Tag Archives: LAHSA

Are We Making Any Progress on Homelessness?

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Homeless encampment on Hollywood Blvd. near Gower.

The results of the 2024 Homeless Count have been released, and the CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) says “the numbers we are seeing are very encouraging.”  Honestly, I don’t agree.  I guess you could say the fact that the growth in the homeless population appears to have levelled off is a good sign, but the fact that we still have around 75,000 homeless persons in LA County does not seem “encouraging” to me.

If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend Tim Campbell’s most recent article in CityWatch.  Campbell digs into the data and points out that, as we’ve spent increasingly large sums on homelessness over the last eight years, the numbers of people living on the streets have continued to rise.  Here’s a quote:

LAHSA’s fiscal year 2016-17 budget was $132.1 million, and it had 200 employees.  The 2016 PIT [Point-in-Time] count showed 46,874 homeless in L.A. County.  By fiscal year 2023-24, LAHSA’s budget ballooned to mor [sic] than $840,000,000 and it had 800 employees.  The 2024 PIT count showed more than 75,000 homeless in the County.  For a six-fold increase in budget, and a quadrupling of staff, the County suffered a 60 percent increase in homelessness.

That doesn’t sound like progress to me. 

In another recent article, Campbell talks about the structural problems with LAHSA.  He points out that the agency doesn’t do a good job of gathering or tracking data, and there’s no meaningful accountability.

In my view, the problems with LAHSA go back to its beginnings.  By the early 90s, LA City and LA County had been bickering for years over who was to blame for homelessness, with each pointing the finger at the other.  So their solution was to create a joint powers authority that would supposedly provide better coordination and more effective services. 

It hasn’t worked, largely because LAHSA was never given the authority to do the job.  LAHSA actually has no power.  It basically serves to funnel public money to various homeless services providers.  Some of them do a good job, some of them don’t, but it doesn’t matter how well they perform because the agency just keeps writing checks.  As Campbell points out, it would be hard for anyone, no matter how smart or talented, to make needed changes because LAHSA’s culture doesn’t allow that.  LAHSA’s culture seems to designed to keep the money flowing and the bureaucracy growing. 

Why is this?  In my opinion, it’s because it’s run by politicians.  The LAHSA Commission is 10-member body made up of politicians and political appointees.  Two LA County Supervisors serve on the Commission, along with three people appointed by the remaining Supervisors.  Mayor Bass also serves on the Commission, along with a Bass appointee, and two Garcetti appointees.  One seat is vacant. 

Of the five non-politicians on the Commission, apparently only one (Dr. Melissa Chinchilla) actually has a background in working with the homeless.  The others are described as “an attorney, equity advocate and mom”, an “educator and community leader”, a “chief impact officer and owner at […] a social-sector consulting firm”, and a “passionate advocate” with a “Bachelor of Science degree in Child Development”.  So on the 10-member LAHSA board, we only have one person who actually has a real background in serving the homeless.  This seems like a serious problem to me.

As long as the agency is run by politicians, decisions will be made based on political considerations.  These people are sitting on top of hundreds of millions of dollars.  If LAHSA were to be restructured to provide better coordination and higher efficiency, it might turn out that it could provide more effective services for less money.  This, of course, is not the outcome most politicians want.  The point is to keep the money flowing, whether the program is effective or not. 

There’s no simple solution to homelessness.  It’s not just a matter of providing housing.  These days homelessness is entwined with a drug abuse crisis and a mental health crisis.  It should be clear by now that if someone’s addicted to fentanyl, just giving them the keys to an apartment is not going to keep them housed.  Someone with serious mental illness needs treatment before they can move to independent living.

So I don’t want to pretend solving homelessness will be easy.  But in my view, we could make more progress if we got the politicians out of the mix.  LAHSA needs to be restructured to give it the power to create and implement policy.  Instead of doling money out to various service providers, it needs to have its own staff working to accomplish definite goals with clear metrics.  And instead of a commission made up of politicians and their appointees, it needs a commission made up of people with credible credentials in homeless services, mental health and substance abuse. 

I realize the chances of something like this happening are close to zero.  But as long as we keep stumbling along with the current, broken system, I doubt we’ll make any real progress on homelessness. 

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

How Do We Help the Homeless?

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Notice outside of vacant homes on Roscoe Blvd. in Panorama City.

Notice outside of vacant homes on Roscoe Blvd. in Panorama City.

If you live in LA, by now you’ve gotten used to the fact that homeless people are part of the landscape. No matter where you go, Downtown, Koreatown, Hollywood, Van Nuys, you see people living on the streets. It used to be that homelessness was one of those things you could escape by running to the suburbs, but not any more. Nowadays Burbank, Glendale, Encino, all have their share of people living in tents and cardboard boxes. The homeless are everywhere, and there’s no simple solution.

