Hi, everyone.
Welcome to the Billy Wilder Theater.
I'm Claudia Bestor.
I'm the director of public programs
here at the Hammer Museum.
And I want to welcome you all to
tonight's Hammer Forum on what's
driving the housing crisis in L.A..
The Hammer Forum is a monthly series
of public discussions about current
social and political issues, and
it's made possible with the generous
support of the Rosenbloom
Foundation.
Tonight is the first in a four part
series on the housing crisis in L.A.
And in my opinion, this is the most
urgent issue in Los Angeles right
now.
If you live here in L.A., you know
that in the past three or four
years, we're seeing a huge amount of
unhoused people living on the
streets or in tents all over L.A.
and neighborhoods on the sides of
the freeways, under bridges
and parks, on the beach and really
everywhere.
And I think the majority of
Angelinos feel very concerned for
the health and safety of
all these unhoused people.
And lots of people are also very
frustrated that there don't seem to
be viable solutions to housing them,
or at least not quickly enough
to satisfy anyone,
not just everyone, but anyone.
It can feel really overwhelming and
unfixable and also confusing.
Who's responsible for caring for all
these people? Why is it so hard to
build housing for them?
How did this problem blow up so
exponentially?
What happened to all the money?
We voted to tax ourselves to
alleviate the crisis.
And what should we be demanding from
our government? And what can we be
doing as individuals?
Part of why it's so confusing is
that the housing crisis is not one
thing and it's not one group of
people.
There are many roads to homelessness
and prevention would probably need
to take many forms.
People returning from incarceration
often have a hard time getting
housing.
Children in foster care often age
out of the care system and into
homelessness.
People fleeing.
People with children fleeing
domestic violence need housing and
working people need housing.
And the rents are too damn high and
the salaries are too damn low.
I've been wanting to put together a
series of programs for a long
time to try to tease apart some of
these issues and see if we can
clarify them a little and
get some basic questions answered
and try to identify some
real commonsense, workable plans
to move forward and house the
unhoused.
I got pretty flummoxed along the
way, but then I met Anna Scott
and I felt we had a good guide
through this morass.
And as a veteran journalist who's
focused on housing and homelessness
for many, many years, she's a
reporter for public radio station
KUOW, and she also reports regularly
on homelessness for NPR's national
programs.
She created and hosted two KC RW
podcasts about unhoused
people, City of Tents,
Veterans, Ro and Samaritans.
Before that, she produced the news
programs Press Play to the Point
and which was L.A.
and wrote for Bloomberg
Businessweek, the L.A.
Times, and other local publications.
We decided to pick this giant
topic of the housing crisis into
four programs.
So tonight is a kind of overall
primer where animals try to set up
the big issues with our guest
speakers, and they'll try to
identify and answer the most common
questions and misconceptions about
the unhoused while drilling down
to the roots of the current housing
crisis in Southern California.
In June, we'll talk about the
intersection of the mental health
crisis and the homeless crisis
and address the wealth of
misconceptions about these two
groups.
We'll also talk about the debate
over bringing back mental
institutions and uncover some truths
about the obstacles faced by both
of these communities, as well
as discussing what policies could
really help.
In July, we ask Where's the money?
In 2016, L.A.
voters voted in a bond measure
designed to generate more than
$1,000,000,000 over ten years to
create affordable housing for people
experiencing housing homelessness.
Six years later, where's the
housing?
And what are the barriers to
building more housing in L.A.?
And finally, in August, we'll talk
about what works.
What are the answers to this ongoing
but ultimately solvable
crisis?
So tonight is our kickoff.
What's actually driving the L.A.
housing crisis?
Anna Scott is our moderator and
she's joined by fellow journalists
Benjamin Oreskes, Doug
Smith and Ethan Ward, all of whom
have written about the housing
crisis extensively.
Benjamin Oreskes covers state and
national politics for the L.A.
Times.
Previously, he covered L.A.
City Hall homelessness and wrote
their Central California newsletter.
And before that, he covered foreign
policy at Politico in Washington,
D.C..
Doug Smith has been a reporter at
the L.A. Times for over 50 years,
covering local and state government,
criminal justice, politics and
education.
He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for his reporting in 1997
and reported extensively from Iraq
from 2005 to 2008.
He specializes in covering where
public policy meets real
people.
Ethan Ward is an award winning
journalist, public speaker and
podcaster.
He's the host of Reputation,
a podcast that explores and
challenges preconceived notions
about people whose lives personally
or professionally intersect with the
homeless.
Sorry, with the homelessness crisis.
Homelessness is an issue close to
Ethan's heart as he lived in his car
for a year while attending community
college.
His reporting can be found on East
89.3, formerly KPCC,
USA Today, Marketplace
and Capitol in Maine.
He did an award winning series of
articles in 2022 called No
Way to Live, which follows the
journey of one Woman's housing
Insecurity.
His reporting on the number of
unhoused people who died in 2021,
a so-called journalism award
and is reporting on unhoused people
using buckets to defecate, was used
in an episode of HBO's Last
Week Tonight with John Oliver.
So tonight, we're going to hear from
all of these journalists with vast
experience understanding the tangled
web of City Hall,
NIMBYs, landlords, developers,
gentrification, inflation, minimum
wage, infrastructure investment
and divestment, education,
the VA violence,
social services, LAUSD,
Soros and the vast network
of small nonprofits and churches
trying to fill in the gaps with
shelters, short term housing, long
term housing, tiny housing showers,
showers, bathrooms, access to
phones, access to health care,
access to veterinary care, access to
social services and legal services,
and all of the other myriad factors
and stakeholders in the housing
crisis.
They're going to have a roundtable
discussion and then take audience
questions.
And then I invite you all to join us
for some coffee, tea and cookies
afterwards in the lobby.
And we can talk about it some more.
And if your question doesn't
get addressed tonight, please,
you are invited to write it
down on a three by five card that's
going to be available in the lobby
and we will look at
it for the rest of the series.
And you can also email us questions
at. Info at Hammer
dot UCLA.
Edu.
So without further ado, please,
please join me in welcoming our
guest speakers Anna Scott, Benjamin
Oreskes, Doug Smith and
Ethan Ward. Thank you.
Hello.
Hi. Hey.
Welcome.
I'm Anna Scott really excited to be
here to host.
As Claudio just explained, the first
in a series of panels that'll
happen throughout the summer.
And
in those discussions, there will be
experts and policymakers, and
you'll hear from people experiencing
homelessness. But this is the only
conversation that we're doing that
consists of my fellow journalists,
people who every day
talk to all these different
constituencies about homelessness,
crisis and housing crisis.
So this is almost like
a lightning round kind of
discussion where we're going to go
over a lot of burning questions that
we hear all the time from regular
Angelinos about these crises and
hopefully cover a lot of ground.
So with that said,
I will just jump right in.
I want to know from each of you
what what is a top question?
And I'll I'll sprinkle this
throughout the discussion tonight so
you don't have to just just one for
now. But what is a top question that
you hear from readers, from
your listeners, from just regular
people in your life about
homelessness in L.A.
And what is your answer to that
question? Why don't we start
at the end, Ethan, and just go down
the line?
Hi, everyone.
I think the biggest question that
I've ever gotten is
why don't people call their family?
Why can't they just call a relative?
Why can't they call a loved one?
Why can't they go
live with their parents?
I think people vastly
underestimate the
family ties and the
access that people have to families.
And there's an assumption that
everyone has someone that they can
call and fall back on.
But a lot of people do not have
safety nets in that sense
where they can fall back onto
someone.
Well, most of the questions I get
are from readers, and
they're usually too.
They just go together.
One is, aren't they all just
mentally ill or addicted to drugs?
And the other is
when is it going to get better?
And my answer is
some of them have mental illness.
Some of them are addicted to drugs.
I have no idea how many, and
I don't know what's when it's going
to get better.
I'm usually keyed on those emails
as well with Doug because we often
write stories together.
But I guess one other
question we often get.
Is it feels like
these people want to be out there.
And it's usually followed
by the questions that
or assertions usually that Doug
mentioned. And what I say to people
is it's a
the homeless population, like the
regular population contains
multitudes and there are people who
want to be outside and actually they
maybe want to be outside it for
very, I think, irrational
reasons because the shelters
they could go to are dangerous or
the PTSD they're experiencing,
you know, makes them claustrophobic.
And that is
painting with such a broad brush
is a folly. So, you know,
I think that's that's what I try
to tell people.
Yeah, that that is one that
I get a lot as well.
And sometimes it's even framed as
how many people, you know, just
want to be homeless or are homeless
because they're choosing it.
And
I think, yeah, there's a big
misperception out there about that.
I mean, I in my reporting, I don't
think I've ever met anybody that
is unhoused because that's what they
wanted to do.
It's always an individual,
complicated story that you really
can't generalize about people
who are homeless. In L.A.
County, it's 70,000 people
or thereabouts.
