Los Angeles Homelessness Crisis
Executive Summary:
The homelessness crisis in Los Angeles is certainly not a new phenomenon, yet it sustains at the forefront of policymakers’ agendas. However, the city’s systematic failure to provide mental health care institutions, shelter, and affordable housing maintains the rising homeless population. The city’s authorization for criminalizing policies punishes homelessness and is counterproductive to ending the crisis. Paralleled with inadequate housing, the encampment fines prevent many from becoming re-housed, thus perpetuating the cycle of homelessness. All these factors point to the complex, severe nature of homelessness in Los Angeles, which a multifaceted approach must tackle. To decrease homelessness, policymakers must reinvest in mental health facilities, shelters, and utilize a public-private collaboration to increase affordable housing construction. Policymakers must acknowledge their systematic failures by eliminating ordinances that criminalize the unhoused community and cause the rising homeless population.
Rationale:
Los Angeles county and city have the most significant number of homeless people in Southern California. The 2022 Greater LA Homeless Count reported 69,144 people experiencing homelessness in LA county, and of those, 41,980 live in the City of Los Angeles (2022 greater LA homeless count). The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines “houseless” as an individual or family lacking “fixed, regular, or adequate nighttime residence, including those living in a hotel, motel, or garage” (Criteria for defining homeless — Hud Exchange). According to Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the rise in homelessness in LA city is a direct result of stagnant income, rising housing prices, de-investment in mental health services, tenant protections, and discriminatory land use (Ward).
On July 28th, 2021, Major Eric Garcetti signed an ordinance replacing Section 41.18 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, marking it as one of the most extensive anti-homeless encampment measures regulating ‘unlawful’ encampments (Ordinance no. — Los Angeles). The updated anti-camping law bans “sitting, sleeping, lying, storing property or otherwise obstructing the public right of way” (Ordinance no. — Los Angeles). Although City Council member Paul Koretz states that the “outdated” municipal code “does not criminalize homelessness,” the city’s actions to execute the law prove otherwise. In over 100 locations, the city has designated spaces as “off-limits to homeless camps” and posted “permanent metal signs setting deadlines for all homeless people to leave” (Smith et al.). LAPD issues tickets and citations when individuals stay past the encampment removal deadline.
Fifty-seven-year-old Richard Carrizales camped in and around the Silver Lake neighborhood for eight years, even though he would like to find shelter. As a result of Garcetti’s anti-encampment bands, Carrizales’s home was surrounded by encampment clearance signs in February 2022. Consequently, he had to find a new spot: a procedure he had experienced numerous times. In a conversation with an outreach worker that discussed his interest in finding shelter, Carrizales reflected, “they come in and tell you the same thing over, and they don’t — still don’t do nothing about it. It’s just another waiting list” (Scott). While the anti-encampment ordinance was intended to be accompanied by a street engagement strategy, the over-criminalization of the unhoused proves no solution to providing immediate shelter.
Criminalizing policies that punish homelessness are not matched with institutional methods to provide shelter. Although the leading cause of homelessness stems from the City’s systematic failures, its current policy is counterproductive to ending the crisis. While LA City policymakers establish laws to criminalize homelessness, they fail to tackle the lack of shelters which leaves homeless individuals with no place to go but the street. Additionally, the City fails to confront the root of the crisis by re-institutionalizing mental health care hospitals and increasing affordable housing procedures. If policymakers continue to overlook their systemic failures and enforce the criminalizing policy as a means of homelessness management, the crisis will persist, and the population will expand.
Systemic Failure 1: De-Institutionalization of Mental Health Hospitals Psychiatric
In the 60s-70s, California’s de-institutionalization of psychiatric hospitals left mentally ill patients untreated (Hard Truths about De-instutionalization). Mental Health treatment refers to available medical infrastructure, which provides resources, facilities, beds, and professionals to counsel, treat, or diagnose individuals (Jenkins). The de-institutionalization was intended to be accompanied by the construction of community treatment facilities, however, they were never built. By the 80s, the end of involuntary confinement and reduced government spending left discharged patients nowhere else to go but the streets (Jenkins).
