Tag Archives: homeless

Showdown in Echo Park

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Photo by Elizabeth Chou, Southern California News Group

The conflict over the homeless encampment at Echo Park Lake seems to be over.  For now.  After months of growing tension, things came to a head this week when the City of LA announced that it planned to close the park and that all persons living on the premises had to leave.  Protests began on Wednesday morning.  Later that day city workers showed up and began erecting a fence, while the LAPD announced that those remaining inside the park would be cited.  Representatives of the LA Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) offered temporary housing for those who wanted it, and while there were many takers, some declined. 

After a couple of chaotic days, the LAPD announced on Thursday night that anyone remaining in the park would be subject to arrest.  Apparently by Friday the park was closed and all those who had been living there were gone. 

Of course, this is just the latest episode in the ongoing story of housing and homelessness in LA.  Nothing has been resolved, and really there’s no reason to think anything will be resolved any time in the near future.  The forces that are driving LA’s homeless epidemic are still at work, and the LA City Council is doing nothing meaningful to change the situation.  A renter relief program and a temporary eviction moratorium are just band aids on a gaping wound.  As long as the City Council continues to prioritize the wishes of real estate investors over the needs of LA’s renters, things will just keep getting worse. 

As an LA Times editorial pointed out earlier this week, while LAHSA’s stats show that in 2019 an average of 207 homeless people were housed each day, the daily average of people who become newly homeless was 227.  There are a lot of different factors that lead to people living on the street, but the biggest factor is that they can’t afford housing. 

While Mayor Eric Garcetti and the City Council constantly tell us that their number one priority is providing housing for the people of LA, the facts tell us something completely different.  According to the LA Department of City Planning’s Housing Dashboard, from July 2013 through December 2020 the City approved 162,706 new units.  Of those units, 87% were for Above Moderate Income households.  The remaining 13% is the total for Moderate Income, Low Income and Very Low Income households COMBINED.  During this period, the City of LA has produced more than double the number of Above Moderate Income units required by the State’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA).  It has not come anywhere near meeting the goals for the other three RHNA categories. 

And let’s take this further.  The Housing Dashboard says that the total number of affordable units approved during this period was 20,591.  But according to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (which gets its data from the City of LA), during roughly this same period, January 2014 through December 2020, 9,444 rent-stabilized (RSO) units were removed from the market under the Ellis Act.  This leaves us with a net gain of 11,147 units accessible to Moderate and Low Income households. 

Right about now some of you may be saying, “Well, if we just ramp up allowable density the free market will solve our housing problem for us.  We need to upzone LA.”  My response is, take a look at New York City.  New York City has been on an upzoning binge for the past decade.  What have they got to show for it?  A bunch of super-tall skyscrapers that have created a massive glut on the luxury housing market, while the Coalition for the Homeless reports that in 2020 there were 122,926 different homeless men, women, and children who slept in New York City’s shelters. 

Getting back to Echo Park Lake, about the only positive thing I can say is that there was some really good reporting by the local press.  I was impressed by Elizabeth Chou’s work for the Daily News, and I’d like to link to the story, but it’s restricted by a paywall.  LAist also did a solid job.  Actually, one of the best commentaries on this mess was in an e-mail I got from LAist, their Morning Brief written by Jessica P. Ogilvie.  I couldn’t find it on their web site, so I’ll quote an excerpt….

The Echo Park tent community has found itself at the center of several heated debates over how to handle the city’s dire housing crisis. In January of 2020, a planned sweep of the encampment, which can lead to residents losing their belongings and being left with no place to go, was met by protesters who blocked city vehicles and stood near tents.

The following month, protesters once again joined residents to defend their right to be there.

Many who oppose officials’ plan to clear the area say that it’s a public relations maneuver, and blame the area’s city council representative, Mitch O’Farrell, for not doing more to ensure the safety of those living in the encampment.

Recently, officials and advocates have announced plans to ease the plight of L.A.’s unhoused residents by building community land trusts, making it easier to construct granny flats, and establishing communities of tiny homes.

But these efforts, while no doubt well-intentioned, are only the latest in an exhausting series of projects to get the problem under control. Some ideas have also included government-funded campsites, vacant hotel rooms, empty parking lots, neighborhood shelters, new legislation, emergency shelters, RV parks, prevention efforts, and more.

