Los Angeles Confronts Homelessness Reputation

We’d like to highlight a recent article in the NY Times addressing the severity of homelessness in Los Angeles, which has a homeless population growing faster than everywhere else in the country. L.A.’s homeless reputation is a concern for both residents and potential investors.

This article is related to the discussion over how homelessness effects potential downtown development, which we did a blog post about recently: Will Downtown Development Hurt The Homeless?

Also relevant is the recently announced five year plan by the L.A. Chamber of Commerce and the United Way to end chronic homelessness in LA, which we also highlighted in a previous blog post. That plan seeks to end homelessness in five years providing food and housing for those most in need.

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: December 12, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/us/13homeless.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a23

LOS ANGELES — It was just past dusk in the upscale enclave of Brentwood as a homeless man, wrapped in a tattered gray blanket, stepped into a doorway to escape a light rain, watching the flow of people on their way to the high-end restaurants that lined the street.

Across town in Hollywood the next morning, homeless people were wandering up and down Sunset Boulevard, pushing shopping carts and slumped at bus stops. More homeless men and women could be found shuffling along the boardwalks of Venice and Santa Monica, while a few others were spotted near the heart of Beverly Hills, the very symbol of Los Angeles wealth.

And, as always, San Julian Street, the infamous center of Skid Row on the south edge of downtown Los Angeles, was teeming: a small city of people were making the street their home in a warm December sun, waiting for one of the many missions there to serve a meal.

At a time when cities across the country have made significant progress over the past decade in reducing the number of homeless, in no small part by building permanent housing, the problem seems intractable in the County of Los Angeles.

It has become a subject of acute embarrassment to some civic leaders, upset over the county’s faltering efforts, the glaring contrast of street poverty and mansion wealth, and any perception of a hardhearted Los Angeles unmoved by a problem that has motivated action in so many other cities.

For national organizations trying to eradicate homelessness, Los Angeles — with its 48,000 people living on the streets, including 6,000 veterans, according to one count — stands as a stubborn anomaly, an outlier at a time when there has been progress, albeit modest and at times fitful, in so many cities.

Its designation as the homeless capital of America, a title that people here dislike but do not contest, seems increasingly indisputable.

“If we want to end homelessness in this country, we have to do something about L.A.; it is the biggest nut,” said Nan Roman, the president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “It has more homeless people than anyplace else.”

Neil J. Donovan, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said he believed that, after years of decline, there had been a slight rise in the number of homeless nationally this year because of the economic downturn, and that Los Angeles had led the way.

“Los Angeles’s homeless problem is growing faster than the overall national problem,” he said, “trending upwards in every demographic, dashing every hope of progress anywhere.”

In a reflection of the growing concern here, a task force created by the Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles has stepped in with a plan, called Home for Good, to end homelessness here in five years. The idea is to, among other things, build housing for 12,000 of the chronically unemployed and provide food, maintenance and other services at a cost of $235 million a year.

The proposal, based on the task force’s study of what other cities had done, was embraced by political and civic leaders even as it served as a reminder of how many of these plans have failed over the years.

“This is not rocket science,” said Zev Yaroslavsky of the County Board of Supervisors. “It’s been done in New York, it’s been done in Atlanta, and it’s been done in San Francisco.”

Part of the impetus for this most recent flurry of attention is concern in the business and political communities that the epidemic is threatening to tarnish Los Angeles’s national image and undercut a campaign to promote tourism, particularly in downtown, which has been in the midst of a transformation of sorts, with a boom of museums, concert halls, restaurants, boutiques, parks and lofts.

The gentrification has pushed many of the homeless people south, but they can still be seen settled on benches and patches of grass in the center of downtown.

“If you have a homeless problem, then your sense of security is diminished, and that makes people not want to come,” said Jerry Neuman, a co-chairman of the task force. “It’s a problem that diminishes us in many ways: the way we view ourselves and the way other people view us.”

Fittingly enough, it was even the subject of a movie last year, “The Soloist,” which portrayed the relationship between a Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve Lopez, who has written extensively about the homeless, and a musician living on the streets.

The obstacles seem particularly great in this part of the country. The warm climate has always been a draw for homeless people. And the fact that people sleeping outside rarely die of exposure means there is less pressure on civic leaders to act. (In New York City, when a homeless woman known only as “Mama” was found dead at Grand Central Terminal on a frigid Christmas in 1985, it was front-page news that inspired a campaign to deal with the epidemic.)

The governmental structure here, of a county that includes 88 cities and a maze of conflicting jurisdictions, responsibilities and boundaries, has defused responsibility and made it nearly impossible for any one organization or person to take charge.

