Larry Stout, a homeless man who previously served as a sergeant in the Vietnam War and now spends many of his nights sleeping on the streets of Westwood, does not like dumb people.
Stout, just one of thousands of people accounted for in a 2007 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count released on Thursday by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, prefers Westwood because of the higher intelligence of the people than those in downtown Los Angeles, he said.
Stout came back from Vietnam after 10 months and 14 days of service “without a scratch,” he said, but he got into an accident seven years ago that causes him to have seizures.
Now he relies on money from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for medicine and a monthly check ““ but the check is minimal, so he is often forced to spend his nights on the street.
LAHSA reported that currently over 73,000 people, like Stout, remain homeless in Los Angeles County. In 2005, the number of homeless reported was 88,345, showing a 17 percent decline since that time, according to a LAHSA press release.
But despite the decline in the number of homeless, it does not mean the Los Angeles community should not be concerned, said Rebecca Isaacs, LAHSA executive director.
“While the numbers are lower, Los Angeles remains the “˜homeless capital’ of the nation,” Isaacs said in a statement. “The situation is still extremely serious.”
LAHSA’s Web site states its mission is to find solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County; it is also the main agency within the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, Isaacs said.
The Continuum of Care model was founded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to address the needs of homeless persons.
The Continuum consists of all areas of Los Angeles County, including the City of Los Angeles and Westwood, excluding Long Beach, Glendale and Pasadena.
To estimate the homeless populations of the areas within the Continuum, an independent research group, called Applied Survey Research, joined forces with a team of statisticians from UCLA to count the number of homeless in Los Angeles County over a period of three evenings in January.
The homeless populations found by LAHSA were estimated, by advanced sampling calculations, to be 68,608 on any given night, according to a 2007 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count executive summary.
The summary found the homeless population to be 5,094 in Glendale, Long Beach and Pasadena.
In the remaining areas of Los Angeles County, about 57,166 homeless live on the street, according to the release, and 11,422 live in either emergency shelters or transitional housing facilities.
Many people fail to realize that all homeless people are not “chronically,” or always, homeless, Isaacs said.
Some people, like Stout, have been homeless off and on for years.
“There are also “˜hidden homeless,'” Isaacs said. “There are people who are temporarily in a hotel or in a garage; there are veterans and people who have recently lost jobs.”
Luckily, there are shelters that do exist for these “hidden homeless,” said Van Mears, program director at the Emmanuel Baptist Rescue Mission in Los Angeles.
The Emmanuel Baptist Rescue Mission is a shelter for homeless men, where they can eat two meals a day and sleep for seven days free of charge, Mears said.
But despite efforts to help the homeless, there are too many homeless that need shelter to house them all, Isaacs explained.
There has been little growth in the number of shelters and housing for homeless as well as low-income housing in the last two years, and many homeless people are discouraged or turned away, according to the LAHSA press release.
Due to this shortage and the ongoing problem of homelessness in Los Angeles, LAHSA will continue to work to eradicate the issue, Isaacs said.
“The high number of people who are still homeless demonstrates to all of us in Los Angeles why this needs to be an ongoing high priority,” Larry Adamson, LAHSA commission chair, said in the release.
But until solutions have been found, Isaacs said, homeless people will continue to reside on the streets around Westwood and Los Angeles.