Although Los Angeles faces a mental health crisis, the city has not increased funding for complementary infrastructure. According to the 2018 California Psychiatric Bed Annual Report from the California Hospital Association, the minimum requirement declares 50 psych beds per 100,000 individuals (CalMatters). In 2018, Los Angeles County, which had a population of 10,137,915, had only 2,301 beds, or 22.7 per 100,000 residents (CalMatters). The lack of psychiatric beds forces the county to rely on emergency services for mental health treatment. However, evidence proves that permanent housing solutions for the mentally ill are more cost-effective than relying on emergency services. In a study of 238 individuals, researchers found that when provided with permanent housing, there was a 57% reduction in mental health expenditures, a 14% reduction in emergency room costs, a 95% reduction in incarceration, and a 32% reduction in ambulance transportation (McLaughlin 2011). Additionally, a study found that homeless individuals with mental illness have significant barriers to obtaining a job. Without an increase in psychiatric beds, mental health issues will continue to push individuals onto the street, and there will be no solution for those on the street to receive professional attention.
Recommendation: Re-institutionalizing Psychiatric Hospitals
The city must re-institutionalize high-quality, ethically administered psychiatric facilities. The asylums are a “necessary part of a comprehensive mental health care system” and will “provide the mentally ill with a place to stabilize and recover” (Sisti). The treatment must be provided seamlessly, from outpatient care to community services, supportive housing, and inpatient medical care” (Sisti). Additionally, offering resources to those in recovery would increase the likelihood of outpatients securing jobs resulting in their contribution to the city’s economy (Poremski et al. 2014). Asylum infrastructure would decrease emergency room costs, incarceration, and ambulance transportation expenditures because alternative resources would treat the mentally ill.
Systemic Failure 2: Criminalizing Homelessness
Business owners, citizens, and policymakers depend on law enforcement to facilitate over-policing and over-criminalization strategies to manage the crisis (Allen). Although policies that criminalize homelessness are cruel and ineffective, such initiatives gain public appeal because they lower poverty’s visibility (Allen). Garcetti’s over-policing strategy argues that if poverty is punished, individuals will change their habits to overcome their impoverished lifestyle (confronting the myth of choice). While the ban assumes that individuals have the option to escape homelessness and that opportunities for shelter are accessible, Carrizales’s testimony proves these theories are false. The issuing of fines for failure to comply with the ban “pushes the homeless deeper into that vicious cycle of poverty […] [due to] the inability to focus their time and energies on working toward more stable lives” (Allison).
Criminalizing is not cost-effective for the local government. In 2014, Central Flordia’s government spent “$31,000 per year for law enforcement and medical costs for every chronically unhoused person, while permanent housing and case managers for each person would cost approximately $10,000 per year” (Allen). Criminalizing homelessness magnifies its root causes, such as mental illness, lack of shelters, and lack of affordable housing. Additionally, the fines and anti-encampment measures provide spatial deconcentration methods, replicated by those enacted on Skid Row, which fails to consider that encampments formulate because of the “spatial concentration of large shelters, meal programs, and other social services” (Culhane 853). Since the homeless-aiding facilities act as a “magnet for needy persons,” it results in encampment concentration (Culhane 853). While fines and anti-encampment policies successfully create spatial deconcentration, dispersing people who are homeless does not solve their homelessness (Culhane 855).
Recommendation: De-Criminalizing Homelessness
Reallocating funds currently spent on law enforcement policing towards the dispersion of permanent housing measures and case managers will provide a more cost-effective approach and adequate resources to end homelessness. It is ineffective to ban encampments near services that aid the homeless. Instead, provide interim, temporary housing near services while shelter construction takes place. While temporary housing is no permanent solution, it will help individuals clear the streets so encampments are not near fire hydrants, parks, or handicap-accessible spots.
Systemic Failure 3: A Lack of Adequate Shelters
The coexistence of initiatives designed to aid the unhoused within shelters, accompanied by efforts to criminalize their existence in public spaces, exemplified in Los Angeles, is a hallmark of current homeless policy failures (Herring). While significant developments have promoted permanent and interim housing, anti-homeless ordinances have contradicted the city’s mission to end homelessness. Encampment bans projected throughout the city are disproportionately joined by the lack of cohesive strategies to shelter unhoused individuals.
Los Angeles built a system where the 15 council districts administrate shelter implementation. While the district-by-district approach forces officials to create shelters in every part of the city, which promotes deconcentration, the lack of available services and shelter undermines their methodology (Scott). According to the LA Homeless Services Authority, shelters are at capacity. Although Measure H and HHH have increased funding for homeless services and permanent housing, local neighborhood resistance to shelters and affordable housing construction has remained a significant barrier to these policies and programs (Vantol).
