Mr. Garcetti — remained stable at 4,016, even as 10 more veterans a day, on average, became homeless. To lower that number, nearly 7,500 beds were created for homeless veterans over the past two years.
Robert A. McDonald, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, moved quickly after taking office last summer to steer more funds to help homeless veterans in Los Angeles. Ending a long and bitter lawsuit between homeless advocates here and his department, he also entered an out-of-court settlement to build housing for veterans on a 387-acre campus in West Los Angeles, where many of the buildings had been rented to private corporations.
”You can’t solve — I can’t solve — veteran homelessness nationally unless we solve it in L.A.,” Mr. McDonald said in an interview. “Veterans are smart. If they are going to a place to be homeless, they are going to want to go to a place with nice weather like L.A.”
Asked if his goal of ending veteran homelessness this year was achievable, he responded: “I am not giving up. That is still my goal.”
Christine Margiotta, who runs Home for Good, a United Way homeless program, said organizations were struggling to keep pace with new people becoming homeless. “We have housed over 20,000 people over the past four years, and yet the numbers are up,” she said. “People are becoming homeless at a higher rate than we’ve seen in the past.”
Tensions have risen in recent weeks after two homeless men, one in Venice and another downtown, were shot and killed by the police as officers tried to arrest them.
“The homeless population is being pushed around,” said Robert Cole, the director of the Emmanuel Baptist Rescue Mission on Skid Row, where dozens of men stood eating breakfast before returning to the streets.
Peter Lynn, the executive director of the Homeless Services Authority, noted the difficulty in counting the homeless, given the fluidity of the population. Still, he said, the trend is clear.
“We have an increase, and the magnitude of the increase is important,” Mr. Lynn said. “I don’t think that anybody was surprised, but everybody is disheartened.”
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