CommentsDEEGAN ON LA-There are over one billion voter-approved dollars and taxes in the pipeline to help our homeless, thanks to Proposition HHH (housing) and Measure H (supportive services). Now comes a new pledge and a slogan that have been added to the rhetorical arsenal. The big picture, however, tells us we still have, according to LA City Council, 25,237 homeless people sheltering on sidewalks throughout the city. Even though there have been dozens of expectations and promises made over the years, the number of homeless is rising. But now there is money to go with the talk.
It was a busy couple of days at City Hall last week when the politicos rolled out their latest effort to address this growing problem. The City Council signed an admittedly non-binding “pledge,” and the Mayor introduced his “functional zero” slogan. While these campaign tactics may give some context to the homeless problem, they give no relief to the thousands suffering homelessness or the thousands of others in LA who are frustrated at City Hall’s inability to make much progress in solving what could be considered one of the top problems in Los Angeles.
Relief that was promised by Proposition HHH to provide $1.2 billion in bonds “to fund housing for homeless people and people at risk of becoming homeless and to fund facilities that provide mental health care, addiction treatment, and other services”, and by Measure H “authorizing a 0.25 percent county sales tax for 10 years in order to fund homeless services and prevention” is still in the future, although getting closer as funds start to accrue. A Prop HHH timeline has been published by the city showing where HHH stands now and into the near future.
Knowing that those funds are expected has helped the City Council tackle potential NIMBYism in communities that do not want the homeless to be sheltered near them. To counter possible community resistance, City Councilmembers signed a pledge “to support a minimum of 222 new units of supportive housing in each of their respective districts, funded by Proposition HHH for the period of July 1, 2017 to July 1, 2020, for a total of at least 3,330 citywide supportive housing units over the three-year period.”
What the Councilmembers voted for was not a Motion that would lead to the Mayor signing a City Ordinance. Rather, it was a “resolution” that contained the “pledge.”
It’s good news that Councilmembers want the funds that accrue from Prop HHH to be applied throughout the city in every council district. This helps defend against the efforts of NIMBYs who may attempt to make the city’s homeless someone else’s neighborhood problem.
It’s a struggle to win the hearts and minds of intolerant people who oppose having the homeless in their backyard, their neighborhoods, and their communities. An opening shot comes from the commitment of the City Council’s pledge. The battle will be in how to identify exact locations for the new housing.This may be eased in part by repurposing city-owned property asusing private land could be expensive.
Over the weekend, Councilmember David Ryu (CD4) told an overflow community meeting that he had secured a site in Hollywood for homeless housing and received support for it from nearby neighbors. This shows the possibility of working with the community to get its buy-in.
Within days, the Mayor made his own news by saying that Los Angeles can end street homelessness within a decade, a concept he calls“functional zero.” In a media statement, a Mayoral spokesperson defined thisby saying, there will "always be people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless," but “they are quickly identified and provided housing.”
This is where Prop HHH comes in: eventually we will have 3,330 new units of housing. If the increase in the number of homeless could be prevented or even stopped we could begin to call homelessness a finite problem, instead of one that is organic and ongoing. But it seems that no matter how much housing we manage to provide, there will always be more homeless people in need of housing subsidy.
Possibly the best news that the homeless and the public could receive would be an announcement from the Mayor that he is running for President in 2020. The Iowa caucuses take place in the first weeks of 2020, which means a presidential candidate must start campaigning around Labor Day 2019 -- only about 15 months from now. This gives Mayor Garcetti a short window to work a miracle: achieving a visible and tangible success in solving LA’s homeless problem would be an asset for his Presidential run instead of representing a legacy of failure.
Electing a President of the United States who is from Los Angeles would be great for our city. Solving LA’s homeless problem would be even better. But maybe we can we have both.
(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].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