A Lack of Clean and Safe Shelters
Regardless of City’s shelter shortage, many unhoused individuals reject opportunities for shelter. As a result of the patchwork system with no oversight, public entities are not charged with ensuring that current shelters are clean and safe. A study on 60 shelters funded by LAHSA found that 41% of the facilities did not meet the minimum required standard (Palta). Inevitably, “negative monitoring reports, health citations, and grievance complaints” infrequently result in a shelter being shut down (Palta). Individuals avoid shelters for fear of experiencing unsafe environments. Craig Aslin resided in The House of Hope, a boarding home in Jefferson Park: “I got [eaten] up with bedbugs” (Palta). After Aslin left, a 2017 public health inspection of The House of Hope found 17 health code violations, including evidence of rats, roaches, suspected mold, and issues with waste storage and disposal (Palta). Although the City urges homeless individuals to reside in shelters, the unsafe and uncleanly measures provide otherwise.
Recommendation: As The city expands…
As the city expands anti-encampment bans supplemented with the district-by-district management strategy, policy creators and planning officials must explore initiatives to 1) guarantee shelter increase and 2) ensure that existing shelters are maintained. Targets must be crafted to parallel each district’s zoning codes and available supply for creating new shelters or utilizing adaptive reuse strategies. By mandating shelter establishments, districts will involuntarily comply with the policy. Correspondingly, fewer resources will be spent on LAPD monitoring anti-encampment zones and issuing tickets, and unhoused individuals will have access to clean and safe shelters.
Systemic Failure 4: A Lack of Affordable Housing
The lack of affordable housing is the leading cause of homelessness and poverty in single adult individuals and families (LAFH). The 2022 Affordable Housing Report confirms that the county must add at least 499,439 affordable homes to satisfy the current demand among renter households at or below 50 percent of the Area Median Income (2022 affordable housing report). Regardless of the county’s urgent need for housing development, the planning department failed to update the General Plan’s zoning regulations to match the housing requirements. The General Plan is the chief obstacle to creating inclusionary practices. It served as the foundation for discriminatory policies that enforced exclusionary practices such as redlining and zoning ordinances, which reflect LA’s current housing insecurities. The lack of urgency to create inclusionary zoning practices reinforces the systemically racist motives that promote policy that criminalizes homelessness.
Although the General Plan is being updated to formulate a plan to meet the estimated Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA), the California Housing and Community Development (HCD) initiated the City’s urgency. LA’s noncompliance with RHNA targets put the department at risk of getting sued. To follow the RHNA estimated target, LA must construct 57,000 units annually.
Adopted June 14, 2022, the updated housing element will increase equitable and sustainable affordable housing measures throughout the city. RHNA Re-Zoning policy identifies rezoning for a minimum of 124,880 moderate and above moderate units and 130,553 lower-income units by October 2024 (planning LA). On October 7, 2022, the city council voted to direct the Department of City Planning to prepare an ordinance that will broaden incentives for projects on land zoned for multi-family housing, emphasizing commercial zones, transit areas, and corridors. The city plans to incentivize projects on publicly owned land, parking zones, and land owned by faith-based institutions. Accompanied by development incentives, projects will undergo a streamlined permitting process to decrease pre-development stages. Last year, city planning officials stated that 76% of LA’s high-resource areas are zoned for single-family homes, while 18% of the low-income regions are zoned for single-family homes. Reforming zoning policies in high-resource areas is often impeded by NIMBYISM; however, the policy must incentivize and enforce affordable housing citywide to ensure the RHNA target will be met (City News Service).
Recommendation: Increase Affordable Housing
To formulate strategies to increase affordable housing, LA must reform its land-use laws that maintain development patterns ratified by racist housing policies. While the Rezoning Program provides comprehensive strategies to respond to the AFFH findings, the plans must involve immediate policy to increase rezoning strategies. In order to meet the 57,000 unit/year housing target, the city must adopt a public-private organizational relationship. By providing developers with increased financial incentives, streamlined pre-development stages, and mandating an increase in affordable units per building, there is a higher likelihood for the city to meet its targets. By amending the short-term policy to increase density, the housing supply will begin to rise. As a result, long-term strategies will effectively develop a General Plan that delineates housing opportunities to solve the lack of affordable housing-to-homelessness crisis pipeline.
Policy Recommendations:
Re-Institutionalizing Psychiatric Care
• Allocate City funding to institutionalize psychiatric hospitals as a part of the comprehensive mental health care system
Decriminalizing Homelessness
- Decrease funding for LAPD encampment policing measures
- Reallocate funding for interim housing and case managers
Increase Adequate Shelters
- Mandate a target number of shelter establishments in each district
- Implement strict health codes for current shelters and increase health inspection visits
Increase Affordable Housing
- Reform General Plan land-use laws that maintain single-family development
- Parallel long-term comprehensive General Plan with short-term initiatives to increase density and affordable housing construction
- Utilize a public-private partnership to incentivize private developers to construct affordable housing units
Works Cited
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