Calif. nears $2B plan to house its homeless
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The growing problem of homelessness can be seen in every corner of California, from small towns that ring the state’s redwood forests to the sands separating the Pacific Ocean from the most prosperous beachfront communities.
More than 115,000 homeless Californians were counted last year and one in four had a serious mental illness, according to the most recent tally from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
With California’s homeless situation at what some officials are calling a tipping point, lawmakers are putting the finishing touches on a plan to provide as much as $2 billion to help cities build permanent shelters to get mentally ill people off the streets. The Legislature could consider the measure later this week.
“There’s just something immoral about a tent city being silhouetted by 16 cranes building high-rises — the juxtaposition of haves and have-nots,” former state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Orinda, said at a recent Capitol hearing on the funding plan.
His reference was to Los Angeles’ Skid Row, a 54-square-block area surrounded by an ever encroaching building boom featuring upscale lofts and apartments, high-rise hotels, expensive restaurants and trendy coffee bars and nightclubs. While the high-rises go up nearby, Skid Row remains blighted, its streets filled with trash, human waste and spent narcotics needles. Its homeless residents — many blank-faced, some half-dressed — wander aimlessly throughout the day. At night as many as 2,500 bed down in hundreds of tents pitched along sidewalks almost in the shadow of City Hall.
With more than 46,000 homeless people scattered across Los Angeles County — an increase of 6 percent from last year — local officials are fighting an uphill battle for state and voter approval of an initiative that would raise taxes on millionaires to benefit homeless services.
Experts say things are just as bad across the rest of California. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where the startup tech boom is sending rental and housing prices skyrocketing, people who lived in once-modest neighborhoods are being forced to the streets.
In Sacramento, people take refuge in bushes near the stately Capitol building or cluster in downtown encampments.
“I don’t care what part of California you’re in, you will see an ever-growing population of people who live on the streets with a mental illness, and that’s what we’re addressing,” said Maggie Merritt, executive director of the Steinberg Institute, a mental health nonprofit advocating for increased state funding to fight homelessness.
Hawaii and some major cities including Seattle and Portland, Oregon, have declared homelessness to be in states of emergency, freeing up disaster funds and breaking down regulatory barriers to provide swift assistance. California Gov. Jerry Brown has resisted that approach. His spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said in a statement last week that local governments are best-positioned to tackle the issue and “a gubernatorial declaration is not appropriate.”
Brown favors the legislative plan proposed by Senate Democrats that would provide up to $2 billion for local agencies to construct permanent housing for people living on the streets with psychological disorders.