If you listen to the experts on homelessness they will tell you that what we need is more housing that is affordable for low income people but, also, we need permanent supportive housing.
Meanwhile, the governor, who has prioritized housing and low-income housing, has taken the easy way out when it comes to homelessness by relying on the ill-advised Grants Pass decision to clear homeless encampments.
I wrote on this earlier this week:
Commentary: Governor’s Approach is Not Likely to Help Our Homeless Problems
But there was a great piece this week in CalMatters as well that should be highlighted.
Reba Stevens is a Los Angeles-based community advocate and a member of the Bring California Home Coalition. She remarkably spent from 1977 to 1998 living on the streets of LA.
She writes, “At the time, the city enforced robust anti-camping laws that kept homeless people out of sight but made it nearly impossible for friends, family and case workers to help me find permanent housing.”
She argues: “My own experiences remind me that we’ve seen these laws before, and we know they don’t work. For me and scores of others, anti-camping rules didn’t solve our homelessness; they made it harder to get back on our feet.”
It’s a reminder that we are neither listening to the experts nor the people with lived experience—sometimes they are even one and the same.
Stevens noted, “Each displacement not only stripped me of my meager possessions but also my dignity. With each arrest for living outside, I lost everything I owned: Important documents, medications — essentials for managing my life — were gone.
“Invariably, I would be released back onto the streets with nowhere to go, no personal belongings and new court dates I couldn’t keep track of, plunging me deeper into despair and perpetuating a cycle of criminalization and homelessness.”
This is a point that I made in my piece earlier this week—under the old laws, pre-Grants Pass that is, local government could clear homeless encampments provided they have beds and space to house people.
The idea was that you couldn’t disrupt someone’s life unless you had somewhere for the homeless to go.
The fact that the governor waited ought to tell us a lot.
Stevens explains how this impacted her when she lived on the streets.
“In my worst moments, the threat of arrest led me to dangerous environments where I could avoid law enforcement, but where substance use and domestic violence were prevalent,” she writes. She added, “Even now, I am dogged by the shame and guilt of not knowing whether we left them for dead or alive.”
The solution, not surprising: “The solution lies not in displacement but in permanent, supportive measures. The overwhelming majority of Californians recognize this need.”
Stevens adds, “The same morning that the Grants Pass decision came out, Los Angeles announced the results from its annual regional housing count, which showed a record number of housing placements accompanied a decline in the number of people experiencing homelessness.”
In other words, what we are doing is slow—but it is working.
Or, as Stevens put it: “This demonstrated how a significant investment in affordable housing and permanent funding for services that address the root causes of homelessness can help people rebuild their lives and end the cycle of homelessness. Arrests never have and never will.”
Resources are going to be a big problem—and may actually be made worse by the new policies.
Stevens noted: “In the weeks before the count results came out, an audit of Los Angeles policy found that after spending $3 million on encampment clearings, only two people were connected to permanent housing.”
Fortunately, Los Angeles might fight this policy.
LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia also condemned the order.
The Controller’s Office previously released a detailed statement denouncing the Grants Pass Ruling and maintains its position that “punishing people for sleeping outside when there is no available shelter is both inhumane and does not result in meaningful reductions in homelessness or encampments.”
The office explained, “It has been shown time and time again that clearing homeless encampments does not help reduce homelessness or encampment numbers over time, but only increases the number of unsheltered unhoused people.”
The Controller’s officer cited a RAND study released earlier in July, that showed that in areas with frequent encampment clearings, “encampments returned within months” and in some places, “people living literally unsheltered (without a tent or vehicle) jumped from 20% to 46%.”
The Controller’s Office added, “Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) found that LA Municipal Code 41.18, which allows for encampment removal in certain areas, isn’t effective at reducing encampments or helping to house people – while costing over $3 million in two years, not including enforcement costs. “
The Controller’s Office said it “believes that homeless encampment removal historically has equated to criminalization. It is cruel and unusual punishment for people without homes with nowhere to realistically go.”
It will be interesting to see which way California ends up going.
As Stevens concludes: “The time for temporary fixes has long passed. We must commit to comprehensive solutions that address homelessness with the seriousness and compassion it demands. Only then can we hope to bring every Californian home.”
“If you listen to the experts on homelessness they will tell you that what we need is more housing that is affordable for low income people but, also, we need permanent supportive housing.
Meanwhile, the governor, who has prioritized housing and low-income housing, has taken the easy way out when it comes to homelessness by relying on the ill-advised Grants Pass decision to clear homeless encampments.”
I suggest you stop framing this as a binary choice. Clearing encampments is a matter of public health and safety. Permanent supportive housing is also needed. The one doesn’t negate the other.
I think a lot of homeless experts would argue that clearing the camps makes things worse. But even if you do not buy into that, the fact that Newsom waited for Grants Pass suggests that there is another problem – they don’t have enough beds to accommodate the homeless people.
Public health and safety are lame excuses designed to denegate the unhoused. It’s the oppression playbook. Clearing encampments solves nothing. It just temporarily scatters the unhoused. They will find ways to reassemble.