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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The SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes have huge, obvious implications for the entertainment industry and creative work.
But the outcomes of this moment also have *enormous* stakes for Los Angeles.
The future of this city is being fought for on the picket lines right now. 🧵
This goes without saying, but Hollywood is *very* important to LA’s economy.
In 2012, a local study found that the industry was directly or indirectly responsible for $43B in labor income and more than half a million jobs across the County.
But LA’s entertainment jobs have been under threat.
Production has fled for decades as studios seek lower costs and other cities race to the bottom to offer tax breaks. The industry hasn’t fully recovered from tens of thousands of jobs hit by COVID.
Three men were killed by LA police in the first week of 2023.
In at least one case, Chief Moore says officers did not follow mental health crisis protocols. But history suggests they may not even be fired if the Chief recommends it.
That’s partly because of a recent change:
LAPD’s Chief can’t actually fire officers. He can make recommendations, but decisions are made by separate disciplinary review panels.
Since 2019, these panels have reinstated 69 officers that the Chief recommended be terminated. dailynews.com/2022/12/13/lap…
In 2017, LA City Council unanimously advanced Charter Amendment C, a ballot measure promoted by the police union that gave officers facing penalties an option for all-civilian review boards.
In case you aren’t caught up on everything that’s been going on with LA County’s Sheriff, Alex Villanueva, here’s a summary of his first term.
(thread)
After his surprise election, one of Villanueva’s first acts was to rehire a deputy who had been fired by his predecessor because of allegations of domestic violence and breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s home. The deputy worked on Villanueva’s campaign.
As I engage in discussions around housing policy in LA, I’ve been thinking a lot about the story of LA’s first zoning plan from a century ago.
To me, this story has a lot to tell us about how we got to our dire housing situation – and maybe how we can do better. (thread)
In 1921, the City Council approved a new plan to govern growth in Los Angeles. This was the first real zoning plan in the city’s 90-year history.
It was exciting, but also a product of need – the city had doubled in population over the last decade and was about to double again.
But the day the zoning plan was approved, LA’s wealthiest got to work.
They’d scooped up land along major corridors, and began to lobby City Councilmembers (legally and illegally) to increase capacity and permit commercial use – tripling the value of their properties.