Four More Communities Accused of “Dumping” Homeless People Into Downtown Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Times today, reports that four other local cities have allegedly sent their homeless people into downtown Los Angeles. These cities include: Burbank, Pasadena, El Monte, and El Segundo. These allegations are made by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department. (Here is the article.)

Yesterday, it was reported that the commander of the LAPD central division saw two L.A. County Sheriff’s officers dropping off a homeless man into downtown Los Angeles. The Sheriff’s department continues to deny that they were intentionally “dumping” homeless people into downtown.

The city officials from Pasadena, El Monte, and El Segundo said they had no knowledge of these new allegations. They say that their departments have strict bans against such practices. Officials from Burbank declined comment.

Captain Smith, of the downtown LAPD central division is quoted: "The bottom line is," Smith said, "the service providers in downtown and the skid row area cannot accommodate all the intoxicated, drug-addicted and homeless individuals from all over the county.

"And all you have to do is walk down there … to know that there is not enough room at the inn for the whole county."

Downtown Los Angeles: The Leaf Blower Mentality?

The Los Angeles Times reports today that a LAPD Central Division captain saw firsthand how two L.A. County Sheriff’s officers were “dumping” a homeless person onto downtown Skidrow. (Here is the LA Times article.)

The article begins: “For decades, it's been an enduring urban tale about downtown Los Angeles, often talked about but never proved: Police departments wanting to get rid of society's lost and neglected — the homeless, mentally ill and criminals — simply drove through downtown and dumped them in skid row.

“But on Tuesday, evidence landed in the lap of the person who most needed it: Capt. Andrew Smith, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Division.

“The cruiser, he said, turned south on San Pedro, then west on 7th Street to San Julian Street. There, Smith watched in disbelief as two deputies ‘pulled over, took a guy in handcuffs out of the car. They took off the cuffs and handed him a bag,’ Smith said.”

The Sheriff’s department denies “dumping” the man, but instead wanted to help him access services at one of the downtown missions.

I have a chapter of this homeless phenomenon in my book. I titled this chapter, “The Leaf Blower Mentality.” Cities across Los Angeles County and across the country have the same story—“That other city is sending their homeless to us…”

I write: “Communities are resorting to a leaf blower mentality. They put their masks on to cover the taste and smells of homelessness, pack their mechanical blowers on their backs, crank up the engines of change, and blow these people away, into other communities, into other states. Like people are homeless leaves fallen from trees, scattered on the streets, annoying the community.”
The leaf blower mentality is a tempting solution. Rather than fund enough shelter beds, supportive services, and permanent housing for the homeless in your community, simply give them one-way bus tickets, or a free ride from the local law enforcement to another community.

Unfortunately, scattering people across the county or across the country is not the solution.

The story for today is not whether the Sheriff’s department is dumping people into Skid Row or not, the story is when will we seriously start providing long-term and permanent solutions to homelessness in our community. Short-term band-aid approaches do not work.

Community Celebrates PATH’s Grand Opening of Its Hollywood Interim Housing Center

A three year old vision for providing housing for people who live on the streets of Hollywood has become a reality. A new 65-bed interim housing program is up and running near the 101 Freeway and Sunset Boulevard.

Today, community members celebrated this opening. Speaking at the opening were: Los Angeles City Councilmembers Eric Garcetti and Tom LaBonge, Assemblyperson Paul Koretz, and West Hollywood Mayor Abbe Land.

Although PATH ‘s official grand opening was today, the facility actually started helping Hollywood’s homeless last June. Instead of announcing the opening to the homeless service provider community, PATH’s street outreach teams went to the streets of greater Hollywood and filled the center with people who were literally sleeping on the streets. Since June, 100 homeless people from the Hollywood community have been helped off the streets.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Eric Garcetti also kicked off Project Y!MBY, a local community homeless initiative in greater Hollywood that will focus its homeless service resources to specifically reduce homelessness on the streets. (I’ll describe this more later.)

Will Hurricane Effort’s Wipe Away Local Charity Support?

The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a national trade paper for charity fundraising, reports that as of Monday one billion dollars of corporate and private funds have been donated for the Hurricane Katrina efforts. It is an amazing testament to the generosity of the people of our country.

However, USA Today has another take on this. (Here's the article.) In an article published yesterday they wrote, “Charities that feed and clothe the needy year-round are concerned that they will see a drop in contributions as Americans donate at a record pace to relief efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.”

Of course, this is not new. Local charitable giving went down after the 9/11 attacks and even after the Asian Tsunami.

This is different, however, because not only are donations going down, but also the need for services is increasing. As evacuees are moved to cities throughout the country, those cities’ existing resources are being stretched.

Can Hospitals Help Solve Homelessness?

The Santa Monica Daily Press recently published an article about how hospitals can help with our homeless crisis. (See page 6 of this article.) The concept is simple:

Help hospitals assess how much they are spending each year on un-paid emergency room visits by the region’s homeless population, and the hospitals might be willing to help pay for preventative homeless services.

Clearly, people living on the streets do not have health insurance, and are more susceptible to getting sick. Hospitals cannot just kick people out of their facilities because they are poor, so many times they have to foot the bill.

The unknown in this simple logic is whether hospital executives would truly believe that donating money for homeless services would really reduce the homeless population enough that homeless people would no longer resort to entering their emergency rooms.

It will be interesting to see how hospitals respond…

MTV Visits PATH To Talk About Homelessness and Hurricane Katrina

Yesterday afternoon, I spent two hours being interviewed by a film crew consisting of current and former MTV staff members. They are putting together a piece for MTV and Current TV (Al Gore’s recent media endeavor) that deals with how Katrina has and will affect homeless services in Los Angeles and the country. I talked about the op-ed piece that is posted on this blog.

They plan to do some other shots and interviews at PATH in the coming weeks.

We talked about how Katrina has affected existing resources—Section 8 certificates, emergencies beds, services, and even donations.

There is an interesting article on Common Dreams News Center about this. (Link to full article.) Here is a quote:

“Most Americans will have given their fill of tax exempted donations to charities this year for the Katrina survivors. But while hundreds of thousands of the hurricane survivors have been displaced, how many of us think of the already-homeless in the US? In Los Angeles County alone there are almost 100,000 homeless people, most of whom rarely merit the attention of the media and the public. Local non-profits who provide services for the homeless will be hard hit this year with most donations being diverted to hurricane relief, and with "donor fatigue" setting in earlier than usual. Many non-profits offer services that the government fails to provide. Barely recovering from the impact of last year's Tsunami donation frenzy, non-profits across the country who provide a safety-net for millions, will be denied grants, will cancel fundraisers, will accept losses in their direct mail campaigns, and will even have to close their doors.”