The homeless population in Panorama City has been growing for a long time. For a while there was a large encampment off of Van Nuys Blvd. over by Smart & Final. Not too long ago the City dismantled it, but of course, that didn’t solve the problem. The residents of the camp were dispersed, but they didn’t go away. They just bundled up their stuff and moved it somewhere else.

Homeless encampment near Roscoe and Lennox.

Homeless encampment near Roscoe and Lennox.

Another shot of the makeshift shelter.

Another shot of the makeshift shelter.

At the corner of Roscoe and Lennox there was a row of houses that were empty. A developer had bought them intending to tear them down, but since work on the project hadn’t started yet, the homes just stood there, vacant. It wasn’t long before a group of homeless people decided to move in. The police chased them out, but instead of leaving the area, they simply created a makeshift shelter on the parkway in front of the houses. As weeks went by the shelter grew larger and longer, until it was difficult to pass on the sidewalk.

Vacant houses near Roscoe and Lennox.

Vacant houses near Roscoe and Lennox.

A view from the alley behind the vacant homes.

A view from the alley behind the vacant homes.

I was curious to find out what was going on with the empty houses, so I contacted Councilmember Nury Martinez’ office. I got a call back from her Communications Director, Adam Bass, who told me that the developer had pulled a demolition permit for the houses, though he wasn’t sure when they’d actually be bulldozed. I asked how Councilmember Martinez was dealing with the homeless situation in her district, and he informed me that earlier this year a new program had been launched in CD 6. The Homeless Outreach and Proactive Engagement (HOPE) initiative brings together the LAPD, the Bureau of Sanitation, and the LA Homeless Services Authority to engage with those living on the streets. While the City still clears away illegal encampments, the idea is to offer assistance to those who want it. Bass told me that since May, the HOPE initiative had helped dozens of homeless people in the Valley, in some cases finding them space in shelters and in others giving a hand to those looking for jobs. Over the summer the program expanded into the LAPD’s Central and West bureaus, and next month it’ll move into South LA.

This is a big improvement over the City’s past efforts. Some of City Hall’s recent attempts to deal with the homeless have been outrageously heavy-handed. Their efforts were so draconian that they were challenged in court three times, and the City lost every time. So the idea of a multi-pronged approach that brings different agencies together to offer assistance is a welcome one, and I’m glad it’s been successful so far. But unfortunately, the problem is so big and so complex that it’s going to take a lot more to bring about real change.

There are no easy answers. I’ve talked to a lot of people about this issue, and everybody’s got ideas, but there’s no consensus. In November there will be a measure on the City ballot to approve a $1.2 billion bond which would pay for construction of permanent supportive housing. At the same time, the County is expected to ask voters to approve a quarter cent sales tax increase which would help provide new services to the homeless. These initiatives could make a big difference, but really they both have to pass in order to make things work. To construct new housing without expanding staff to provide support for the homeless would be a waste of money, and the same goes for offering additional support without getting people off the streets.

And it could be that both of these measures will go down. In this upcoming election, the City, County and State are asking voters to approve billions in taxes and bond measures, and it seems possible that many voters, overwhelmed by the flood of initiatives, won’t be in the mood to approve anything.

As for other ideas on how to help the homeless, some people have suggested that the City use existing vacant housing to provide shelter. My feeling is that without support services, this would be futile. The idea of gathering tens of thousands of homeless together in empty buildings without offering mental health services, help for addicts or counseling seems like a recipe for disaster. Another proposal is to get the state and/or federal government to kick in more money. Garcetti already tried that. It went nowhere.

Personally, I think the most important thing is to keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. This probably sounds so obvious you may ask why I’m even mentioning it, but it’s important to keep in mind. One of the leading causes of homelessness is eviction, and thousands of LA tenants have been kicked out of their homes in recent years. In part, this is because the City offers incentives to developers that make it very tempting for them to take advantage of the Ellis Act. If City Hall really wants to make a dent in the homeless problem, our elected officials need to stop rewarding landlords who throw their tenants out. The recent passage of an ordinance to crack down on “cash for keys” scams is a good start, but City Hall needs to do more. If you don’t want people living on the streets, then you need to do everything possible to keep them in their homes.

Demolition of the houses on Roscoe.

Demolition of the houses on Roscoe.

Earlier this month, the homeless encampment on Roscoe was dismantled. Around the same time, the houses that had been standing empty were demolished. But it’s only a matter of time before another makeshift shelter springs up in the neighborhood. This problem isn’t going away any time soon.

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