But I find that even if you meet
people who at first
will tell you, you know, I don't I'm
not interested in any shelter,
I'm choosing this.
Usually if you spend more time
talking to them, you'll
find that there is they have a long
back story that at some point,
of course, involved falling out of
the housing market.
And and
most people, by and large do
want help.
I mean, want you know, don't want to
be in this situation, but maybe
don't see a good option in front of
them or have their defenses
up and haven't found somebody
to trust who's going to take them
through those options. So I'm always
a little surprised by the question.
Yeah, I guess it just speaks to the
perception that people have.
But there's something
that what you were saying, Doug,
that I want to ask all of you about,
which is I do find
also that there's a lot of
conflation that people
will do about
addiction, mental health issues
and homelessness and kind of think
of them all as one and the same.
And although there's overlap,
they're certainly different
issues. And
and I think sometimes people grab on
to what's most visible about the
crisis that they see and,
and sort of make generalizations.
So I'm wondering how each of you
in your work
or just when you think about this
issue, how do you untangle
those things from each other?
How do you think about
homelessness versus
mental health issues?
Addiction?
I don't know. Do you want to start,
Doug, because.
Well, last summer I spent some time
with Shai Raab, who is L.A.
County's street psychiatrist,
and he has a very practical
view of it.
He is looking for people on the
street who have serious mental
illness, which is either severe
bipolar disorder or
schizophrenia.
And he
often encounters people who have
serious substance abuse
disorder, and
he can determine if the person
has mental illness or not.
So he tries to get those who
those who he diagnoses as mentally
ill, He tries to get on
medication and then get into an
appropriate place to live
where
they that is designed
for people with mental illness.
But he said it takes about two weeks
for him to sort out and figure out
if the a person is a candidate
for that or is should be
in some kind of
addiction treatment.
Um hmm.
So.
Yeah. It's not something that that
you can just look around and have
all figured out, in short.
Mm hmm.
I mean, one thing I would just add
to that is, like, I think
our eyes are our best tools
as reporters, but they can also be
very deceiving in the sense that
think about your own experience,
like not getting a good night's
sleep and what it does to you.
Now imagine spending
an entire night staying up because
you don't want to be preyed upon or
have your stuff stolen.
And what that would do to you and I
do that every night for years,
or like
the stabilizing effect
of a good night's rest in a square
meal.
Not having that can really
mask what your true
state of mind is.
And and that
stabilizing people is such an
important part of helping them.
And that's like very different than
like resolving their homelessness
through getting them connected to
services. It's just like a very
discrete task.
And we don't really have a ton of
the.
They're like beds to do
that and help people in
that way.
Yeah, when we talk about mental
health as well and that overlap with
homelessness, I think it's really
important to point out that a lot of
people that fall into homelessness
likely maybe didn't have mental
health issues until they were in
that situation.
And then once you're in the
situation, your mental
health starts to deteriorate because
you're in a position where you've
never been in before.
I know me personally, when I lived
in my car for a year, it was a
constant battle to.
Care, like to care about
going to class, turning in an
assignment.
You really have to fight
every day to kind of like,
get over that barrier.
So I just want everyone to know
that. Yeah, you
sometimes get into homelessness in
your mental health deteriorates and
we'd really need to get.
You know, really have more serious
conversations about how we addressed
that as well.
Well, also, Doug, you were saying
something interesting before this,
but when we were just talking
outside before this panel about
the mental health component of the
crisis being something of an
unknown, and I was wondering if you
could explain that a little bit.
I mean, we do have statistics on
there is the count every year, the
homeless count, and there's numbers
in terms of how many people
are estimated to be experiencing
severe diagnosed mental health
issues. It's like something like a
third of people experiencing
homelessness at any given time in
L.A. County.
But
but you, you and Ben both have done
reporting on that particular
issue and questioned how accurate
those statistics are.
And so could you just talk a little
about how you think about that and
why you called it an unknown?
Alaska conducts a survey
of 5000 person survey every
year, and they ask a lot of
questions about.
Losses the homeless.
Homeless, homeless, homeless
authority.
And they ask lots of questions
about.
How you became homeless, how long
you been homeless, and what kind of
medical history you have and what
kind of mental issues you have.
It was a mental illness
because you're becoming homeless.
And they
produced those statistics
and came up for years.
They came up with a very low
percentage of substance abuse
and mental illness.
And
because I'm a help
this data reporter,
I filed a public records request
for the actual survey responses
and I was surprised that I got it
and saw that they were consciously
disregarding a lot of the answers
and the numbers were
higher.
But it's it still is not definitive
in any way because these are
self-reported surveys and
there's no clinical diagnosis.
ROUNTREE at UCLA has done
a massive study where she
compared the
homeless Management Information
System, which is a records
kept by outreach workers
and compare that to county
databases, DPS and the
public health system.
And she determined that probably
10% of the people living on the
street have, in their medical
history, a diagnosis of serious
mental illness.
So the numbers are all over
the place and from
my perspective.
Mental illness is a big
problem on the streets.
The public perception of it is
probably way out of proportion
to what the problem is.
But there are just hundreds to
thousands of people on the streets
who have untreated
mental illness and their lives are
just absolutely miserable.
And the mental health system is not
engaging those people in a
meaningful way.
And wherever
you run into people
who engage the mental health system
in the courts or for rapid diversion
from from criminal offenses
to the
outreach workers on the street
to the hospitals,
they just don't have beds for people
to go. They know that somebody
needs a medical
bed, an acute care bed, or
possibly a boarding care home, and
they're always fighting to get them.
And until that problem is solved,
you have
like five 5150s
of a involuntary
commitment for every
follow up placement in
a residential program.
So the system is just churning
people through three day commitments
in a psychiatric hospital,
stabilizing them and putting
them back on the street.
So a lot of work needs to be done
there.
MM Yeah.
I think one thing
you said there about the perception
of how prevalent
serious mental health disorders are
being out of proportion probably
to the reality definitely
strikes me as probably true.
It does seem that, you know,
people live their lives, go around
L.A., see people
who appear to be having behavioral
health issues of one kind or
another, and and will
make generalizations.
I do, Yeah.
I do think that that it can
be easy to conflate
all these holes in our mental health
care system that
can affect some
people.
Some people's path into homelessness
conflate addiction with
homelessness, although
they are are separate crises.
They're overlapping and it and it
can really complicate
the individual solutions
when you have a crisis of the
magnitude that you have in L.A.
County and we're talking about how
to solve it, and that's going
to involve a ton of
street outreach, ideally.
And, you know, and and it
complicates how you
help people who are currently on the
streets, off the streets.
But I guess this is all
leading to a question.
No.
But but when you look at the
underlying drivers
of the homelessness crisis, you
know, I'll look to other places
around the country, like with
addiction, for example, you know,
the places in America that have
the highest rates of opioid
addiction are
they're not L.A., not New York,
not San Francisco.
It's
Missoula and Cincinnati,
last I checked, for example.
And they don't have enormous
homeless crises.
So at the root of all this,
we have this housing affordability
and housing availability issue
that has plagued
this region for so many decades,
and people who are already
vulnerable to slipping through the
cracks obviously, are slipping
through those cracks.
But I want to shift into talking
about that, that underlying housing
issue that's at the root of all of
this and
not to keep you on the spot, Doug,
we'll all jump in here, but
I did prior to this panel, find
an article that you wrote
for the L.A. Times in 1983
about a guy who was
building little modular homes
in El Segundo, and
these were maybe going to be a
solution to homelessness.
It was this new innovative thing.
And and
anyway, and there's other examples,
too. If I go through the L.A.
Times archive of just people
looking for these out of the box
solutions for for 40
years plus to
this this housing problem that we
have and
well, that guy has not solved it
apparently.
And has done.
So what what is going on that I
need? I want all of you to weigh in
on this. And it's a big question,
but why have
we had so much trouble getting our
arms around this for so long?
First, I want to comment
on something that's not your
question, is it the fact I don't
remember that article, but the fact
that I wrote that article is
evidence that what we what we're
thinking of as something that just
started happening six or seven years
ago didn't just start happening six
or seven years ago.
We've we've had people living
outdoors in Los Angeles County.
I mean, at least since the
Depression. I don't know, probably
before that, but I don't know about
that. But
it was just much more hidden in
the past and something did
change. And and
I think partly it's just this the
number of people both.
There were great debates in the
eighties about what is how many
homeless people are there.
And those those debates ultimately
led the U.S. Census Bureau to try
to count homeless people
in 1988
for the 1990 census.
And it was a horrible failure
because they didn't know where to
look.
And and it took another
15 years.
But that led to the
semiannual count required by HUD
that every every community in
America does now.
I'd just like one quick anecdote.
Doug and I read a lot about
encampments on the Venice boardwalk,
and we found stories from 1985
or 86 about people sleeping on the
beach and the
consternation that caused neighbors,
you know, sort of I don't know if we
felt depressed or like enlivened
by that, that we're having the same
similar debates now.
