Suburbs Respond To Prisoner Release Program: No Way!

On Tuesday, state and local officials proposed that inmates released from the downtown Twin Towers Correctional Facility (county jail) should be sent to the community from which they were arrested.

In other words, if you were arrested in Long Beach for public intoxication, when you are released, you should be sent back to Long Beach. Too many people are released in downtown Los Angeles, and then end up homeless on Skid Row.

Well, the local suburbs have responded… and quickly… Here are some of their responses:

Calabasas Mayor: "This is a plan for balkanization of the region, with every city trying to do the same thing without any expertise and the advantage of a concentration of resources," he said. "We would never fight a common war city by city. But that is what this plan would have us do."

West Covina Councilmember: "They shouldn't go back to where they were arrested unless they live there."

Montebello Mayor: "I understand not leaving a person in downtown, where there's already a serious problem. But then again, if you are going to simply transport the problem to another community, I am not sure that would be the kind of solution folks in the local cities would approve of."

Pasadena Mayor: "Returning people from downtown seems equitable, but it does require that resources are available to tackle the issue these people have. Right now, there is a concentration of resources downtown. A redistribution of resources is not going to be easy to achieve."

A regional approach is obviously the solution—spread out the services and housing for homeless throughout the County. Especially when homelessness occurs all over. The difficulty is NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard!).

What bedroom community in L.A. County is going to welcome with open arms, a 100-bed homeless shelter. Overcome this reluctance, and a regional approach is the proper solution…

Skid Row: An Interesting Attraction For Celebrities

L.A. Times columnist, Patt Morrison, scribes an interesting column for Thanksgiving today. Here's the LA Times column. Here is the beginning of it:
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THE PERILS of skid row in Los Angeles can be stated in too-muches and too-fews: too much violence, too much illness of mind and body, too much crime and dirt and hunger and noise. And too few decent beds and good meals; too few safe, clean refuges, even too few private places to go to the toilet.

And then there's one day in particular, when a certain kind of too-muchness hits the red-alert level. That day is today, Thanksgiving Day. The danger is an excess of celebrities and the news media that swarm in their wake.

Skid row's missions and shelters don't see a news crew for months on end. And then comes Thanksgiving, when their poor patrons can get their retinas burned out from camera-light candlepower as paparazzi trail the celebrity swarm "giving back" and dispensing hot food to the down and out.

A few years ago, a slightly panicky staffer at one mission called over the walkie-talkie: "I think we've got too many celebrities in the cooking area." In Hollywood? Is there any such thing?

If you watch the news accounts carefully, you'll see the beneficiaries of all this charity appear none too keen on being made into human props.

How To Deal With Skid Row? Crack Down On Drug Dealers…

City and State officials are cranking up their efforts to clean up Skid Row. The L.A. Times article today states that a number of new measures will be implemented to deal with the criminal behavior on Skid Row. Here's the article.

This includes:

- Setting up video surveillance on the streets. This anti-crime measure is similar to what they have done successfully in Hollywood and MacArthur Park.
- Increasing the number of undercover detectives and uniformed patrol officers on the streets.
- And proposing a state law that mandates inmates released from the county jail system be returned to the communities where they were arrested.

Literally, one fifth of all city-wide drug arrests occur on the streets of Skid Row.

L.A. City Council Delays Mayoral Appointee to LAHSA Commission

Attorney Doug Mirell, who helped the ACLU of Southern California sue the city over its treatment of homeless residents is having a hard time getting approved by the Los Angeles City Council to be on the LAHSA Commission. At today’s vote, he was one vote shy of approval.

That means they will be re-considering his appointment to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority commission next Tuesday. The four councilmembers who voted against him were: Jan Perry, Greig Smith, Bernard Parks, and Dennis Zine.

Another mayoral nominee, Rebecca Avila who serves on the ACLU board, was approved.

ACLU Executive Director, Ramona Ripston, is up for approval next week, as well.

Release of Local Homeless Numbers Delayed

We've been told by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority that the local homeless numbers will not be released until sometime in December.

The homeless count for Los Angeles County was done in early 2005. The overall number was released in June 2005.

Many local cities are waiting for the number of homeless in their own communities. That's what this local homeless number will provide.

This announcement was supposed to be announced in mid-November.

Stay tuned for more info...

$100,000 Toilets For the Homeless—And It’s Not The Pentagon Buying Them

Yes, that’s correct… Some cities are buying $100,000 high-tech toilets that clean themselves so that those who are “residentially impaired” (the homeless) have a place to go—literally.

