Our District, Our City, Needs Leaders with Experience to Tackle This Crisis

As a community leader in Hollywood, I was watching my beloved neighborhood change as the crisis of homelessness began to intensify and a mental health crisis played out in our streets. So, I got to work. Over the years, I organized a coalition of providers and community leaders, I talked with unhoused neighbors trying to survive on the street, and I studied models of mental health treatment around the world. 

I have learned a lot since founding Hollywood 4WRD. But more than anything, I learned just how urgent this moment is -- and how crucial it is to have the right people leading us forward. 

Every day people die on the streets of LA. Every day in this crisis counts. That is why we need to re-elect David Ryu to Council District Four. (photo above) 

I believe that David deserves a second term to continue focusing on the hundreds of units of housing he’s building, the services he is creating, and the work he has started. Speaking from experience, he has dedicated his staff faithfully to a hundred percent of the Hollywood 4WRD Zoom calls that we have held weekly since March 23. He, himself, joined a call about 10 weeks ago and listened intently to the 42 people who joined the call – all working on the homeless issue in Hollywood, when I asked them to respond to the question: “What is keeping you up at night?” These are folks hard at work on the front lines in our homeless situation. 

Shortly after, David asked if I could convene a working group to advise him on what it would take to meet the order coming from Judge Carter’s courtroom to house in record time, the 6,700 people living under freeways. David values the input from people actually doing this work and with his staff in attendance, we have gained an appreciation of the human-scale challenges associated with the scope of this court order. 

Nithya Raman’s approach to homelessness concerns me, not only because it seems overly idealistic and ill-informed, but because it could set us back. 

For example, Raman has said in a recent article that “we could’ve bought old motels or container-style units and remodeled them — none of that was done.”  

In fact, the city tried to adopt a motel conversion ordinance that would have allowed for the acquisition of motels for a finite period of time to house people. There was a lawsuit that stopped that dead in the tracks. That lawsuit also stopped the city’s permanent supportive housing ordinance.  

What Ryu’s challenger doesn’t acknowledge is that there is a pattern of litigation that has made it difficult for the City to advance novel ideas. It is also concerning to me to observe that some of the groups that support her, based upon the tenor of their social media and public actions, lean toward sowing seeds of division and digging in their heels, rather than embracing collaborative work to find common ground on arguably the most challenging crisis to face our city.  

David Ryu, with decades of experience dealing with homeless services under his belt, has worked tirelessly to turn District Four into a leader for homeless housing. Ryu has built hundreds of units of homeless housing in his first term, including in many neighborhoods that met his ideas with fierce resistance. But Ryu did not waver -- he sat down, met with every neighbor and answered every question, and found a way to build the resources we need to meet this crisis. 

We all feel frustrated with the state of our city, county, and region right now. I certainly know how that feels. But this moment calls us on to listen, learn and work together to advance the solutions already being made.  

Instead of betting on an untested newcomer, I am betting on the person with whom we have built a relationship and who has expressed the willingness to listen, the courage to act and the desire to learn and to make things better. 

Experience counts in 2020.

(Kerry Morrison, former head of the Hollywood BID and former LAHSA Commissioner, is currently involved in homeless policy and service delivery on several levels. She is a member of Hollywood 4WRD, serves on the board for The Center in Hollywood, is appointed to the HHH Citizen’s Oversight Committee and advocates for bold policy change to provide treatment and housing to  people with serious mental illness.) Photo: John McCoy/Los Angeles Daily News. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.