AT LENGTH-The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
—Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
There’s a certain amount of fear and embarrassment in the debate over how to address homelessness. Especially given how invested we are in the idea that anyone can join the middle class through pluck and a strong work ethic.
Living outside of the societal norms, the homeless become “the other.” In this instance, the real core of our fear is the possibility that “but for fortune” we might become them.
It’s embarrassing that amongst all the bounty that we’ve produced and the relatively high standard of living we’ve experienced, there are so many who are so desperately poor that they’re pushed to survive in underutilized parks and the thick underbrush along the side of freeways and riverbanks.
It is profoundly humbling to see these outcasts live amidst all this wealth and wealth production.
Without delving into the well-documented ills and causes of homelessness, I will say that they, too, are a part of the “law of unintended consequences.” We can blame them for their own misfortune and we can condemn the inabilities of our government to address this seemingly ever-growing social problem. Or we can point the finger of culpability at an economic system that is more dedicated to profits over people. But we still won’t have a cure for the problem.
Just the other day, someone posted a picture of a new homeless encampment near the corner of Anaheim and Gaffey streets. Shocked that here at the entrance to both Palos Verdes and the “Welcome to San Pedro” sign, a small colony lined with tarp-covered shopping carts and tents sprung up, seemingly out of nowhere.
What most of you don’t realize is that prior to the City of Los Angeles deciding to renovate Machado Lake at Ken Malloy Park (a $130 million Harbor City project), there were some 160 homeless people camped out in the far reaches of this wetland.
Hidden in the shrubbery under the trees, this group of homeless people went unnoticed by the employees of either Los Angeles Harbor College or the Phillips 76 oil refinery or the commuters racing to work.
What the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks department didn’t consider in the park renovation master plan was what to do with the park’s 160 human residents. It’s not as if the department didn’t know they were there. But now, of course, people are shocked that there’s this sudden bloom of homeless people encroaching on the visible public domain. How dare they?
There’s an old adage that goes like this: “If you solve one problem, you create two.” Hopefully, the two you create are easier to fix than the original problem.
The Rec and Parks Department’s position is that they have no ability to address homelessness. They said as much at the recent Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council joint committee meeting on the future of Anderson Senior Center.
Yet, clearly the Rec and Parks Department is going to be forced to deal with this problem one way or another. So far, their only response has been to enforce the city ordinances such as park curfews and ban on overnight camping through homeless evictions and concentrated enforcement by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Read into that what you will, but the fact of the matter is that Rec and Parks, CalTrans and the Port of Los Angeles are probably the landlords for most of our homeless population. This is, of course by default, as it is not in either of their missions, their intent or even their budgets. Yet, here they are, landlords to the homeless.
To their credit, the Los Angeles Police Department has created a “quality of life” car that is dispatched from Harbor Division to offer assistance to the homeless population. But that’s just one car with two officers. That one car has to cover four communities that this division covers. This is hardly enough.
The homeless count this past January found the visible homeless in San Pedro was around 300 people. This is not an overwhelming number, but it is now much more visible than in years past. And it is of growing concern and alarm to local residents for the reasons stated above.
Clearly there is only one cure for the homeless. That is, to put a roof over their heads. This is the only logical conclusion many cities across the nation have reached. It is actually more cost effective to give them an apartment with a caseworker than it is to have them live on the streets to die, get arrested and rearrested.
Either out of fear or embarrassment, people excuse themselves from directly addressing homelessness by saying, “it’s not my problem.” Avoiding this conflict is a tacit admission that we’ve failed to address the dysfunction of the status quo. This is an embarrassment for all of those who can do something about it, but don’t.
My greatest fear is that as we aspire to redevelop our waterfront and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build ever more profitable terminals at our ports, we will lose our own sense of humanity and our history to the law of unintended consequences. And we will be told that this is indeed “progress!”
(James Preston Allen is the Publisher of Random Lengths News, the Los Angeles Harbor Area's only independent newspaper. He is also a guest columnist for the California Courts Monitor and is the author of "Silence Is Not Democracy- Don't listen to that man with the white cap on he might say something that you agree with!" He was elected to the presidency of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council in 2014 and been engaged in the civic affairs of CD 15 for more than 35 years. More of Allen … and other views and news at: randomlengthsnews.com where this column was first posted.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 29
Pub: Apr 7, 2015