And Los Angeles is a place where people drive almost everywhere, so there are fewer of the reminders of homelessness — walking around a sleeping person on a sidewalk, responding to requests for money at the corner — that are common in concentrated cities like New York.

“It’s easy to get up in the morning, go to work, drive home and never encounter someone who is homeless,” said Wendy Greuel, the Los Angeles city controller. “I don’t think it’s seeped into the public’s consciousness that homelessness is a problem.”

The homelessness task force offered its plan at a conference that attracted some of the top elected officials here, including Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa and three of the five members of the Board of Supervisors, a notable show of political support.

“We believe that with the release of this plan, we now have a blueprint to end chronic homelessness and veteran homelessness,” said Christine Marge, director of housing for the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

Yet in a time of severe budget retrenchment, the five-year goal seems daunting. Even though the drafters of the plan say that no new money will be needed to finance it — Los Angeles is already spending more than $235 million a year on hospital, overnight housing and police costs dealing with the homeless — government financing of all social services has come under assault.

“I don’t for a minute think it’s not going to require a tremendous amount of political will to make it happen,” said Richard Bloom, the mayor of Santa Monica. “Do I think it can happen? Yes, because I’ve seen what happens in other cities, like New York City, Denver and Boston.”

Still, Mr. Bloom, who said he regularly attended conferences involving officials from other communities, added: “Our numbers are way out of whack with those numbers I hear elsewhere. It’s just so much more enormous and daunting here.”

LAUSD homeless students receive donations to stay in school

Some good news for homeless students in the LAUSD!  Approx. 25,000 items were donated by Comerica Bank customers and employees.

This article was taken from the website of Southern California Public Radio: http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/09/29/lausd-homeless/?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4cd392ce5a7e33c9,0

Sept. 29, 2010 | Adolfo Guzman-Lopez | KPCC

There are more than 13,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District classified as “homeless.” Their families have lost nearly everything. Today a bank gave a donation to a district program that works to help those students continue their education.

L.A. Unified’s program is tasked with helping homeless students stay in school. It includes case worker visits to families in Skid Row hotels and outreach to parents to let them know that clothing and bus vouchers and free school supplies are available. Tammy Wood does this outreach at 400 district campuses.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines accepts donated school supplies and cash for the school district's homeless students from a Comerica Bank branch and it's customers.

“So many cases touch our hearts. I think the ones that touch us the most are when these little kids come to the office because they’ve either just moved here from out of state or they’ve actually lived in the area but maybe doubled up or tripled up, sometimes in families homes.

“They’ll come into the office and we’re going to give them a backpack with school supplies and the little kid is so excited they start crying, ‘Mommy, this is my backpack.’” Wood said.

She and school district officials were in a Comerica Bank branch in L.A.’s Koreatown to accept donations to help students. The roughly 25,000 items include new backpacks, pencils, pens and soap; all given by bank customers and employees.

Comerica Bank Executive Vice President Betty Rengifo Uribe immigrated to the U.S. from Colombia when she was twelve years old. She says she can relate to the plight of L.A. Unified’s homeless students.

“When we came here it was my mother, just my mother, three brothers and I and we had very little money. So we went to the churches and the church would give us the school supplies and the food and so forth,” she said.

The donations will soften the hardships of poverty, says L.A. Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines, though it’s not enough to meet the need.

“But it is symbolic and it never lets us forget that we have to care about others regardless of how bad the times are,” Cortines said.

The school district employs about ten people in its Homeless Education Program to reach homeless students from San Pedro to the San Fernando Valley. Officials say they’re seeing more formerly middle class families using the services.

Pictures of Reach Out Saturday 2010

Here’s a few pictures I took at our June event. There’s one of the morning assembly line at Brentwood Presbyterian, one of volunteer Alec wrapping things up as we were about to hear Tom’s speech, one of the room full of backpacks set to go out that day, and one of the Covenant House where I went to deliver bags. Sorry so few. Enjoy.

Brian

Morning assembly line

Backpacks ready to go

Alec helping us wrap things up

The Covenant House in Hollywood

Bringing Hope to the Homeless

LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky writes of his night counting the homeless for the recent U.S. Census.

Hope on the Streets of Hollywood

written by Zev Yaroslavsky

My alarm went off at 3:00 a.m., rousing me from bed for a trip to Hollywood to participate in a new count of homeless people—one in a series of such surveys conducted in Skid Row and throughout my supervisorial district during the past 2 ½ years.