I mean, I feel like when
you talk about the housing aspect of
it, it gets at this larger
issue.
I mean, you think it's better than
anyone. It's like it's not just the
most visibly impaired
people that we see in downtown
L.A. or any parts of L.A.
It's this like larger population
of people who are sleeping in their
cars, are sleeping in motels
and are just like.
Struggling and we
don't have a great handle on how
many people. I mean, we have studies
that speak to that.
But it's not it's
not where the debate is
necessarily.
When we talk about homelessness in a
mayor's race. I mean, I look at this
very much through a political prism
like cover politics.
And and we seem to
lose that, I think, in
that larger debate.
And part of that partially is like.
We are no closer to getting
our arms around that or that crisis,
and it feels vast and scary and we
let it get so bad that it feels
daunting, I think.
Yeah, well, I want to I'm not
dropping the the housing shortage
and and what is behind that.
But but yeah Ethan I did you
have written a lot about L.A.
is invisible homeless in this
crisis which is much bigger than
just people that you see on the
street. And I was wondering if you
could talk about that.
Yeah, I when we talk
about housing, I think the biggest
thing for me at least was I just
couldn't afford rent.
It was it really came down to
an economical thing for me.
It was like either I can pay to eat
or I can pay rent.
And I had to make a really tough
choice. But I really want to point
out the fact that black
people make up 8%
of the population here in L.A.
County, but we represent
like 33% of the
unhoused population.
And I did a story and I talked to
Marc Vestal actually from UCLA
at the Luskin Center, and he was
telling me that this goes back to,
like Doug was saying, the Great
Depression.
It goes all the way back to racist
housing policies back then.
That, according to him,
snatched wealth out of the black
community. And then it kind of just
kept going. And then you get to the
eighties and then you have mental
health issues. There's a
disinvestment of mental health.
There's a lack of, you know,
input from HUD to
come up with housing.
And so what you see today.
Is a direct
impact of that. It didn't just
happen in a vacuum.
And so when I think about black
people, you know, not being able to
get housing, I think about
how they ended up going to jail,
you know, because there was no
mental health facilities for people
to go into. And did you have a
criminal record? And then that's a
barrier to you getting housing.
So there's a lot of different
aspects and nuances
to that conversation that go on,
especially when it pertains to black
people not being able to have access
to housing.
Yeah, well, it seems that the racial
disparities in who is
experiencing homelessness in L.A.
County certainly go to the
socioeconomic crisis
that is really at
the root of all of this.
And so.
Going back to the housing issue for
for many here. What?
I mean, how did we get here to
this point? You know, we know L.A.
does have a housing shortage
for wonky reasons.
But, you know, the the city, like
other cities in California, does
assess every year
how its housing supply compares to
the housing demand and comes up with
goals for housing.
So we do you know, we do have a way
to quantify it.
We can say we do have a shortage
compared to the demand that's
impacted affordability that's
been building for for many
decades. But.
Why? What are the big what are the
big drivers, Ben?
I mean, does it.
How far back, you know, do you have
to look to
to figure out the policy.
When you go to any other major
world city, you see
that they house
their citizens in
large, high rise,
huge villages with hundreds of
of 20, 30 storey high rises.
And that's just not going to happen
in Los Angeles in my lifetime.
It probably will have to happen
sometime.
But I think I
think the answer to your question is
partly that these are very deep.
Social movements that
are.
I can't see.
I can understand.
But. But they've been there locked
up in our history.
The development of Los Angeles after
World War Two, just this gigantic
housing boom. My father bought his
first house in Los Angeles for
$8,000, and
I bought my first house in Los
Angeles for $20,000.
And those
people who came here and
invested in the city
are still invested in it.
And my kids were able
to buy a house.
But if you if you don't
if you weren't invested, you can't.
And and there's this.
The city is has really huge
social divisions that
leave the great majority
sort of out in the cold, even if
they're even if they have housing of
some kind, they're at a great
disadvantage.
I would just add to that.
I mean.
I'm blanking on the numbers, but
when you look at housing production
and permitting of new
single family homes in the nineties
in L.A., it was like
that was, you know, like a thousand
new permits, you know, three that I
mean, and, you know,
they think we need 500,000
new units of housing.
So, I mean, I think it's just like
whether it was a benign neglect or a
pernicious illness that stems from
a racism and a NIMBYism that
we can all talk about if we want.
It just we didn't build
enough and we didn't build it fast
enough. And people came here
and the population grew and those
all fed fed into this
thing where then it pushed
more people and put more pressure on
people who were already vulnerable.
The people we were talking about
with serious mental illness, with
substance abuse disorder
and put pressure on people.
And the housing is one thing that is
hard to hold on to if you are
vulnerable in other ways.
And after the postwar housing boom,
the the land was used up
and it became harder and harder to
build. But people kept coming and
they're still coming.
Do you think that
their policies and attitudes around
housing development specifically are
changing now?
I mean, my understanding is
that like in the eighties, maybe
in the nineties
there was more there
was more of a political machine
around the idea that LA is this
city of single family homes
and it should be low density.
And and it does seem like now people
are talking a lot more about the
need for more housing.
It seems like the state is doing
some things to try to push that
more aggressively than it has in the
past. And I wonder, do you guys
do you guys see any shifts there?
I mean, absolutely.
I mean, I think like one prism into
that is like.
The proponents of affordable
housing in this state now
are unions and unions
that had previously been very big
vocal backers of single
family housing because who built
those that housing they did.
But now see, you know,
ensuring that project labor
agreements and other requirements
to use that kind of labor
enter into these um,
you know, discussions
has meant that political
forces that
had previously been very opposed
to density are now very into it
because they realized, oh, we could
build it. And I think that's one
aspect of it. I think there's many
others as well.
Yeah.
Anyone else want to weigh in on
that? If not, I'll keep it moving
because there is something else I
want to go back to.
Okay. No.
All right.
Well, we were talking before about
invisible homelessness and and
the scale of the crisis actually
being even bigger than what we see
on the streets, even bigger than
what's reflected in the official
loss account every year.
And I think
a county official told me at one
point there's probably at least
a couple hundred thousand people
experiencing homelessness in L.A.
at any given time.
Not 70,000, but
but they're the people, you know,
you don't see. Maybe they're
sleeping on a couch,
etc.. And I was wondering if,
Ethan, if you could talk about some
of the reporting you've done about
just specific people you've met
that that would fall
into that category.
And then Doug and Ben,
I know you guys have also
done a lot of reporting on the
official count and
and how how questionable it is.
It comes out every year.
It sounds like a very specific
number. It's like, you know, 69,752
or whatever it is. I just made that
up. But it's something like that,
but it's not really that precise at
all. So.
So maybe, Ethan, you can begin and
then you guys could talk about the
official count.
Yeah, sure, I.
The first person that comes to my
mind is this woman named Sarah Fay
that I did a story on the No way to
Live series.
And I spent four
months with this woman.
She works. First of all, she works
in the homelessness sector where at
the time she did, she worked for a
nonprofit helping
young people who had fallen into
homelessness, trying to place them
into housing.
But she herself did not have
a place to live. She was living
between her grandmother's garage,
her car and motels
all around L.A..
Four years and I
was blown away by that because
I thought, how is it possible that
you work and have a full time job
and you can't afford a place to
live and you work in this sector?
So she definitely was the first
person that comes to mind when I
think about the vast majority of
people that are probably in
situations like hers where
they are working.
They do hold down jobs.
They just cannot afford to
get a place in L.A.
And I've met a lot of the people
that I've met during my reporting
have similar situations,
is not that they're not working.
They are gainfully employed
oftentimes.
They just can't afford rent.
They can't keep the barriers that
they have to get apartments, like
making three times the rent, having,
you know, good credit.
And again, if you have
fallen into homelessness and your
credit is not good, that is also
another barrier to you getting into
housing. So I
like you said earlier, I just think
that the vast majority and
we see a lot of visible unhoused
people on the streets oftentimes
who are at their worst. But I think
the vast majority of people are
people that are like Sarah Faye,
who are working and just can't
afford to find a place to live.
And
we don't have any handle on that at
all. It's absolutely right.
And we don't we don't know anything
about it.
The account that Lahsa conducts
every year is basically a street
count. They just start counting
people who are on the street and
then they combine
it with a shelter count, which they
get from the shelters through
electronic systems.
But they
they send out they get volunteers,
thousands of volunteers, and they
actually go to every
census tract in the county and look
for people.
And then they
have minimal training to decide
If you're if you see a camper parked
on the street, what's your opinion?
Is there is somebody living in that
or is it just somebody's camper
and they don't try to
count, They don't engage with people
and they don't try to determine how
many people might be living in a
tent.
So the annual survey,
which is a huge survey, 5000
people,
but it's big because they spread
it out over all the census tracts.
