Fix “Broken Windows” Or Fix a Broken System

In today’s Los Angeles Times, they highlight LAPD Chief William Bratton’s “Broken Windows” theory, and how it worked in New York City. Here's the article.

The idea is for the LAPD to concentrate on the “little things” in a neighborhood—petty crimes, graffiti, neighborhood blight, and “broken windows”—this would result, so the theory goes, in the reduction of major crime.

Homelessness is part of the “broken windows” theory. Reduce homelessness and crime is reduced, they say.

In 1994, Bratton is quoted, "We are going to flush them [homeless people] off the street in the same successful manner in which we flushed them out of the subway system." Unfortunately, not a politically correct statement.

But Los Angeles is not New York City. The geographical expanse of our community is great. And the concentration of homelessness in Los Angeles is significant. With 91,000 homeless people, Los Angeles’s numbers overwhelm any other American city in comparison.

There is an interesting theme in today’s article. In New York City, when the availability of affordable housing increases, the numbers of people living in shelters decrease. That makes sense. However, with so many more people on the streets of Los Angeles, we would have to shelter everyone before we could see the phenomenon of shelter numbers reducing.

In other words, if we increased affordable housing units today in Los Angeles, sure some people would leave shelters for permanent housing. But those still left out on the streets would just fill the empty beds.

On another note… Sheriff Lee Baca is entering the debate on downtown Los Angeles, homelessness, and mental health care. He has invited some of us to join him for a meeting on this subject tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 pm.