The current city to mull over the dilemma of where should people living on the streets go when they need to use the bathroom… is San Antonio, Texas. Other cities who are dealing with this problem are: Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, and, you guessed it… Los Angeles. Here's an article about them.

But instead of buying these high tech bathrooms, Los Angeles opted for regular old portable toilets. They are lined up on Skid Row.

Are they working? Or are they places for drug dealing and prostitution?

I would say that we should be helping those on the streets by providing safe and secure places to use the bathroom. But I would suggest we place these toilets on the property of local homeless agencies—so that they can be protected and managed by agency security staff.

Having these toilets unregulated on the tough streets of Skid Row doesn’t make sense. For the small percentage of people on the streets who prefer crime over proper behavior… these toilets are too much of a temptation to be used for criminal activity.

But instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water—we certainly should provide places for people to use the restroom. But let’s provide them in places that are safe and secure.

$100,000 high-tech toilets for the homeless? Come on… We could be using that money to provide permanent housing…

Editorial On L.A. Community Cooperation

Bob Erlenbusch, the Director of the L.A. Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, has an editorial published in the L.A. Daily News.

Here it is:
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Typically, most people living in Los Angeles only encounter Skid Row if they take a wrong turn off the freeway. Confronted with cardboard lean-tos, sidewalks blackened with human waste and garbage, and mental illness and addiction, Angelenos roll their windows up and speed from the despair and destitution.

But now Skid Row is in the headlines. And Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has promised to address "The Row."

Skid Row is a tragic symbol of our city's policy of abandonment, as well as surrounding communities' policies of abdication. By putting few, if any, resources of their own into homeless services and affordable housing, police squad cars became the social-service program of many small cities - transporting their homeless downtown, dropping them off in hopes of finding services, and more often leaving them to drown in desperation.

In fact, the small area of Skid Row represents only 15 percent of the homeless population of Los Angeles County. The remaining 85 percent are far more invisible: standing aimlessly on corners, hiding under freeways, sleeping in cars in every corner of the county. We have the disgraceful distinction as the homeless capital of the United States, with 90,000 people homeless on any given night.

The recently completed homeless census by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority estimates that 35 percent have struggled on the streets for more than a year, suffering mental-health crises and addictions. Another 25 percent are estimated to be veterans, and the number of homeless families with children is growing at an alarming pace. Between the Los Angeles city and county school districts, there are more than 25,000 homeless students from kindergarten to the 12th grade.

Half of the entire homeless population in Los Angeles is African-American. Nearly 60 percent of homeless people say they arrived on the streets from three overloaded and broken institutions: jails, foster care and hospitals. People are discharged to the streets in a fragile state of mental, physical and emotional health, with no money and, because of decades of systemic failures, nowhere to call home.

We are at a public-policy crossroads. We can either continue to house homeless people in jail, psychiatric units and hospitals at a cost of $40,000 a year to taxpayers, or take that same amount and invest in affordable housing, including permanent housing with services on-site. The city, county and surrounding communities can persist with policies that shuffle the homeless from one community to another, or we can move together in a regional and comprehensive approach to end homelessness for all.

It is this simple: The cities have the housing and the county has the services. Yet they must be fully coordinated and integrated, generously funded, and regional in approach with all communities doing their fair share to end homelessness.

Villaraigosa's proposal is part of the equation. But it's not nearly enough to address our regional crisis. The other 87 cities in L.A. County must also step up. A few - Santa Monica, Long Beach, Pasadena - have already done so, but this long-overdue effort to end homelessness will require appropriate action from each and every city in the county.

Bringing all of Los Angeles home will require an array of housing options, with a focus on permanent housing and support services. Our health and welfare systems will need to be integrated and accessible to homeless people, and we will have to make sure that no one - not a single mentally ill veteran, battered wife or foster child - is ever discharged to the streets.

Yes, all of this costs money, so regionally we will need to do a much better job at advocating in unison for our fair share of resources from state and federal governments. With those systems in place, homelessness can once again be a thing of the past.

Local L.A. Homeless Count Numbers To Be Announced Today

At a special Westside meeting last Friday, a group of political representatives and service providers were told that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority will be announcing their local city numbers today.

Last summer the regional numbers were released, when it was announced that there were 91,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. Here's an op-ed piece I wrote for the LA Times about this regional count.

This new announcement will show the numbers by census tract and cities.

Since the Friday’s group promised we would not reveal some of the data that will be announced today, let me just say that today’s announcement will show that homelessness is certainly region-wide. It is not just a downtown L.A. or Santa Monica problem.

Local cities in the county that might deny they have homelessness in their communities might be surprised when these numbers come out.