There are over hotspot census
tracts. It gets to be small
in some in
some categories.
They use that to come up with
multipliers and they say
on the broad brush, well, 1.3
people live in every tent and
1.5
people live in every RV and
so forth. And then they they
multiply that by all of the
sightings and they come up with an
estimate.
And of course, there's an
upper and lower bound to that
estimate. But they never publish the
upper and lower bound because in
fact they have no idea how to
calculate the margin of error.
So they just
give the number and down to the last
person as if you know, as if that's
and I really got
into a tiff with them.
When you're when they discovered an
error in their programing,
the people at USC who I love, I love
the people at USC, they're very
good, but
they just haven't come to grips with
this.
They found that error in the
program. They recalculated and they
changed the number by like 358,
which was, you know, when
when the a reasonable
upper and lower bound would probably
be like five or 6000
at least.
It was it was just nonsense.
But it's it gets a
lot of people engaged and it
gives us some information and
we get.
We get
longitudinal information so we can
compare over years.
I mean, I think again,
I think that the people my
if I had the biggest critique I have
of a lot of the people working in
on these things is that they do
their work completely absent
minded of the political
jungle that they exist in.
So Doug often refers
to the implied precision
of this count.
The point that Anna was making its
exact number, but that.
It creates this incentive structure
where the mayor or the city council
members are incredibly invested in,
like driving down the number in
their area and
not thinking about it in a more
holistic way, which is that
homelessness is dynamic.
It's not a I mean, it's
this is definitionally a point in
time count, it's in the name,
but that like it maybe isn't the
best way to like, think about
people being homeless.
And there are researchers, a guy
named Dan Fleming thinks about it.
He uses like labor data to to
then like welfare rolls
and.
It's a much larger number, but he's
not saying it's on one night.
He's saying over the course of a
year this is how many people are
homeless and it's a much higher
number.
And that I think one of the
challenges is that we
these numbers are
created without a lot of attention
to how they are then
utilized by political candidates,
interest groups across the
ideological spectrum,
and that they get twisted as
a result.
Yeah, we've all probably
seen some of the the behind the
scenes choreography that goes into
the release of these numbers.
If it's good news, you are
guaranteed a big press conference
and you'll see county supervisors
and city council members and
everybody there.
If it's bad news, they're going to
delegate it to somebody from the
L.A. Homeless Services Authority,
maybe telling them about
it at a meeting as if they don't
already all know what's in
the count.
So you remember when Marty
called us all in like two weeks
ahead of time? They're not supposed
to say what the number is, but
he was prepping us for bad news.
And I do
think it was a very odd,
odd meeting. Yeah, I was there.
Doug was there a couple of weeks
before the the count came out.
And. Yeah, it was just to prep
us for bad news. But I do remember
leaving that and all saying like.
Well, what was that about?
But this all gets at the thing that
we're kind of circling, which is
like the study of homelessness
is very new, like
studying why people become
homeless, who is homeless like
is a thing of
the last 15 or 20 years.
So there's very little research,
empirical research, good empirical
research, longitudinal
data. And the result
is that we're left with Mark
Ridley-Thomas like trying to put
his thumb scales of, you
know, things as it's coming out.
And yeah, I mean, I think that's
a big problem, actually.
Yeah.
Well, I and I, I
don't want to leave people feeling
like, you know, gosh, this is just,
you know, completely hopeless
and nothing is going right.
So we will get to
some positive strains.
But I do think the governance issue
is something that is important
in L.A. that, you know, if you're
not really in the weeds of this
topic, can be can just
pass you by.
But but who
is even really in charge of
homelessness in Los Angeles, Right.
Because we've
got the county supervisors who
control social services,
the city council members who have
quite a lot of leeway to how they
want to deal with it in their
districts, in their power.
There's the mayor who's
somewhat limited or, you know,
Garcetti really liked to talk about
can't do anything now
but like so and then
you have the L.A. Homeless Services
Authority. And it's unusual.
It's unique.
It creates some unique challenges.
Other municipalities aren't really
set up this way. So,
yeah, how do you guys answer that?
Who's in charge of homelessness in
L.A.
and how does this strange
structure affect the actual
policies when it comes to dealing
with the issue?
Well, I think you're on to something
about the patchwork ness of
it all. There are so many
different players, and I
don't know how that happened.
I think that started with maybe
Lawson with the way that
they delegated things.
But there's so many different
players. You have the supervisors,
you have the city council, and
everyone has different roles to
play. So it doesn't really fall
onto one person's shoulders.
And I think at least, you
know, officials that I've talked to
and sources, especially people that
work in the homelessness nonprofit
services, they say that there's
always a lot of pointing fingers
when things don't go right.
It's like, oh, it's them over there,
or they do it over there.
And that really leads to a lot
of confusion. And when it's time to
get things done, because there is
not one person that you can point
to and say that they are responsible
for this.
And back in 2016,
the city of L.A.
had when Miguel Santana
was the city administrative officer,
they conducted a big
project and and produced
a 102 hundred something
page report called the Homeless
Initiative. And.
And that was a prelude to the
measure passing in 2017.
And L.A. County created its homeless
initiative to basically
manage the money for Measure H.
And in the city's proposal,
they said, well, we need
to we need to name
a person to be responsible for all
of our homeless
services. And we all
thought, oh, they're going to name
the homeless. Are this the person
who's really going to have power?
And we should've known
better because they appointed
a very nice woman,
Meg Whitman, who was
a classic city apparatchik.
And basically all her job was
was to just count the numbers and
and be sure that the numbers added
up.
I'm kind of high on
Felicia Adams column.
Column Adams Adams column.
For the first time we've we've seen
Liza run by I mean
really technocrats
really dull and uninspired,
but ideological technocrats.
It's a very bad combination.
And Karen Bass
is appointed of Alicia Adams Kellum,
who's the CEO
at the Saint Vincent Center
and has a really good track
record in.
And she gets things done
and she's a big personality.
So I'm hoping that I'm
hoping that she emerges as a kind of
a leader.
I have not much to add other than,
you know, the idea of diffusion.
The diffusion of authority means no
one's in charge.
That, I think,
is the ultimate way to describe
the situation we have and
the result. You know, I mean, I
think Los.
Has homelessness in the name, but
very little control over the things
that.
Create homelessness.
And those are different
problems are two different things.
And how you address homelessness
and how you respond to it are very
different in some ways.
And that is a huge
problem that no one has a good
answer to solve.
Yeah, and you can see it at
the city level playing out with
things like council members not
wanting to provide shelter beds
or motel rooms
to unhoused people who
came from other districts,
even though that's not really how
people experience life
in the city, you don't necessarily
know what district you're in at any
given time, but if there's somebody
on one block and the nearest bed
is in another district,
that is just a block away.
There can be difficulties that.
So that
definitely has been an issue at the
city level. And it will be something
interesting to watch to see how are
still relatively new mayor deals
with that going forward.
Because
one one of our promises was to have
a citywide strategy on this issue.
And besides no one being in charge,
just imagine the amount of energy
that goes into all of these
different groups trying to figure
out what the other group is doing
and how that how what they're doing
fits in with it. It's it's
very confusing.
Yeah, Well, you did mention
Measure H, which was
a sale county wide sales
tax that went to fund
homeless services.
And then there's also Proposition
Triple H, which people are probably
familiar with, which was the bond
measure that passed in 2016
at the city level to build
new homeless housing,
permanent supportive housing.
So specifically for people who
have disabilities and were
chronically homeless.
So it's for a very particular
segment of the population, but one
that is hard to house.
So I
wanted to talk about those because
this is a question I get all the
time and I'm hoping you guys can
help demystify it a little bit.
I get a lot. I get people asking a
lot. Whatever happened to that?
Are they working? Are they doing
anything?
And these measures
have definitely been criticized a
lot. I mean, we've all played a role
in that. I've written critical
things you guys have as
well, but they are doing
things prop triple
H, the housing bond is
is really almost
seven years in but but bearing
fruit now there's something like 50
ag projects opening this year,
thousands of units.
And yet a lot of people still think
of this as a failure.
So I was wondering if you guys
could help break down what
those measures are actually doing
and why the perception of them is
so negative even though they are
doing things.
I'll diagnose the problem
why the perception is so negative,
and then let Doug and Ethan
describe why it doesn't work because
of the harder part.
It's so negative because, I mean,
look at the streets.
I mean I mean, I think that's and
I and while
it's predicated on sometimes
a lack of knowledge on people's
part, I. Do you sympathize
with people who are affected
by encampments near their homes and
and also are
wondering why their
money, how their money has been
spent and can't
kind of come to terms
with what is happening
because their government has not
done a good job of, you know,
bringing resources to bear but also
not explaining it well.
And I think that that inspires so
much of the anger.
I mean, we we did a poll
the fall of 21 or
yeah, about
95% of people said homelessness
was the biggest problem.
