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

Counting the Homeless in the U.S. Census

The Los Angeles homeless census began last week, March 29, 2010.  Those without a permanent residence are apparently at risk of not being counted in the most recent census – a cruel problem for the already marginalized,  but frustrating also to the census workers who recently took three days to count the homeless, covering shelters, soup kitchens, and outdoor encampments.

It is also in the best interests of the city of Los Angeles to count all homeless because federal dollars are paid to cities based on the number of residents. An accurate count is also important so we can know how many in Los Angeles, and the greater Los Angeles area, are adversely affected by today’s economic conditions.

Due to disagreement about last year’s count of the homeless for the federal governmet’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, homeless advocates worry of another undercount.

The following article from the LA Homeless Examiner explains in more detail.

Advocates worry Los Angeles census will undercount homeless

LA Homeless Examiner       March 27, 2010      by Joel John Roberts        www.examiner.com

Despite efforts by the City and County of Los Angeles to count its homeless population, advocates are concerned that the US Census count will not reach everyone living on the streets.

The Los Angeles homeless census begins this week when census workers will fan out into the region’s homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and outdoor encampments in search of homeless people.

The United States Constitution requires the country to counts its people every ten years. $400 billion of federal funds is at stake. The census becomes a political game of who gets the largest piece of the federal resource pie.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is leading the city’s efforts, telling the community that ten years ago the city was undercounted by 76,800 people, a loss of $206 million of federal funds. He attributes this loss to the difficulty of counting what census officials call the “hard-to-count” population, including homeless people.

The California Community Foundation acknowledges the importance of obtaining an accurate count of homelessness in Los Angeles, so the foundation has donated $1.5 million to agencies that work with hard-to-count populations.

The official census count of the homeless population in Los Angeles starts with counting people living in homeless emergency shelters and transitional housing programs. The second day includes counting homeless persons using food banks, pantries, and soup kitchens.

On the final day, census workers will look for people living outdoors, on the streets, under bridges, on the beach, in cars and in the hills.

Advocates around the country, however, see the counting of homeless people as flawed. David Gomez, a homeless advocate in Austin, Texas told the local paper, “How do you count the homeless when their existence depends on their ability or desire to remain unseen?”

Experienced Los Angeles homeless outreach workers agree. “The best workers to count people living on our streets are skilled homeless outreach workers,” said Rudy Salinas, a ten-year veteran of street outreach in Los Angeles. “They know where all of the encampments are, and can encourage people to be willing to come out from their hidden places.” The census, however, only allows official census workers to do the counting.

Advocates from other parts of the country believe there will be a severely undercounted homeless population in the 2010 census due to inflexible rules, unreasonable time limitations and inadequate resources.
When the County of Los Angeles performed its bi-annual homeless count for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development last year, advocates strongly disagreed with the results. Leaders within the homeless service community in Los Angeles believe the US Census results could be just as inaccurate.

The three-day homeless count begins on Monday, March 29, 2010.