Homelessness gets worse

L.A. officials have a plan and soon they’ll have the money. But they need faster, more creative action.

The new numbers on homelessness in Los Angeles are startlingly grim — up 20% in the city and 23% overall in the county. That means volunteers found 57,794 men, women and children living on sidewalks and in parks, in cars and campers, or at overnight shelters during a three-night count in January, despite tens of millions of dollars worth of services funded by city and county agencies. In the city of Los Angeles alone, 34,189 homeless people were counted in the tally. The number of homeless veterans was up 57% despite the federal government’s redoubled efforts to eliminate the problem.

At a news conference on Wednesday, local leaders and officials of the L.A. Homeless Services Authority didn’t try “sugarcoating” (as Mayor Eric Garcetti put it) the fact that they have yet to make a dent in homelessness. Yet the numbers reflect the riddle of solving this increasingly intractable problem. While the homeless population went up dramatically, so did the number of people the county did manage to house — a record 14,214. That’s good. Anywhere else, it would be great. But while those folks were being housed, their ranks were more than offset by the mounting volume of people unable to escape the streets. And, no, they weren’t from out of town. A separate demographic survey that the homeless services authority conducts shows that 75% of the area’s homeless people have been here five years or longer.

The city and county have a plan to fix this: Reach out to chronically homeless people and get them into housing; reach out to newly homeless people and get them rapidly rehoused through rental assistance. They just can’t do any of it fast enough to stop more people falling into homelessness. Not the outreach, not the provision of housing, not the rental assistance.

There’s no question that a huge part of the problem is caused by the severe shortage of housing in the region. According to statistics provided by the homeless services authority, less than 3% of the apartments in greater Los Angeles will be vacant this year. Making matters worse, L.A. County’s median rent is rising rapidly, while renters’ median income is shrinking, according to the California Housing Partnership Corporation.

Garcetti wants the city council to impose a fee on developers that would go toward building affordable housing in the city. That’s an idea worth exploring. Meanwhile, to attack homelessness in the short term, the city needs to look into creative ways that other communities are using to increase the supply of housing — for example, by rehabilitating existing buildings or even converting shipping containers. And elected officials cannot allow reflexive neighborhood opposition to block badly needed and appropriately scaled housing projects.

The head of the Homeless Services Authority on Wednesday said his agency is working on ways to speed up the bureaucracy, including cutting the time it takes for service providers to have their contracts approved. That’s a good idea. For example, outreach to chronically homeless people can take weeks or even months to bear fruit. If more outreach workers can get on the streets faster, more people can be persuaded to move into housing.

There are also homeless people who have federally subsidized rent vouchers for apartments, yet can’t find willing landlords or available apartments. In particular, hundreds of homeless veterans have vouchers in hand but can’t find apartments. The VA and the county need to deploy more housing navigators who specialize in finding housing and working with landlords. And more services and rental assistance need to be offered to people on the verge of homelessness before they become newly homeless statistics.

City and county officials know all this. To a certain extent, their prescription for themselves is to do everything they’re already doing but with more money. They are, indeed, about to get more money. The city can start selling bonds this year to fund homeless housing, as authorized by Proposition HHH. Officials have already recommended that the bonds finance 416 units of permanent supportive housing in the development pipeline. Additionally, the county’s Measure H funding for services will become available in July.

But city and county officials must act faster and move more creatively. And then they must hold themselves accountable this time next year for the results.