And like anyone who knows anything
about polling, it's like you never
get 95% of anyone to agree to
anything. And it's like
the poll. I remember the pollster
being like, I've done this for 40
years. I've never seen anything like
this, like the unanimity of
people's anger and anger
that has an incredible amount of
empathy connected to it
is very visceral.
And I mean, you know, I
think it fueled the candidacy of
Rick Caruso. He lost, obviously, but
I think it also fueled
a lot of what Karen Bass said.
I mean, she gave an interview to me
and a colleague of mine named
William Dillon, where she said
encampments on the street are
unacceptable.
And our mayor,
Eric Garcetti, had trouble saying
things like that. And he was, I
think, a little handcuffed by his
own sort of how his brain worked
a little bit. I mean, he was just
very worried about insulting
constituencies.
And but that, like Karen
was speaking to her base emotion of
people. And she was not trying to
belittle homeless people, but she
was saying it is unacceptable that
we allow this to happen.
This is not where people sleep and
that that people responded very well
to that.
Mm.
It was. Now you do the hard part.
It was a failure because
the L.A. Chamber of Commerce and
United Way got together and
promoted it with a flashy campaign,
basically saying, this will end
homelessness.
Which one or both
Kitchen Proctor.
And I.
I asked them both.
I said, you know, the numbers don't
add up. And they said, well, they
knew, but they would cross that
bridge when they came to it.
And the other thing they didn't say
is that the process
that this money was aimed to.
It wasn't to pay for these
buildings. It was to sort of give
a little extra money to make it
easier for them to go through this
horrendously complex
problem of of capitalizing
these projects where they have to go
through rounds of
offers, notice of funding,
availability from L.A.
County, and they have to and those
are at different times from the
when the tax credits are offered
and it's horribly
competitive.
And sometimes they go through all of
this and then they don't get the tax
credit. So they have to wait for the
next round.
And it was obvious it was going to
take at least five years before
these any of these
10,000 units were going
to be coming on line.
And when all 10,000 came on
line, they were never going to be
enough to solve the problem.
And then they they
created the coordinated entry system
to
find it's a system
for prioritizing people
for scarce resource.
And they basically
the coordinated entry system based
on a acuity test,
prioritized people with the most
serious problems
health, health and mental health and
substance abuse.
They were the ones who were
prioritized for getting housing.
And you have, you
know, some really good
legacy organizations, like a
community of Friends that has 42
buildings for for people with
mental illness.
And they worked so hard to stabilize
these buildings and make them work.
And then they are told,
you have to take these people.
They're given
the leasing was taken out of their
hands and given to the centralized
system.
And so they get people right
off the street who have serious
problems hoarding problems and
substance abuse problems, and it
blows up their whole building.
So it it didn't work
because it wasn't thought out.
You know.
Doug, you did a great job
explaining.
There was one point that came
to my mind when you were talking.
I interviewed council member Marquis
Harris-dawson for a story
about this. And I asked him, why is
it so slow? Because people keep
asking me that as well, Like, what
is the process? Why is it taking so
long? And he brought up
environmental reviews
as a big obstacle to this as
well. And that was something that
never really crossed my mind because
California, we have all these great
protections that are supposed to be
in place to protect everyone.
But then he said they ended up being
an obstacle to developers,
being able to get buildings
approved, and that slowed up
the process as well.
But then we accepted it and it was.
I don't know, I don't want to say
anything inaccurate. This is almost
getting too in the weeds even for
me. But I will say with with
it, yeah, I think there
was a big disconnect between,
I mean, the wonky
reality of how this was always going
to work and the big
promise that was made
to get it to pass.
And those two things don't really
jive. And maybe a misunderstanding
on even the part of
people promoting it perhaps as well.
But.
But yeah, it was it was never going
to solve homelessness.
The goal was to create
overall 10,000 units of
permanent supportive housing.
So this is housing for the
neediest people living on the
streets over ten years.
And and that was always baked into
it. And so if you just do the math,
I mean, there's like 42,000
people experiencing homelessness in
the city of L.A. Maybe a third would
qualify as chronically homeless and
eligible for these buildings
potentially. So it
was never going to solve
homelessness or even chronic
homelessness.
And now that the
the buildings are opening.
But it's all you know.
But yes, it's it's years after the
measure passed.
And so I
guess I don't want
to give the false impression that,
you know, this this went nowhere and
it didn't do anything.
I just got some numbers from
the city in the last week, and
there's something like 2300
units open now that are partially
funded by Prop H
and that's going to double over
this year and next.
And we're sort of in the crest of
these projects finally opening.
And if all goes
as planned, it will meet that goal
by the decade mark by 2026.
But yeah, I think that people
had a lot of expectations around it
and maybe that could have been
tempered, but they didn't really
match the reality of how this was
going to work.
One positive sign is
that because of the
problems with Triple H, I
thought Major Ula
didn't have a chance and they didn't
do a big flashy advertising
campaign for it.
A United Way kind of learned
its lesson and it and it started a
multi-year campaign of just
community organizing
and ULA, which is
far more money than
Prop Triple H
passed pretty handily.
And so in the next
ten years there's going to be, you
know, we don't know how much because
it's a rich it's a
tax on homes of
five $5 billion, I think.
And people are stopping selling
their homes so that the money might
be less than they had hoped.
But but over the over the coming
ten years, it's going to be billions
of dollars. And they've
also learned their lesson.
They've they've dedicated
about, well,
70% of the money is for housing
and that sort of split half
and half between the
old tax credit
system, which is slow,
cumbersome and expensive and
what they call innovative
housing models.
And nobody knows what that means
yet, but I'm hoping it means
that they'll they'll figure out how
to use
a little bit of government money and
make find a way for the housing
market to produce affordable
housing.
That's all.
Do you want to go in a minute to
audience questions?
But I feel like we need some kind
of, I don't know, almost
like wrap up type thing here.
So this is sort of a corny one, but
but but we've all been covering this
for a while.
I wonder how you guys feel about do
you feel at this point like this is
an intractable
problem or that it's a solvable
problem? And I will go first and say
I still think despite everything
we've been talking about, that this
is clearly a solvable problem
because there are
countries in the world that don't
have a huge crisis
of homelessness, that
have a totally different approach to
housing. And
and we've even had success stories
here. I mean, I did just do
a whole podcast about the problems
that still exist with veteran
homelessness and the VA.
And and there are a lot of
problems around that.
But but also in
this country, there's been a lot of
progress as a whole,
not as much as Los Angeles, but
around the whole country in reducing
veteran homelessness over the last
couple or decade or so, which is
totally opposite of homelessness at
large. So that's just one example
of how we we do
actually know what works.
And we we were able to employ it, at
least for this one population that's
a little more politically popular
than, you know, the
unhoused population at large.
So I do think we know what
works. I don't think it's intractable
personally, but it's easy
to feel that way when you're steeped
in this all the time.
But what do you guys think?
Like, I don't know.
Been is this hopeless?
Are we ever going to get out of it?
I know you said you don't know when
readers ask, but tell me
anyway.
I personally feel
that is not hopeless.
I speak to people all the
time who work in this space every
day, day in and day out, and
they know the answers and they have
the answers and they say the
simplest answer is that people just
need housing.
And I just feel like once we
get to that understanding that
people do need housing,
and I think this is also a product
of our society as well, to be honest
with you, our perception about how
we approach people that are
experiencing homelessness.
I was in Dublin and the lady I
interviewed her there who runs their
homelessness stuff, and she said
that they just keep spending money.
And I said, And no one complains
about this.
She says, No, they need a place
to live.
We just put them in motels.
And she was really mad.
She was like, And I feel really bad
that they have to spend so much time
in these motels.
And I just thought like, Wow, you
know, maybe we can get to that point
where we also all approach the
situation where we're like
collectively realizing that
this impacts all of us
and.
If we are able to kind of grasp
get our heads around that as
a society, then I
do believe that we'll make a lot of
progress. And so I'd like to be
optimistic.
Well, I started covering this,
oh, maybe eight years ago when
I was driving around the city
and seeing more and more people
living in tents on
the sidewalk.
And I and nobody at the Times was
really paying attention to it.
And so I thought
this is a problem that needs tending
to. And based on my past experience,
if you shine a spotlight on
something that's going wrong, the
people who are responsible for it
get engaged and then it it
turns around and gets gets right.
Shows you I grossly exaggerated
my own power.
But I
and I do think the problem
I think it's intractable in that I
think there will always be people
who will somehow lose their housing.
And we're always even in an ideal
world, we need a shelter system and
a good shelter system because
you have domestic violence
and you have people aging
out of the foster care system and
you just have people
who break up and and
particularly women who have no
resources. So we need we need that.
We're never going to have a society
that doesn't require a
good shelter system.
And unfortunately, we don't have a
good shelter system.
We have a terrible shelter system.
But I do think
that there's been a lot of attention
on how to create density in Los
Angeles with transit
oriented communities.
