Westwood’s colorful collection of indigents tends to shape
most students’ view of Los Angeles’ homeless
population.
It’s easy to think, for instance, that the panhandler on
Broxton Avenue is representative of the 80,000-plus people who
spend any given night in the streets, parks and shelters of our
city.
The real picture, however, is strikingly different.
The homeless, by and large, are not people who have chosen to
drop out of society, but rather folks who have fallen on hard
times.
Once we see that, it’s clear that social services, just
like those we give to the elderly and the poor, are necessary to
improve their lot.
Los Angeles County has the largest homeless population of any
urban area in the United States.
An estimated 254,000 men, women and children in the county
experience at least a night of homelessness each year, according to
the Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty at the
Weingart Center.
“People tend to think that homeless people are just these
insane people,” says Renée Choi, a third-year
microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student and
director of the Hunger Project, a student group that provides
social services to the homeless.
Really, she says, “the people you see in shelters are
people like you or I who’ve made bad decisions or had bad
luck.”
Choi has a point. On certain nights, 40 percent of the homeless
are families, usually headed by a single mother with an average of
two children. A lost job, domestic violence, disability or just too
low an income ““ not irresponsibility ““ are common
reasons for folks to end up on the street.
And that stereotype that the homeless are lazy? It’s
false.
Nearly 20 percent of them are currently employed, and 41 percent
show employment in the last year. It’s not like they’re
not trying; they just can’t make enough to afford housing in
a city where the average rent is nearly three-quarters of minimum
wage income.
As many in the city are calling for a solution to the
homelessness problem, we should remember these facts about the
homeless.
Apparently, the LAPD hasn’t remembered. In October, Los
Angeles Police Chief William Bratton ordered a crackdown on
“street-sleeping” in Skid Row, causing the homeless
count there to drop substantially from 1,876 in mid-September to
1,447 in early October.
Bratton may indeed be polishing up the area by enforcing drug
laws and shooing away ““ or even occasionally arresting
““ the homeless who camp there during the day, but instead of
helping the homeless to better their lives, Bratton’s policy
is only dispersing them around the city.
Anecdotal evidence reported by The Los Angeles Times has shown
an increase in homelessness on the West side. Not surprisingly, the
newcomers say they have come from downtown.
This crackdown, which has been lauded by some, is no real way to
help the homeless.
The public needs to demand more outreach services such as job
training, money-management workshops and addiction-treatment
services, along with more affordable housing. Only this will solve
the homelessness problem.
If we were down and out, we’d expect the same from our
countrymen.
In the early 1990s, when Bratton was New York’s police
chief, New York City witnessed a significant drop in its homeless
population.
This turnaround occurred not just because Bratton swept the
homeless off the streets, but because then New York City Mayor Ed
Koch gave them a place to go with his Housing New York Program.
In the mid-1980s, the program invested $5.2 billion in the
creation of 150,000 affordable housing units across the city.
Some of this housing included on-site support and counseling for
mentally-ill residents and nearby job-training programs for
residents who were able to work.
If Los Angeles is to help its homeless, it must invest in a
similar program.
The program would not be a handout to the undeserving, but
rather an important social safety net, ready and able to catch
those who have been so unfortunate as to fall.
If we lived as the homeless do, we would be grateful to have a
net so sturdy.
For information on what you can do to help, e-mail Reed at
treed@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.