Mitch O’Farrell claims he cares about the homeless and wants everybody to have secure housing.  But this is the same man who recently voted to approve the hotel project at 1719 Whitley which involves the demolition of 40 rent-stabilized units.  And all the rest of his fellow Councilmembers, with the exception of David Ryu, joined him in voting to greenlight the project.

That should give you an idea of how much the LA City Council really cares about solving our housing problems.

Still from video posted on Twitter by Services Not Sweeps

Now Leasing

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Scene from the corner of Ivar and De Longpre in Hollywood.

I was on my way to the market when something caught my eye at the corner of Ivar and De Longpre.  Actually, it was two things.  The first was a massive new apartment building on Cahuenga, with a huge banner that exclaimed “NOW LEASING”.  The second was a homeless encampment on Ivar.  Seeing the pricey new apartments and the row of makeshift shelters so close together struck me as a perfect image of what’s happening in Hollywood these days, and really what’s happening across so much of LA.  The City keeps telling us that building expensive new housing will alleviate the housing crisis, but upscale units like these are completely out of reach for the people who need housing most. 

Part of what makes the scene so perfect is the banner shouting “NOW LEASING”. I have no idea how many of the units have been rented, and maybe it’s almost full, but I doubt it.  A June 2020 report to the LA City Council from the Housing + Community Investment Department offers data on vacancy rates in various LA neighborhoods.  While it uses multiple sources to assess vacancies, the report’s authors state that data from the LA Department of Water & Power is probably the most reliable.  Does it surprise you that according to LADWP the vacancy rate in Hollywood is 10.7 percent?  That’s 1,372 empty apartments in the Hollywood area, and I bet most of them are in new buildings like the one you see in the picture.  You know, the ones where the rent for a single starts around $2,000. 

Now, the US Census says that the average household size in LA County is 2.8 people.  So if we multiply 1,372 units by 2.8 we find that you could house about 3,841 people in the apartments that are sitting vacant in Hollywood right now.  Interestingly, the 2020 Los Angeles Homeless Count found that Council District 13, which covers much of Hollywood, has a total of 3,907 people experiencing homelessness.  (A 22% jump over 2019.)  In other words, you could fit almost all of the homeless people in CD 13 into the units that are sitting empty in Hollywood. 

Of course, none of those homeless folks could afford $2,000 for a single.  Let alone $3,000 or $4,000 for a one-bedroom or two-bedroom unit.  But the LA City Council keeps telling us that if we just keep building housing, any kind of housing, even housing that the average Angeleno couldn’t possibly afford, it will help alleviate the housing crisis. 

So they keep on approving high-end apartment complexes.  And the homeless population keeps on growing larger.

LA’s Future Is Homelessness

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Homeless Encampment

Yesterday the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) released the results of the 2020 count of the homeless population in Los Angeles. Once again, he results are shocking. In 2020, a total of 66,433 people experienced homelessness in LA County, a 12.7% increase over last year. In the City of LA, the total was 41,290, a 14.2% increase. But it’s not just the overall numbers. Digging into the statistics is disturbing on so many levels….

  • Blacks make up about 8% of LA County’s population, but they make up 34% of the homeless population.
  • The number of homeless people over age 62 increased by 20%.
  • There was a 19% increase in homelessness among Transition Age Youth Households and Unaccompanied Minors, which includes both individuals 18-24 years of age and members of families headed by persons 18-24.

The press release highlights some of the positive work that LAHSA is doing, and I don’t doubt the agency is trying hard to address the problem. But it can’t. The real problem here is that housing is growing increasingly unaffordable, not just in LA but across the nation. Over the last several years real estate has become a huge draw for speculative investment. This isn’t just a local phenomenon, it’s a global one. The investors who have been buying up both single-family and multi-family housing in recent years have only one goal: To extract as much profit from their assets as quickly as possible. They have no interest in providing housing, and they don’t care how many people are homeless. (Unless, of course, those homeless people are camped out in front of their latest acquisition. Then they’re very concerned.) If you’re skeptical about these claims, I suggest you read Capital City by Samuel Stein. The author lays out the facts in horrifying detail.

But if you think the homeless numbers are bad now, brace yourself. It’s gonna get way worse. At the end of May, UCLA’s Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy released a report outlining the impacts the pandemic will have on housing. The report’s author, Gary Blasi, offers two estimates….