And I
believe that there's a
possibility of things
getting better in the future.
But that's not a prediction.
It's just a hope.
What he said.
What he said. Yeah.
Okay, well, all we need is
a better shelter system, a lot more
housing and an entirely new social
contract. But I think.
And redoing health
care and raising the minimum wage
do.
Yeah, but.
But no, but not intractable.
Well, I do want to go to any
questions that we've jumped around a
lot, but, um.
But yeah, any questions that people
here have.
I think there's somebody going to
come around with a
like.
I had a question for all of you
about housing elements.
And I mean, I've been reading a lot
in the paper lately about Santa
monica being out of compliance.
And that means there's a lot of like
fancy new apartments being built.
Right. Do you guys think the state
regime of these housing elements and
like suing cities or their housing
elements is actually working in
terms of providing more affordable
housing? Or is this like a broken
regime that isn't really working
right now?
I think we don't know yet because
it's relatively new that the that
the state has been attaching teeth
to these housing goals,
that cities are setting and
going after municipalities that
aren't meeting those goals.
And it's also relatively
new. I think that
there are some developers taking
advantage of this.
This there's there's something
in the law where if these
cities are out of compliance with
the housing that they're supposed to
be building according to these state
goals that they set, then developers
can bypass the local
zoning. I'm hopefully not
bungling this, but they can bypass
local zoning rules and
propose larger projects
and more density.
And so it's the builders
remedy.
And there's been a lot of news
stories lately about developers and
all around Southern California
trying to take advantage of that
with different proposals.
But I think it's still relatively
new.
We haven't totally seen how this is
all going to play out and hold up to
lawsuits and all of that stuff.
So I think it's hard
to say.
I think you're right.
And I think that one of
the issues you mentioned, the teeth
or lack thereof, you know,
our colleague Liam Dillon wrote
about Coronado, which has basically
went like that to the governor,
and nothing happened.
And so maybe that will change and,
you know, they'll start suing cities
like that. But until they do, I
mean, we're very limited in what we
can do or like
the state is very limited in what
they can do, not we journalists,
but as a state, we are very limited
in creating more housing.
And until these housing elements are
sort of ambitiously rendered and
then executed.
Yes, I'd like to address
not the neediest
homeless.
The not the.
You know.
The people who have the hardest
time.
But.
There's also an upper
end to homelessness.
People who've just had
a terrible.
Medical bill and just
couldn't keep up
and lost.
Their home or couldn't pay the
rent anymore or whatever.
So.
I'm a senior.
There are a lot of seniors.
Many of them open their homes
and they're empty nesters and
they're not selling their property.
For various reasons.
Because maybe they don't want to
pay. You know, they think they're
gonna have to.
Pay too much in taxes.
But I'm I'm
it has occurred to me for a long
time that there ought.
To be a way.
That quote responsible
people who are.
In an intermediate or temporary
situation.
Could be could go through
some sort of a public agency
or a.
Public.
Organ or nonprofit organization
and be matched up with people who
have.
Large houses
and.
Empty bedrooms.
On even like a temporary basis.
Six months. A year.
Where the the the
homeless person can save money,
you know, and get ready
to put it a
rental.
You know, when you.
Rent a new apartment, you have to
have money for the
what do you call it, the fees.
And it just seems like
most there are a lot of people,
I think, in Los Angeles who would
be willing to have
someone at the, quote,
upper end who don't have, you
know, major problems of
mental health or
any, you know, substance
abuse.
Who could they.
Would be willing to share their home
for six months a year.
And let and.
While these people who are.
Working are saving
up so that they can enter
the the housing market.
But it's like.
Sometimes it.
Takes an agency who
can. Who can chaperon
that because most of us don't
know how to deal.
If we get somebody in who turns out
to be, you know, Godzilla,
we don't know how to get rid of
them. And, you know, most
people are just afraid.
But if there's some kind of an
agency that
can interface and match
up.
People and take care of the
few bad apples.
I'm just going to yeah, I'm going to
jump in. But yeah, I don't know.
Good idea. And that sort of
matchmaking service between people
with big empty homes and
people out a room.
I think I heard a story on
KPCC or L.A.
Sorry about
that. Kind of an agency that was
operating, i believe, in san Diego.
I've never heard of anything like
that here.
There is an organization called
share that that
leases empty homes.
That is, people have moved out
and that is the whole home.
And then, and then they board
two to a bedroom and maybe put six
people in the home with
what they call a
peer advocate.
Just to add on to that,
there are programs in L.A.
that are kind of like what you're
describing. I know the LGBT
Center, they have something like
that for people that come through
there. So people that come through
their center can get, I guess,
mentors or get matched up with
people to do exactly what you're
talking about. But I definitely
agree. I think that that's something
that should be a concept
that they take to scale.
I'm optimistic, though.
I mean, the comptroller put out
like a call to landlords,
I think, to say like, hey, we
need your help in this crisis.
If you have rooms, let us know.
Be part of our database.
I'm not really sure what happened
with that or what will happen with
that, but I mean, I guess that will
be a maybe a step forward.
I don't know. But it does also
relate. We have more questions.
It does relate to something we're talking
about before, which is the just
the most the invisibility of most
homelessness. I mean, most people
are who experience
homelessness in L.A. County in a
given year are in a situation like
you're describing, but do manage
to pull themselves out of it before
ever landing on the street or ever
getting entered into any system.
So what we think of as homelessness
is really just such a small sliver
of everybody that actually
experiences it in a given year in
L.A..
And then one thing that
the homeless count has shown
is that even though it's
a point in time kind of count on
one day they ask people how
long you have been on the street,
and they use that again with a
statistical
maneuver to it
to calculate how many
people have been homeless at any
time during the year.
So we know that there are a lot of
people who have.
For the reasons that you described,
may lose their housing,
but somehow recover
on their own, or they get help and
recover.
And it's a pretty substantial
number. It's I think.
Self resolution was the largest exit
out of homelessness, people figuring
it out themselves.
Oh, hi. I'm next.
Hi. Thank you, everybody.
Sorry, I'm a little nervous.
I'm in real estate, and you know
what they say?
Location, location, location.
So the first thing you ask is,
what's your budget?
And then based on that, that's where
you do your search.
So I know the name
of this lecture is the housing
crisis, but could it also be called
the location of the housing
crisis? Meaning there's plenty
of land when you go
an hour outside of L.A.,
completely open to be built
in. And it's cheap land
and they could build and there's
less, you know, holding
back with permits and they could
build new, beautiful,
great facilities for unhoused
people and and
not crunched here in the city and
just spread it all out.
And then people who you
know.
I was raised with living within your
means.
And you have to have like an honest
assessment, like, Hey, I can't
afford to live here anymore.
I can move somewhere
where I can afford to live or I can
earn additional streams
of income or
get more skills.
And I'm not trying to come across
insensitive. I, of course, super
care about homeless people and
then everybody and I want and I also
have heard and correct me if I'm
wrong, I've heard over 50%
of the homeless population in Los
Angeles or in California is from
the other all of the other states.
It's a nationwide problem
coming here.
And I think the other states need to
take responsibility and
take care of their homeless, too,
because we're running out of
resources were overstressed,
overstretched, and I heard seven
homeless people die every day.
And that that's that's so
sad to me.
And I just wish there was more,
you know, like, let's go somewhere
where we can afford to build and be
self-supporting and not,
I guess, well, overspend
in have like a homeless
shelter in a very expensive
part of Santa monica.
Like, can't they go?
Build that like outside of
Bakersfield and build like a brand
new city and create opportunity
and just create more more
of a spread out city.
And and I'm sorry.
I hope I'm not hurting anybody's
feelings. I'm really not trying to
do that. I just feel like this is a
more responsible
solution is saying, okay, let's
work and live within our budget.
Well, I think I'll just there's a
couple of things sort of baked into
there that that I do want to
address. I do think that it's not
uncommon to
for, you know, to for people to
think that L.A.
has this homelessness crisis because
of the weather or because of people
coming from other places to be
unhoused here.
But those are myths, really.
Most of the people who are homeless
in L.A. County were last housed in
L.A. County.
Even if, you know, people were
originally from somewhere
else. I mean, most
a lot of people and I'm from
somewhere else, you know, I'm from
I'm from New York.
So it's
it's not true that people,
by and large, come to L.A.
to be homeless.
Most people last were housed here.
They're here for all the reasons
that any of us are here in L.A.
They have family here. They have
connections here, ties
here.
And so, you know,
I think so that that's
one thing that that complicates
it. Also, I think if
you look at the racial
disparities in who's experiencing
homelessness,
it it does tie back to
many of the exclusive and
and racist housing policies of the
past goes all the way back to
redlining in L.A.
that, you know, the roots of this
homelessness crisis that we have
today.
So I think when we think about
solutions, you do
have to take all of that into
account.
