CommentsHOMELESS POLITICS-Los Angeles City Council Members Joe Buscaino and Paul Koretz have entered a motion for the city to withdraw from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA.
The proposal tosses another log into Buscaino’s fiery strategy to fight homelessness by turning up the heat on those without shelter. It’s the next step after the council — forced to vote when Buscaino invoked a rarely used legislative maneuver — for a freshened-up set of anti-camping laws. Those statutes prevent homeless people from sleeping in certain public spaces and allow police officers to throw away most of their possessions if homeless people do not comply with them.
These anti-camping laws were passed 13-2 by the City Council on July 28, preventing homeless people from sleeping on or near many public areas, including near parks, schools, bridges, and homeless shelters. Councilman Mike Bonin and Councilwoman Nithya Raman voted against the new laws.
“Today’s action will ensure sidewalks are passable, fire hydrants are accessible, doorways and driveways are clear,” Buscaino said. “This a great step in the right direction, but I still don’t think this ordinance is enough. We must still pass a law that says you cannot camp on the sidewalk if you have been offered housing.”
The motion to leave LAHSA, made June 16, makes official the sentiments Buscaino expressed in an opinion piece he wrote for the April 22 edition of the Los Angeles Daily News. In that column, Buscaino said that LAHSA does not share data on who has been offered housing, how many times they have been offered it and who has accepted it.
“It’s taken a damn motion that Mr. Koretz and I have submitted months ago to see who’s saying ‘yes’ to help, who’s saying ‘no’ to help,” Buscaino said at the June 18 meeting of the Los Angeles City Council. “Without knowing this information, we as a city cannot enforce our anti-camping laws.”
Heidi Marston, executive director of LAHSA, said that organization is providing council districts with “roadmap” reports that tell how many people occupy selected areas, how many are offered housing and how many are accepted. These do not show what each individual chooses, but give an aggregate amount, showing an overall picture. These are done on encampments that council offices deem important.
“Part of the challenge is finding the balance between being clear and helping you all understand. . . ‘who’s on my street, what do they need, what are the gaps?’ and also equipping outreach workers to build the relationships that they need and the trust they need to help break through some of the barriers,” Marston said.
However, these reports are not helpful to Buscaino in enforcing anti-camping laws, because they do not track denial of services, only acceptance.
“If people say ‘no’ today, it’s very possible that in a week, maybe something has changed and they’ll accept it then,” Marston said. “We don’t track denials by design across the system.”
Buscaino said the city should move from LAHSA to its own continuum of care. However, that could take a long time. John Wickham, a division head of the Office of Chief Legislative Analyst, said the City of Atlanta moved from a regional system to a city-only system, and it took three years. Wickham spoke of the office’s report at two city council meetings, on June 18 and June 25.
One of the problems is that about 82% of LAHSA’s funding comes from one-time or short-term sources. An example would be Measure H, which has a 10-year lifespan.
“Their other funding sources are competitive grants at the federal government,” Wickham said. “So depending on how much money the federal government decides to put into homelessness, and then our ability to compete against every other jurisdiction in the country. . .is driving how much is available to our system.”
Because of this, there is high turnover and instability in staffing in LAHSA, as it does not know when it will have money, or when it will be available.
Assembly Bill 71 would create a regular funding source for homelessness in California, but Wickham said it is on hold for the year.
Wickham said that LAHSA’s system can be strengthened greatly by increasing its weakest links.
“You need everybody working together to figure out how to solve the problems to make it more efficient,” Wickham said.
To be placed into housing, a homeless person needs a Social Security card. But during the pandemic, the Social Security office has been closed.
“It doesn’t matter how fast LAHSA can work,” Wickham said. “They need Social Security to deliver. No matter how you structure your city services, or your city and county services, you still need the federal government, and you still need the state to align with you. So when we’re talking about a weak link system, we’re talking about identifying all of the players on the field and making sure that we’re improving the weakest players across the board.”
Councilman Gilbert Cedillo argued that problems like the trouble with getting Social Security cards need to be handled, so that they can focus on other issues which can lead to homelessness. These problems include mental health, the high cost of health care, foster youth after emancipation, poverty, and immigration status.
“We need a serious focus on prevention,” Cedillo said. “We’re anemic in those efforts. We’re very focused on [housing] creation and it’s very cumbersome but. . .if we don’t address the question of prevention we’re going to be in deeper water.”
Wickham said that LAHSA and the city need better communication.
“LAHSA and the city oftentimes are not communicating directly when we’re developing solutions,” Wickham said. “The city will have ideas and pursue them and then bring in LAHSA at a later date. Or, LAHSA will pursue an idea, and then bring in the city at a later date.”
The same thing happens across the system, so Wickham argued that the different parts of LAHSA need to bring each other into their plans earlier.
Part of the problem is there is just not enough affordable housing available.
“There’s no question that supply impacts the ability of the system to be effective,” Marston said. “Because there’s nowhere for people to go.”
She said that Los Angeles County is 500,000 units short of needed affordable housing — this does not mean permanent supportive housing specifically made to help homeless people, but housing that costs no more than 30% of a household’s income for rent and utilities.
A system analysis done prior to the pandemic found that LAHSA’s system for placing homeless people into housing needed to create at least 30,000 units of affordable housing.
“We need to redo the analysis, which we’ll be doing to look at what the numbers show now,” Marston said.
Wickham said that whether the city leaves LAHSA and creates a replacement, or simply improves LAHSA, it will need several things. The first is clearly understood and accepted principles in the system. It also needs to be able to develop policy, provide services, and administer programs and finances. In addition, it will need transparency, accountability, and consensus among all parties in the system. It should also be able to measure results and have a clear line of responsibility.
(Hunter Chase is a reporter at RandomLengthNews where this story was first published.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
