Los Angeles and Homelessness
Our city is plagued by two interconnected issues: a lack of affordable housing and the resulting growth in homelessness. Our population has grown, and our housing stock has not kept up. This increases rents and home values. More and more people cannot afford the price of housing, and this leads to rising homelessness. It also increases the home values of those fortunate enough to be long time homeowners.
We have to build more housing, and we have to build more affordable housing.
Some of the homeless suffer from mental illness; others suffer from addictions to alcohol or drugs, and some experience both mental illness and substance abuse (the dually diagnosed). 75% of the homeless do not suffer from serious mental illness or addiction. They just need affordable housing. 25% of the homeless do suffer from serious mental illness and/or addiction. They need housing and support services to treat and manage their mental illness and/or substance abuse.
In California, county governments are responsible for most severe mental illness and substance use treatments. In Los Angeles, it’s the county, not the city that is responsible for care and treatment of the seriously mentally ill. Likewise, the city of Los Angeles, not the county, is responsible for housing in the City of Los Angeles.
The voters of Los Angeles City have approved increased funding to build more housing for the homeless – Proposition HHH in 2016. https://localhousingsolutions.org/housing-policy-case-studies/los-angeles-proposition-hhh/ The state of California has approved increased funding to build more housing in Los Angeles and across the state. https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4468
The city of Los Angeles and the developers of homeless housing have to date failed to perform in a satisfactory fashion. https://localhousingsolutions.org/housing-policy-case-studies/los-angeles-proposition-hhh/They have not built sufficient units. Those units they have built have been extremely costly.
The voters of the county of Los Angeles approved ¼ cent sales tax to fund services for the homeless and raising about $350 million annually. The county operates multiple different agencies that deal with the homeless: Public Health (substance abuse treatment and Covid Prevention), Mental Health (mental health care for severe mental illness), Health (inpatient, outpatient and emergency services), LA Care (full scope of health care for the homeless receiving MediCal) and Social Services (public assistance). It is labyrinthine to track their care, treatment and services for the homeless.
We need to integrate and simplify access to care, treatment, programs and assistance for the homeless. We have to build in accountability for results/positive outcomes.
The city of Los Angeles and the County of Los Angeles jointly operate LAHSA (Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority). LAHSA coordinates and manages over $800 million annually in federal, state, county, and city funds for programs that provide shelter, housing, and services to people experiencing homelessness. https://www.lahsa.org/about
Law enforcement, in the forms of the Police Department, Sheriff’s Department and the local jails, are frequently called to address homelessness. This may involve serious crimes; it should be noted that the homeless are more frequently the victim than the perpetrator, but community outrage is more commonly provoked when the homeless are the perpetrators, rather than the victims. https://ktla.com/news/local-news/recent-killings-in-los-angeles-and-new-york-spark-anger-raise-risk-for-homeless-people/ More commonly it is disturbing the peace and violations of city and county ordinances. We have had an unfortunate tendency to criminalize homelessness and the real needs of human beings to sleep in relative peace and safety, rather than provide safe and clean shelters.
Starting in the 1960’s as a nation, we closed public mental hospitals, which were often warehouses for the mentally ill with no treatment, and we shifted to a community mental health treatment system but did not fund community mental health. Starting in the late 70’s and 80’s as a nation, we defunded public housing programs and shifted to a system of vouchers, but we did not fund housing vouchers for private housing. Starting in the early 80’s and accelerating in the mid 90s (welfare reform), we defunded many federal, state and local public assistance programs (aka welfare) for the poor.
Beginning in 2016, the California legislature adopted a series of reforms to spur the development of housing due to the vast imbalance between supply and demand across the state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage
Beginning in 2014, ObamaCare expanded coverage of health, mental health and behavioral health for low, moderate and middle income individuals and families who lacked health insurance. California has been among the most successful in implementing this expansion. It does require strong county leadership, particularly in developing the network of mental health and behavioral health treatment centers.
There has been a lot of strong local resistance to increased housing density in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California. There has also been strong local resistance to the siting of housing and services for the homeless.
In the upcoming elections, many aspiring candidates are going to demonize homeless individuals to distract from our society’s failures to provide an adequate supply of affordable housing and a strong, and easy to access social safety net.