And, you know, I think
I think it's easy to sort
of put all the onus on
personal responsibility and say,
well, why don't we just, you know,
if people can't afford it, why don't
they just go somewhere else?
But I think that is also partly
what.
Led to this moment in time.
Yeah. And just to kind of piggyback
off what Ana just said,
the majority of people that I've met
living on the streets who are
unhoused, they
are from those communities.
They have lived in these communities
their entire lives.
They went to elementary school,
their middle school, their high
school there.
So to them, that's all they know.
And they feel like, why should I
have to go all the way out to I
think he said Bakersfield or
something like that. Why should they
have to go all the way out there
when they don't have ties
or bonds to people in that part
of town?
They're looking for solutions that
keep them in their neighborhoods,
around their family ties, their
friendship ties, the people that
they've built community with
here in L.A. growing up.
And I think you've raised the kind
of conundrum because
right now we have a
homeless system that is packed
with services.
And you can't
you can't just build a
project in
Bakersfield or people have proposed
the Antelope Valley
and just send people there.
First of all, you can't send people
there. You have to they have
to decide to go there.
And as
many people there, they're close
to their ties.
And the other issue
is that the people who
live in those communities are
primarily doing long commutes
to work somewhere else.
And so you're taking a population
that doesn't have access to
transportation and and
trying to convince them to live in a
place where they'll be totally
isolated. I just don't think
that even if you built it, I
don't think it would be very successful.
I just not to
pile on. I mean, one other I mean,
when you look at the history of how
Skid Row was created, it was
I mean, it goes way back
to when the people came out on the
railroads and where residential
hotels were.
But but it also has a lot to do with
them concentrating all
of the services
and shelters in one place.
And the result was we have a
thing now that is
what Skid Row is.
And that it's
it's a it's it's like
people were rational actors
in the sense we go to where the
things we need are.
If we put them all in one place,
then there will be all kinds of a
certain type of person there.
So I think I think part
of spreading it out is about the
equity of where these people are
across the city as well.
Yeah. And the kind of city that
we're creating. I mean, if you look
at like Venice Beach
as a sort of case
study in L.A., homelessness
at large, I mean, Venice is an area
that has quantifiably
lost density significantly
in recent decades.
It's a place where consequently
and for other reasons to housing
prices have become some of the most
astronomical in L.A.
County.
It's also a place that has lost
diversity during that time, too.
If you look at census numbers,
it's it's become whiter.
It's lost a lot of black residents,
which it historically had in larger
numbers.
It's lost Latino residents.
And and
it's also, you know, it's long had
some unhoused population.
But you can see
all of that play out there in this
really extreme way.
And it is also an area where
there's been
some of the most heated fights in
L.A. over putting services
or affordable housing projects
or shelters.
But it's kind of hard to divorce
those fights in the current
situation from all of that history
that came forth.
So, you know, I think there's just
a lot baked into that.
Just one additional thing.
The two
communities in Los Angeles County
that have the highest percentage of
people who came
from out of state or out of county
are Venice and Hollywood.
And that's really no surprise.
And people didn't come to Venice and
Hollywood to be homeless.
They came to take in
the beach and to maybe
become a star.
And it didn't work out.
But throughout most of the county,
the a
very high percentage, like 80, 80,
90% have been in the
county for at least a year before
they became homeless.
Some more questions.
At the risk of being unpopular.
And I'm not afraid to be said
because I
you know, there
are values to single family
neighborhoods, too.
And Newsom, when he
after the recall, the first thing he
did was pass prop, you know,
Senate Bill nine and ten where
where you can take you know, and put
density. And.
You know, they talk.
About heat sinks in the middle of
cities and Santa monica
is under part and
there there is a value, too,
of not forcing
all this density and there is
a backlash.
And if people have paid
a mortgage their whole lives and
work to to
enjoy a community and
some authoritarian figure,
the self-righteousness of
the whole I mean, our
federal deficit now is 31 trillion
and climbing and and all this
largesse and all these these
ambitious programs
to to try to make things
better, making it much worse for
most people.
So I think
a lot of thinking needs to be done
about letting local people
create their own environments.
And it may be true that I
can't afford to live in Bel Air.
I'm so sorry somebody could write me
a big check so I can be a
$10 million down payment to buy one
of those homes.
Well, we'll say I heard the word
largesse, which I do want to push
back on, because I do think there
is an idea that there's this, you
know, largesse and there's all this
spending going on that's,
you know, all this this, this
welfare that's maybe making
things worse, but.
Fair. I'm not putting words in your
mouth, but largesse. But I think you
know that that I mean,
Karen Bass is proposing spending
$1.3 billion on homelessness
this coming fiscal year.
New York City spends $3 billion
a year on an enormous shelter system
that they have.
You know, general relief in L.A.
County is something like $200
a month, which is,
you know, for the most destitute
people in the county who don't have
other other income, you can
qualify for general relief.
That number hasn't really changed
since the eighties.
And just, you know, reporting on on
how is communities I mean,
the services are pretty thin.
If every unhoused person in L.A.
County tomorrow said, oh, I want to
go to a shelter bed right now, we
would have not nearly enough.
There's a huge shortage of all kinds
of affordable housing, just regular,
cheap apartments.
SRO is deeply subsidized
housing, Section eight vouchers.
I mean, you name it, there's there's
not enough of it.
So
I would say that if you
are vulnerable to falling into
homelessness or you've already
fallen in, the resources are
pretty scarce.
The outreach is pretty spotty
most of the time.
It's hard to get any any kind of
housing or even a shelter bed
if you want it.
You know, there I think
there's sometimes an idea that
there's all these empty beds and
people are just turning them down.
But that's not the case.
And many of the beds are spoken
for. And
so.
So that's one thing.
But but the other point about, you
know, L.A.
does, you know, single family homes
are part of what make L.A.
special. They're part of you know,
there's something to be said for
them. I mean, I don't think anybody
here would would dispute that.
You know, they are and I've heard
interesting, innovative proposals
just in my reporting over the years
from different people.
Like I remember an architect laying
out some plan about how, well, you
know, look, you could make
this incredibly dense corridor along
Wilshire Boulevard, for example, and
you could concentrate all this
density there, and then you could
still have single family,
neighborhood homes, etc., etc..
So I don't think I don't think it's
like about taking away
from people that
have single family homes or have
wealth now and and
giving to people, you know, to
others. I think that
just the way that L.A.
has allocated resources
over all these years is
is part of how we got here.
And there's there's not a lot of
resources for people who are at the
bottom of our economy.
So I covered the
down zoning movement in Westwood
in the San Fernando Valley in the
1970s.
And what precipitated that was when
people like Sam Gilbert,
the UCLA booster, built
20 storey office buildings right
next to single family homes.
And it was an atrocity.
And and that really
precipitated a massive downturn
in all across the city, which
now makes it very difficult to adapt
to the the influx of people
coming into Los Angeles because we
don't have border control at city
boundaries or state boundaries.
And so we
were going to the city is going to
get more dense,
can't help it.
But but it's got to do
it in a way that's less ham
handed and destructive as it was in
the 1970s.
Hi.
I wanted to ask about.
Ask a question.
Yes, Rebecca, I know you
just your opinions on why the
shelter situation is such a disaster
in the city and what can be done
to remedy that.
Hmm.
I mean, I think I think
actually COVID was in a moment that
like, sort of buried a lot of the
inequity that we hadn't really
talked about COVID as a moment
that like sort of shined a light on.
How messed up so many things are.
And just really quickly, like
we we were still out doing reporting
throughout much of it and we would
go to downtown L.A.
and the only people in downtown
were homeless people and
construction workers because
construction continued and
what was being built was
not for these people.
I bring that up to say that the
people we saw on our streets
were people in many
cases who had left the shelter
system because it had decompressed,
because the way we have built
shelters is to jam as many people
into a smaller place as possible.
And I think if there's like,
it's kind of hard way of thinking
about it, but like the outbreaks
and death that resulted, as are
because of how we've built shelters,
really was a wake up call for people
and resulted in much more
of awareness. Now to the idea that
we need people deserve
a room and not like
not a room at the Four Seasons, but
like a room. And I think that
that has been a very positive
development.
Why we got to the place
we got to, I think is
like a little bit about how we view
that. It's sort of like how we view
charity, a little bit of like we're
just going to give you what you get
and you like it.
And in efficiency, I mean, I mean,
these are limited budgets, the
places that run these shelters.
So I think that.
There's a real recognition that like
this is a market and this
is if you want the beds to be full,
you have to make it a somewhat
approachable place.
And if you make it a place where
your stuff is going to get stolen,
where you're going to get covered,
people are going to come into it.
And I mean, I've been inside the
Union rescue mission, been inside
the midnight mission. They're not
they're not fun. They're scary
places. And I,
I don't blame a person for not
wanting to go into that.
Yeah, I have.
I've lost count of how many people
that I've met that have said that
they'd rather be on the streets.
