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DEEGAN ON LA—What does the tiny community of Grants Pass (pop. 39,194), a one-time lumber producing outpost in rural Oregon, have to do with the homeless and their supporters in Los Angeles, where our homeless outnumber the entire population of that town?
The answer to that question will be determined by the US Supreme Court that just announced they will hold a hearing on April 22. The topic is a lawsuit to determine “Whether state and local officials can punish homeless individuals for camping and sleeping in public spaces when shelter beds are unavailable.” The case is City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson.
Los Angeles has laws recently put on the books that prohibit camping at certain public locations. Enforcement has been mixed, generating passions from both pro and con activists in and out of City Hall.
What the Supreme Court will rule on specifically is if it is unconstitutional to enforce anti-camping laws against homeless individuals when they have nowhere else to sleep. Simply, is it legal to forbid homeless to sleep in public places? This may hit LA hard.
The town of Grants Pass says unregulated camping poses both public safety and public health issues. Defendants say that the homeless are being punished for being homeless, that it is criminalization of the homeless.
How LA responds to the court’s decision will set the tone for the future. Will it be criminalization of the homeless or leniency and compassion for them?
Los Angeles has an epic record of failure when it comes to dealing with the homeless. While there have been many homeless housed, many more thousands are still sleeping on the sidewalks.
Billions have been spent or earmarked to house the homeless; there are horror stories of developers building single occupancy apartments for them that have a market rate of $800,000.
Although successive mayors have promised, with some success, to get results, the problem of our homeless population continues to grow. How to curb that acceleration has not been a working part of the solution.
Many fingers have been pointed at and by City Councilmembers, Mayors, County Supervisors, developers, and the homeless themselves.
Just a few days ago, a controversial report by LAHSA (the Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency), itself a controversial agency, slammed the effectiveness of municipal codes that aim to depopulate a homeless presence in certain public areas. It has cost millions to enforce and shown very little success in moving homeless into housing. Finger-pointing in City Hall has now shifted to the veracity of the report and its data methodology.
It’s not just the politicos and activists that are in-fighting over the homeless. On Friday, March 8, U.S. District Judge David Carter asked Mayor Bass to report to him on the status of her Inside Safe homeless housing program for housing the homeless, and allegations of a lack of transparency in how the city is handling that program.
This was spurred by the LA Alliance for Human Rights that is suing the city for $6.4 million as a penalty for operating in the shadows. Judge Carter seems to agree, saying that the city has been operating in “bad faith” and ordering the mayor and the city council president to appear before him in his Federal courtroom on March 18 to work out how to audit the program; the judge, not the mayor, will appoint the auditors.
Judge Carter expressed a view of the homeless housing crisis that there is too much waste in the millions of dollars put towards the homeless in Los Angeles.
City Controller Kenneth Mejia, the city’s own internal auditor, has told Cater his view of the city’s “lack of transparency and accountability on homelessness efforts despite billions of dollars spent.”
Los Angeles faces two big issues on the table about the homeless—waste and criminality. April 22 will be a landmark day for the homeless in Los Angeles. Will the justices wrap the homeless in their robes and deny that they are criminals? The issue of waste has not been timetabled yet. The Supreme Court usually issues their finding in June when the current term is up.
(Tim Deegan is a civic activist whose Deegan on LA weekly column about city planning, new urbanism, the environment, and the homeless appear in CityWatch. Tim can be reached at [email protected].)
