Stop talking about housing: just do it
The next time a city of
Los Angeles public official or homeless-bureaucracy staffer gets the urge to say something, or write something, or pass a law about something related to the decades-long tragedy of homelessness on their streets, they need to stifle the urge.
Stop talking, writing, passing laws. Instead, do something. Anything.
Or, take the few successful physical manifestations of projects that in fact do something about homelessness, and replicate them. Go check out the Eagle Rock Tiny Home Village that opened two years ago with 48 8-by-8 prefab houses that provide beds every night to 93 people, many of whom used to live in tents on the sidewalk just down the block on Figueroa Street at the 134 Freeway underpass. The houses were built on a little-used former parking lot owned by Los Angeles County, the city's Department of Recreation and Parks and Southern California Edison. It's not fancy. But it's working.
Last week, a little-seen report on the city's muchvaunted homelessness enforcement policy aimed at getting people off the streets and into shelter was leaked. It claims the city “has failed in key goals to keep areas clear of encampments and get people housed,” as LAist reports. The policy is known in bureaucratese as 41.18, a city ordinance that allows council members themselves to designate areas in their district where unhoused people can't camp.
Actually, in many respects, from simple observation, the policy is clearly working. Homeless encampments have been cleared, and, contrary to the report, compiled by the perhaps conflicted LAHSA agency, are staying cleared. And thus the kerfuffle in City Hall about the City Council commissioning the report and then slow-walking its release.
But, lawmakers, stop talking about the crisis of homelessness and create more housing instead. Spend your time, and the time of your myriad staffers, on actually securing land such as the Eagle Rock parking lot, buying tiny homes and opening them up to people without homes. The good part of 41.18 is major nuisance camps throughout the city are being broken up and their residents sent packing. The bad part is that it it creates no cheap housing for the homeless to move into. Let's work both sides of the problem better than we do.