The purpose of this count, like the others, was to identify as many homeless people as possible and determine who among them is most likely to die on the streets unless they’re given the services and housing they desperately need. Each individual is asked a series of scripted questions about their health, mental health, substance abuse, economics or any combination of the above.

At the end of this week’s three-day Hollywood survey—conducted under the guidance of Common Ground, a New York-based non-profit that pioneered this technique—a list will be turned over to the county and its service providers. We then will begin the delicate and difficult process of convincing these vulnerable individuals to accept our offer of housing and services.

The team I joined on Monday covered an area bounded by La Brea, Highland, Franklin and Sunset. Our team leader was a highly motivated and passionate intern from People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) by the name of Alex Cornell, who is pursuing a divinity degree. We were told we needed to complete our survey before sunrise, in the hours before the homeless would begin to scatter for the day.

In the pre-dawn chill, in the shadow of boutique hotels and gentrified storefronts, we found people asleep on church steps, in parks and on bus benches. Alex gently approached each of our prospective clients and asked if they’d cooperate in answering the questionnaire. As an inducement, they were offered a $5 coupon from Subway sandwiches. While most agreed to participate, some wanted only to be left alone, despite our offer of food.

I have to confess that I had not planned to spend the whole 2 ½ hours on the streets of Hollywood in the middle of the night interviewing the homeless. But once I got started, I couldn’t stop. With each person we interviewed, I felt a sense of responsibility to them and an even greater sense of the possibilities we could offer to help avert a tragic end to their lives.

The first man we found was sleeping in a pocket park off of Franklin Avenue. He’d been homeless for 8 years, most of them in Hollywood and most of them in that park. He said he’d suffered a traumatic brain injury in an accident some years ago and had no memory of anything. His name, he said, was Frank Sinatra. I suspect he’ll end up on Common Ground’s “vulnerability index” as one of the homeless who’ll rank among the area’s most likely to die on the streets without services and housing.

As we walked down La Brea Ave. between Hollywood and Sunset, we found a man in his late 50’s sleeping on a cot in the front yard of an apartment building. He offered a different face of the problem of homelessness on our streets.

Homeless for two months, he said he has a B.A. from UCLA and was honorably discharged from the United States Navy. I asked what precipitated his life of homelessness in Hollywood. He said that he’d been living with his mother in Altadena when her failing health forced her to move into a convalescent hospital. To pay the costs, she needed to sell her house, leaving her son without a roof.

One of our other teams found a colony of homeless people living in the hills above the Hollywood Bowl—more than 20 of them led by their “mayor,” an armed forces veteran who has been homeless for more than two decades. One of the tragedies of homelessness in our country is that somewhere between 20% and 25% of the homeless are veterans of our armed forces. They answered the call of our nation, and now it’s time for us to answer their call for help.

That’s what the Hollywood homeless count is all about. We’ve already had success with this approach in Skid Row, in Venice, in Santa Monica and in other communities, where “permanent supportive housing” will be provided in the months ahead to nearly 500 of the most chronically and vulnerable homeless on our streets.

These are the individuals who’ll end up in our jails and emergency rooms multiple times during the course of a year if they’re not housed and provided with crucial health and mental health services. On the streets, they run up a fortune in health and incarceration costs. Providing them with permanent supportive housing will actually save our county and society money because these individuals will no longer end up in jail or in emergency rooms with anything approaching the same frequency.

I know that the magnitude of our homeless problem can seem intimidating and insurmountable. But this is a problem of individual lives, not statistics. Common Ground’s “vulnerability index” gives us a biography of sorts for each of these people, giving us new and deeper insights into their struggles and exactly what they need to have lives restored. Our job is to take those biographies—those life stories—and change their trajectories.

To see a video of Zev addressing homeless volunteers before heading onto the streets, click here.

Posted 4-29-10 on Zev Yaroslavsky’s Blog

Save the Date: June 4 and 5, 2010

Well it’s that time of year again where we pool our efforts for our Reach Out Saturday. On Friday June 4th we’ll be gathering at Brentwood Presbyterian Church (12000 San Vicente Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90049) to assemble our summer packs. On Saturday June 5th we’ll be heading out to the streets to give out our survival packs to the homeless in the Los Angeles area.

Register Now! (click on or copy the link below into your browser), and be prepared for a rewarding day of service to others. 

http://thegivingspiritreachoutsaturday2010.eventbrite.com/

Each person needs to sign up individually so that we can keep an accurate count of volunteers.

See the flier attached below for more detailed information. The details are also on our website: http://www.thegivingspirit.org/

Become a Volunteer

Save the Date