CommentsPLATKIN ON PLANNING-The City Council’s latest stopgap measure to deal with the most extreme aspect of the housing crisis, rampant homelessness and the emergence of homeless encampments throughout Los Angeles, has set neighbors against each other.
This new approach requires each Councilmember to identify a parcel in his or her district suitable for emergency temporary housing.
More specifically, the Mayor has authorized $20 million to be divided among LA’s 15 Council Districts to fund temporary emergency homeless shelters on city-owned parcels. The Mayor estimates that these actions will create 1500 beds and could house up to 6000 people.
Related City Council actions will also allow the quick conversion of motels, churches, and other non-profit facilities to become makeshift shelters for the homeless.
The pushback against these actions has taken several forms. Like the emergency housing band-aid itself, however, they also gloss over the root causes of homelessness. Instead, the criticisms address the shortcomings of the Mayor’s proposal, especially as it is rolled out in each Council District. For example, according CurbedLA:
- The #SheDoes movement demanded additional resources for homeless women in the Mayor/Council short-term programs.
- The Los Angeles Community Action Network responded that the Mayor should do much more than pony up $20 million for temporary shelters. Its director, Pete White, also criticized of the Mayor’s budget because it criminalizes homelessness. Instead of dedicating funds for social services, it pays for Sanitation workers to confiscate homeless peoples’ possessions when the LAPD herds them out of an encampment for violating municipal “vagrancy” ordinances. Apparently in LA it is a criminal offense to sleep on city sidewalks, alleys, parks, and parkways.
The strongest opposition to the shelter program has emerged in Koreatown, where Councilmember Herb Wesson’s selection of a city-owned lot at 6thand Vermont generated enormous pushback from Koreatown residents. They objected to both the shelter’s location and what they contended was the Council Office’s secretive site-selection process.
Critics of the Mayor and the LA City Council make sound points when they complain that the City’s response to widespread and growing homelessness is halfhearted. Furthermore, by opting for a small, underfunded program that sets neighbors against neighbors, our elected officials have kept the causes and remedies for homelessness out of view, while triggering squabbles among their constituents over the deployment of artificially scarce homeless resources.
This is, in effect, the politician’s version of a classic magician’s trick. Distract an audience while you work your magic in plain view.
Official Negligence Created the Housing Crisis:hat should our elected officials be talking about and what should they be doing? The most important point is that homelessness does not just happen. It a result of deliberate long-term Federal, State, and local government policies and practices dating back to the 1970s to undercut affordable housing. But all these government actions can be reversed and eventually repaired, including the following, all of which could be dealt with through concerted action at all levels of government:
HUD housing programs. Beginning in the 1970s, the Federal Government began a long-term process of eliminating most Federal housing programs, especially public housing projects. Other slashed affordable housing programs include 221.d.3 and 236. It is their subsidies that funded the successful high-rise senior facilities at Bunker Hill, Chinatown, and Little Tokyo.
Section 8 housing. One of the few remaining Federal housing programs, Section 8, supplies vouchers for scattered-site affordable housing. Its underfunding is now so severe that in Los Angeles over 600,000 people want Section 8 housing, but only 400 people per year manage to find available Section 8 housing.
Veterans Administration. Cutbacks at the Veterans Administration have left nearly 40,000 military veterans without proper treatment for their mental health injuries to the point they are living on the streets. In LA alone there are now 1,200 homeless veterans.
Holes in the Safety Net. Los Angeles County is finally reversing its long-term cutbacks in social service programs for the homeless. The County’s plan is to hire more medical professionals, public health officials, and social workers to deal with the complex pathologies that have left over 45,000 people, sometimes whole families, on local streets.
Redevelopment Agencies. Spurred by California Governor Jerry Brown, the state Legislature dissolved California’s local Community Redevelopment Agencies in 2011. They had become the major source of funding for affordable housing after the Federal housing programs were slashed. This action may now be moving in the opposite direction if the Legislature adopts Senator Ben Allen’s proposed Senate Bill 961. This legislation mimics the tax increment financing approach of redevelopment agencies by allowing cities to establishlocal districts in which increased property and sales taxes will finance transportation, housing, and landscaping improvements.
Inequality. Increases in poverty and economic inequality have left hundreds of thousands in Los Angeles Country without enough money for proper housing. While this economic trend is national, its impacts are most pronounced in coastal cities, like Los Angeles with high housing prices. According to CurbedLA, “Median rent in LA has gone up 32 percent since 2000, while household income has actually dropped about 3 percent (both figures are adjusted for inflation.”
As for poverty in Los Angeles, according to the 2020 Commission’s A Time for Truth: “As the result of two decades of slow job growth and stagnant wages, 28% of working Angelenos earn poverty pay. If you add those out of work, almost 40% of our community lives in what only can be called misery. The poverty rate in Los Angeles is higher than any other major American city. Median income in Los Angeles is lower than it was in 2007.”
Reversing this trend requires action at all levels of government, such as raising wages and benefit levels.
Evictions and Gentrification. Ellis Act and informal evictions have soared in LA over the past two decades, allowing existing low-priced or official affordable (i.e., rent stabilized) rental units to be replaced by new, expensive condos and rental units. Every evicted tenant is part of the gentrification-induced housing crisis as they scramble for disappearing affordable housing, sometimes becoming homeless.
Rent Control. While the lucky evictees might find a few remaining affordable units, they are then stuck with two enormous loopholes in LA’s rent stabilization ordinances. Every time a tenant moves or is pushed out; landlords can raise rents, and, if not, can automatically increase rents three percent each year. This means that rents can double every twenty years, even though most salaries and Social Security payments are not similarly indexed.
The above list of official negligence is hardly inclusive, but it is in sharp contrast to the blind alley of market solutions that our elected officials have futilely turned to as their response to the housing crisis. Their programs of zoning and environmental deregulation may support new market housing, but that is where the buck stops. The resulting increase in market housing does not magically create affordable house elsewhere. To the contrary! In Downtown LA, Manhattan, and San Francisco, for example, the supply of new market housing has surged, along with a sharp growth in housing prices.
This has forced all but the wealthy to look elsewhere for a place to live. These housing refugees quickly discovered, though, that there are no longer affordable housing bargains to be found in these metropolitan areas. The market programs, in fact, made the housing crisis worse, not better, as demonstrated by every homeless encampment throughout Los Angeles.
This is why our elected officials must ratchet up their game once their temporary housing fix is in. Emergency beds won’t even begin to end homelessness, and it is the same for their pet voluntary inclusionary zoning ordinances, SB 1818 and Transit Orient Communities. If they intend to get serious about the housing crisis, the above list should keep them occupied for many years to come, even if they run for higher office.
(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on local planning controversies for CityWatchLA. Please send any questions to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
