This is another escalation of the city's failed strategy on homelessness: make people miserable enough, and hopefully they'll get themselves off the street.
But the city makes getting off the street next to impossible. Here are a few reasons why:
Restrictions on sidewalk sleeping are supposedly designed to push people into shelters.
But as of 2018, there were only about 8,000 total shelter beds in the City of LA, for 36,000 people who are homeless.
Many shelter beds in LA are only for women or children, or only open in winter. Many don't allow pets or couples, or for people to keep their stuff. Some, sadly, have issues with cleanliness and safety.
So for some folks, the number of decent beds available is vanishingly small.
If someone wants drug treatment, there are very few facilities that offer medical detox and take MediCal, and almost none in the city.
For example, when we recently tried to help a man get into detox, the only available bed was in Pomona, and we had to get on a wait list for it.
Here's something that really shocked me:
We were also told by a detox clinic that overcrowding was partially due to people pretending to have addiction issues just to have somewhere to sleep for the night.
Add to all this that it's basically a full-time job to get yourself into housing in LA: it takes many meetings at different nonprofits and city bureaus that take a long time to get to without a car.
And when you leave your tent, you risk your stuff getting stolen or swept away.
If your stuff does get thrown out or stolen, or you end up in jail over unpaid tickets or another violation, you pretty much have to start this whole process over again.
Even once you qualify for housing, there are so few available units that you have to wait for months before you get one. And if you get a Section 8 voucher, many landlords in the city don't take them.
I know people whose vouchers expired before they found a willing landlord.
To sum up: the city is once again creating new restrictions on where people can sleep, but there are almost no safe places for them to go.
It doesn't have to be this way. We can end homelessness.
But we cannot keep doing the same things and expecting different results.
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