The most optimistic estimate is that 36,000 renter households, with 56,000 children based on U.S. Census figures for Los Angeles County, are likely to become homeless. If […] support networks have been severely degraded by the pandemic, those numbers could rise to 120,000 newly homeless households, with 184,000 children.

Sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it? The report offers some good recommendations for policymakers and lawmakers, such as providing legal counsel for renters facing eviction and expanding rapid rehousing programs, but these will only mitigate the damage.

The root of the problem here is that many of our elected officials are basically pawns working for real estate investors. The Department of Justice’s ongoing corruption investigation in the City of LA has so far produced four guilty pleas, including one former councilmember. It’s almost certain that at least one current councilmember will be indicted, and the evidence released clearly indicates a widespread conspiracy that has turned the project approval process into a high-stakes pay-to-play game.

According to the LA Department of City Planning’s (LADCP) annual reports to the State of California, about 90% of new residential units approved in the City of LA from 2013 to 2018 were for Above Moderate Income Households. This means that the combined number of Low, Very Low and Moderate Income units approved each year comprised about 10% of the total. The LADCP, the Mayor and members of the City Council have repeatedy claimed that the high-end high-rises they’ve been greenlighting in Downtown, Koreatown, the Valley and elsewhere were going to help solve the housing crisis. At the same time, they’ve pushed for policies that incentivize the destruction of existing rent-stabilized housing. This appalling combination of greed, stupidity and denial has led us to where we are now.

I know they’re tough to look at, but I strongly urge you to read both the press release on the homeless count and the report from the Luskin Institute. The only way we’re going to get out of this situation is to take a long, hard look at the brutal facts.

2020 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count Results

New Study Warns of Looming Eviction Crisis in Los Angeles County

LA Renters Are Being Priced Out

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Priced Out Image

I’m not a big fan of TV news, but I was impressed by this report from CBS. The title, Priced Out, says it all. Tenants are being displaced because real estate investors are buying multifamily buildings and jacking up the prices so they can cash in. This means working people are being forced out of their homes. The idea that we can build our way out of this crisis is ludicrous. Yes, we need to build housing, but the people who argue that high housing prices are simply the result of short supply don’t know what they’re talking about. According to the CBS report, median rent in LA increased 84% from 2010 to 2018. This is a direct result of a massive expansion in real estate speculation, and the impacts on LA households have been devastating. Click on the link to view the video.

Priced Out: LA’s Hidden Homeless

Jailing the Mentally Ill Doesn’t Help Anyone

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Mens Central Jail Photo by Mark Ibirby

Does this look like a good place to send people who are mentally ill?  Photo by Mark Ibirby.

Here’s some disturbing info from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)….

“In a mental health crisis, people are more likely to encounter police than get medical help. As a result, 2 million people with mental illness are booked into jails each year. Nearly 15% of men and 30% of women booked into jails have a serious mental health condition.”

Throwing mentally ill people in jail doesn’t help anybody. It certainly doesn’t help the person who’s stuck behind bars, because getting locked up just adds one more layer of trauma, and will most likely prevent the person from getting the help they need. And it isn’t good for society at large, because instead of hooking mentally ill people up with treatment that will help them get back on their feet, it makes it more difficult for them to find employment and housing, meaning they’re more likely to end up homeless.

Over the past several years there’s been a push to rethink the way we care for people dealing with mental health issues. Last week the LA Board of Supervisors approved a plan to tear down the Men’s Central Jail and build a mental health care facility instead. At first glance, this looks like progress, but local activists fear the plan may only offer cosmetic changes. For more details, read the story in the LA Times.

LA County Will Replace Men’s Central Jail with Mental Health Hospital for Inmates

At this point it’s hard to say how this will all play out. The plan approved by the Supervisors could be a step in the right direction, or it could be a way to defer meaningful action that would lead to real progress. But however this plays out, we should all be thinking about how we can push for change in this area. If you’ve lived in LA for any time at all, you’ve seen mentally ill people wandering the street. Many of these people have spent time in jail, and were released with little or no support to help them transition back into society. If we don’t change the way the system operates, we’re certain to see the number of mentally ill homeless increase.

I’ll leave you with another quote from NAMI.

“Jailing people with mental illness creates huge burdens on law enforcement, corrections and state and local budgets. It does not protect public safety. And people who could be helped are being ignored.”