Los Angeles city officials declared a “state of emergency” and a corresponding $100 million investment in September to address homelessness with a bit more fanfare than the sum probably deserved.
To be sure, homelessness in Los Angeles is certainly a state of emergency, with more than 44,000 people at last count living without permanent housing. A majority of these people are on the streets instead of in shelters, and with the annual funding for law enforcement dwarfing rehabilitative resources, it seems that the problem will persist.
The $100 million directed to help with housing and other services is being bolstered by an additional $50 million approved by county officials. This sum is a good start, but even this total is still only a drop in the bucket considering the magnitude of the city’s problem.
What is absolutely necessary though for a successful solution to homelessness is pivoting from the strategies employed by Mayor Eric Garcetti during his tenure in office. While Garcetti pledged to combat homelessness while campaigning, the homeless population has actually grown about 12 percent since he took office two years ago and his efforts have mainly centered on harsh-handed law enforcement solutions to the city’s homeless.
Los Angeles already spends about $100 million annually addressing homelessness, a significant portion of which goes to police arrests, patrols and mental health interventions. Earlier this year, the city council approved an ordinance that authorizes the seizure of homeless persons’ property and makes it easier to clear or destroy makeshift shelters on the city’s streets.
The trend continues despite city-wide plans like the Bring LA Home! plan, which was approved in 2006 and aimed to end homelessness in Los Angeles within 10 years. While the plan called for a stronger relationship between the city and law enforcement, it also called for policies that addressed institutional injustice that facilitated homelessness. Nine years down the line, not much has changed, even though the plan included four different scenarios to improve the status quo – ranging from “cautious” to “optimistic” – all of which estimated the city would need to spend $1.47 billion in the first year of the strategy alone.
This sum is not unreasonable, especially when compared with similar situations. In New York City, for example, where the homeless population is larger, but proportionally more sheltered, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to spend more than $1 billion of federal, state and city funds for the 2014-15 fiscal year.
Los Angeles must acknowledge the limitations of $150 million, especially as it currently has limited plans on how the funds are to be utilized, not to mention where it will come from. How the funds are used will be determined over several policy summits through November, giving the city the opportunity to shift away from policies that currently stagnate the problem instead of fixing it.
While the sum can’t fix everything, it’s certainly a start. And if applied efficiently it can spark real change on city streets. By focusing on rehabilitative programs instead of police patrols, the city can begin alleviating the specific causes of its rampant homelessness that it identified a decade ago. While some issues, like the lack of a living minimum wage, have since been mitigated by measures like the recent wage hike, other problems like exponentially increasing rent, providing transitional housing and individualized assistance through rehabilitation haven’t.
If Los Angeles is truly committed to solving what it has now officially labeled an emergency, it must recognize the true scope of what its money can do. Honesty is the best policy, and in this case, that policy could have major ramifications on one of Los Angeles’ biggest issues.