President Trump’s proposed $54 billion cutback in discretionary spending in order to fund a matching increase in the military budget hits hardest at programs for the poor and homeless. The most obvious is the $6.2 billion from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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[The following message on President Trump’s budget request was issued March 16 by Diane Yentel, President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, based in Washington, D.C. It is reprinted with permission.]
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In February 2016 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors adopted a 47-point strategy to combat homelessness under the title the Homeless Initiative. One year later, on February 8, 2017, they sponsored the First Annual Homeless Initiative Conference. Little reported (no article in the LA Times), almost 500 civic leaders gathered at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels for an all-day session.
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In November the City Council adopted a revised law restricting living in vehicles on city street. The revised law took effect January 7, 2017, but police are holding off enforcement until early February. The change takes the form of a revision of Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) 85.02 – Vehicle Dwelling.
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Back in 2013 the Economic Roundtable concluded a two-year study of the 10% of Los Angeles homeless people who have the most frequent hospitalizations. The study, "Getting Home: Outcomes from Housing High Cost Homeless Hospital Patients," made the astonishing discovery that for the 10th decile patients, the city was spending an average of $63,808 a year. When instead of leaving them on the streets it placed them in permanent supportive housing, their total annual costs including rent and food fell to $16,913.
The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services has created a new unit called Housing for Health devoted precisely to trying to house these extraordinarily expensive patients. Created by DHS Director Mitchell H. Katz, Housing for Health aims to use the huge savings to invest in creating long-term housing for the extremely ill homeless, and to do it now, not waiting for the housing boom that will eventually materialize from the Proposition HHH bond issue.
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Both the city and county of Los Angeles in January 2016 produced extensive plans for long-term dealing with homelessness. This is the county's final plan, issued in February 2016. Click on the link below to view the document, a 130-page PDF.
The link below is to the Comprehensive Homeless Strategy plan completed in January 2016, on Mayor Eric Garcetti's website. The link goes to the Mayor's brief summary page. The link on that page goes to the full 237 page document. The download for that can be slow and not practical for a smartphone.
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Homelessness in South Los Angeles
The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough understanding of homelessness in Los Angeles as it pertains to the Eighth City Council District and South Los Angeles more broadly. On January 13, 2016, the City of Los Angeles released a Comprehensive Homeless Strategy detailing over 60 strategies to combat homelessness. The citywide view is sweeping, expansive, and comprehensive, but falls short when detailing the geographic and demographic particularities of South Los Angeles. While I support implementation of all strategies within the Comprehensive Homeless
City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana released his office's first quarterly report November 7 on Los Angeles' ambitious new agenda to end homelessness. The most optimistic achievement was the passage of Proposition HHH the next day, committing the city to issue $1.2 billion in bonds to qualified developers to construct 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing over ten years.
For the rest, there are many promising accomplishments, but a few serious warning signs of trouble to come. Santana concedes at the outset that until this year, the city's main investment has been in crisis intervention, "largely relying on funding emergency shelter beds, with no clear path to long-term recovery."
In the short-term, this must still be the government's focus until new housing units begin to come online some years from now. The immediate priorities are to increase storage facilities, and create mobile showers and safe parking locations. It is just here, however, that the first quarter has been least successful.
At this time, there is only one location in the city to store homeless people's possessions. It is downtown in Skid Row. Three new ones were under consideration. The one in San Pedro was soon abandoned due to community opposition. One in CD9 on east Washington Blvd. was dropped because rehab costs were too high. And the third, a city-owned, long-vacant senior center in Venice, was approved, but that led to an uproar from the community. The city is considering some kind of mobile storage as an alternative.