Didn't go into a shelter
for various reasons, some that
he just mentioned.
But a lot of times also, we're not
thinking about the different
experiences of people that have to
go into the shelters.
So like if you are a woman fleeing
domestic violence and you
have dealt with assault, you're not
going to feel comfortable maybe in
that environment. I have met dozens
of LGBTQ people, especially
trans and non-binary people, that
have experienced transphobia and
homophobia at shelters, because
just because you're unhoused and
living at a shelter doesn't mean you
can't be bigoted. You know what I
mean? So there are a lot of
different obstacles to being
in a shelter that people have to
overcome. And I really think that we
need to really rethink how we
approach shelters.
And like you said, we we often
think you should take we get what
we give you and be grateful for it.
But that's not the reality of how
most people live.
Most people want to be indoors,
but they want to have a door where
they can lock and have some privacy.
And that if that's what we need
to get people indoors and then
that's what they're going to have to
do to try to like really rethink
about how the rules
that surround the shelter system
operate in order to get more people
indoors.
So there is some good news that the
shelter system today is is really
a lot better than it was eight years
ago when I first started reporting.
It's far from perfect
or got many issues.
But back then
they the whole system was
pretty much oriented toward
nonprofits and charity
charitable organizations like the
Union Rescue Mission, like Catholic
Charities, Salvation Army
and Volunteers of America.
And they ran they would sort
of buy warehouses and
or they had a lot of shelters
in armories, which were, you know,
if you could picture like two
basketball courts and they would
have 100 hundred cots that would
go up in the wall every day.
And then at night they would come
down and people sleep in them.
And partly as a result of
media coverage and the
L.A. Alliance lawsuit, Judge Carter
has has squeezed more
shelters out of the city.
We now have, you know, Mayor
Garcetti built, I think, 30
shelters that are supposed to be
temporary, but they're going to be
there until they fall apart.
And there are now hundreds of
tiny home village, hundreds of tiny
homes in tiny home villages,
which is is far from perfect.
But it's you know,
we talk to people in them and
they say the biggest problem
is that they have to stay there for
months. It's supposed to be a
stepping stone into
a permanent situation and the
permit situation doesn't
materialize. So
sometimes after nine months
in an eight by eight shed,
people just get burned and they and
they leave.
But still the the
shelter capacity in in 2005.
Was one shelter bed for every
four people living on the street.
And I haven't studied the ratio
recently, but it's much better than
that now. There's there's much more
opportunity if that's your choice.
And it's not everybody's choice.
But if that's your choice, there's a
lot more opportunity.
Yeah. I think one way to make
a better too is just getting more
input from people who have been
through that system or experienced
homelessness or are experiencing it
now at the policy
level. You know, I mean, we
know from reporting, I mean,
you're all the time about issues in
shelters. And a lot of the issues
that that I hear about are that
people aren't getting enough
assistance in shelters.
I mean, they're unpleasant to be in
a lot of the time, but also they're
not getting consistent
case management.
There's no clear exit plan.
And then they're kind of languishing
in this place. That's not pleasant
to be in anyway, so why
stay? So I think I mean,
if policymakers got more input from
people who have gone through that
system, that would probably help
improve it.
It's a problem. I was at the
Alexandria tiny home village last
week talking to a woman who
had been living there for six
months and she finally got
approved for housing.
But while we were talking, we were
out in the lunch area and there was
a guy who was
harassing her like
a bee. I mean, he wasn't touching
her, but he was sort of just
hovering around her, talking to her
and trying to give her a cigaret.
And she just kept saying, going
away. So and
that was, I'm sure,
after dark, even worse things
happen.
So I think we'll do
a couple more questions.
Ah ah, I,
i. I can't I.
Hi.
My question is whether
or not there is a
resource center for people who are
on the street like to go to to
find out what their resources are.
Is there a collective of information
somewhere?
It's not is.
No.
I mean, it.
Seems like there should be.
There should be. And it's actually a
thing in San Francisco.
They do this thing when they
have these navigation centers.
It's much more common.
You can walk into some of the
nonprofits, but it's it's much more
difficult.
There's not a lot of options.
We have a few navigation
centers here.
That's the idea.
But.
I mean, if either of them over
400 square miles of Los Angeles,
it's it's not going to accessible.
You know, I think the biggest
resource right now is the county to
one one system.
And when you call there, they pretty
much refer you to a nonprofit.
And then you begin this process of
like calling a gazillion different
numbers to find a place that could
help you get into the coordinate
entry system so they can then start
to route you to the appropriate
services.
But I live in downtown, and
if you go down by City
Hall on Main Street, there's
actually what they have a homeless
help desk that literally
has been empty and boarded up since
I've been living down there.
And I always just think it's like
this is, you know, we're right here
in downtown. There's tents
everywhere.
Why is there no one staffed in this
this building? And it's boarded up.
So, yeah,
it's on Main Street.
It's like a good story.
We're all like, wow,
that's right.
It's going to do it.
For it's right by city hall.
You've seen it?
Yeah.
I have never noticed it.
We will do like, two more.
We'll call it a night.
What do you guys think are the
biggest obstacles to creating
more density in L.A.?
I mean, I was in opposition
and lack of imagination.
I agree.
Me too.
Yeah, I guess that sums it up also.
A lot of it's just hard to do.
Also, a lot of red tape.
Building in this city sucks.
And it and it doesn't
matter if you're building affordable
housing or market
rate housing.
We need more of everything.
And we've not made
that an easy process for people.
Yeah, I think we'll take one more
and then we'll.
Who's it going to be?
I guess just following that
question,
what role does like zoning and,
you know, the time that permits
take to build and
process developments?
What role does it play here?
You know, and obviously
I'm from the view that more
density is better, at least in
certain spots. You know, like I
mentioned, the corridors, like in
Wiltshire, we see that in a lot of
European countries, you know, France
and they're doing great.
You know, it brings economic
development, jobs and
just vibrant cities, you know,
walkable cities.
But I'm just curious, what can we do
different in terms of zoning and,
you know, changing that to make it
easier for developers of market
rate and affordable housing to be
able to build more?
Thank you.
We could probably have a whole
nother panel discussion.
I will say this was there's a
there's a lot of red tape around
building stuff in and there was sort
of like one of the lesser paid
attention to elements of Rick
Caruso's mayoral campaign because
he is a real estate developer and
he didn't talk about it much
publicly. But if you went on his
website, one of his things
that he wanted to do as mayor was
create a fee.
I think it was like a $15,000
fee or like something substantial
for filing
a sequel lawsuit, which is this
really wonky thing.
But but this is one thing that
snarls development in L.A.
is that often large
development projects will get held
up by litigation from people who
oppose those projects.
Under this particular environmental
law that California has,
which has this acronym, Sequoia,
and it's a law that's been
abused just to stop
development. It's, you know,
ostensibly on environmental grounds,
but it has been the basis of a lot
of anti-development lawsuits.
And anyway, that was one of his
proposals, make a big fee to try
to cut out the frivolous sequel
lawsuits. That's just one tiny thing
that was interesting.
I've been talking to developers
who are building affordable housing
with social impact money, with no
government funds, and
their biggest complaint is always
the city permitting process, not the
not the entitlement process, but
just getting their plans through
city hall, where they would go to
the fire department and get it
approved, and then they would go to
building and safety department and
they would require changes
that conflicted with what
the fire department told them.
And it would just be a
never ending battle.
And these
these developers got Karen Bass's
ear prior to the election, and
one of her first acts was to
order a streamline process
and the developers tell me it's
actually working and
the DWP is another obstacle
where they have to get electrical
electrical connections and that
could just take months and months.
And DWP has instituted a
fast track program
which they say is working also.
Purnell one I'll
be very quick. One of the sort
of most depressing or kind
of funny stories that Doug and I
heard during the COVID was a lot
of the permits require
a wet signature, like literally a
pen, and and the offices
were closed.
So you couldn't you could like
literally the head of the housing
authority couldn't sign checks and
sign off on projects and stuff.
I mean, so there's a whole
conversation you'd have about zoning
and the amount.
Not actually a lot has been built
under SB nine, for example.
It's just for however much
it's been debated, very few projects
have been utilized that.
So I don't know enough about
that to really speak to it.
But I think there's just this like
really soul crushing.
Process to get things
done that could be examined
much more closely and much more
creatively.
Wow. Wow.
So we'll leave it there.
I do want to say, just on a personal
congratulations note, I don't think
Claudia had it in her intro, but
Ben here was part of a team
at the L.A. Times that yesterday won
a Pulitzer Prize for
their reporting on the city hall
scandal,
the racist tapes that were leaked.
City Hall. So congratulations.
Thank you.
It's why he's the most casually
dressed of this panel.
It's like, I don't care.
But thank you all so much for
for coming out for this.
Really?
Yeah. This is fun.
Thank you for moderating you.
Absolutely.