Prepare for the ‘perfect storm’ ahead

In the months and years ahead, city leaders must focus on the driving forces that lead L.A.’s residents into homelessness, including the convergence of racism, gender-based exploitation and consistently low wages during inflation.

The COVID 19-era eviction protection measures and emergency shelter efforts worked to curb the cascading flow of those entering homelessness during the pandemic. But L.A. cannot rest on this slight pause in the deluge.

Unfortunately, a perfect storm of everlasting racism, inflation, undervalued and under-compensated work primarily performed by women and the upcoming lifting of the so-called eviction moratorium is coming.

In particular, Black, Latinx and Asian women who were primary caregivers for their housed family members or were paid under the table for cleaning their houses or caring for their children are increasingly becoming the most vulnerable to becoming and staying unhoused. While many seniors rely on Social Security to pay rent, older women of color who worked their entire lives and whose bodies often suffer the ravages of that hard, back-bending labor will have no income as they age.

Now, more Angelenos are being forced to leave our city in search of affordable housing, leaving family members behind who now have no one to turn to for a few nights or weeks of shelter. In the future, city departments must be forced to work together and to lessen the red tape that inhibits the development of affordable housing. Chancela Al-Mansour

is executive director of the Housing Rights Center.