Down On Mean Streets

What is a mean city? According to homeless advocates from the National Coalition For The Homeless, it is when city’s “criminalize” homelessness. Here's the article. That means they ban panhandling, sleeping on the streets, etc.

Los Angeles is the 18th meanest city in America, according to this study. Santa Monica, just west of L.A. breaks the top ten, by being the 9th meanest city.

I’ve stated many times that there needs to be a balance between providing enough services and housing in a community, while allowing the community to keep its streets safe and healthy.

We should not be allowing anyone to live on our streets. That’s a given. So when we provide enough services and housing, our community should have the right to ban sleeping on the streets. People—homeless or not—should not have the right to sleep on the streets. It is too dangerous. Violence and health risks can occur.

The big question is this… should cities have to wait until they provide enough services and housing for the homeless before they can enforce ordinances that affect the homeless?

Why not a progressive approach? If there are open beds in the system at a given time of the day, ordinances can be enforced. If the beds/services are all full, ordinances cannot be imposed.

We are all stuck in a funk… we all have the same goal—end homelessness—but we disagree on how to do it. So we are stuck not being able to keep our streets clean, and not being able to house all the people on the streets.

Some—out-of-the-box—thinking needs to prevail…

Beating Trend: From Los Angeles To Florida

Downtown Central City East Blogger reports on another beating of a homeless person. This time in Florida by a couple of young men. Here is the link.

Los Angeles already experienced this sick behavior in downtown Los Angeles when two men nearly beat a homeless man to death.

I certainly hope this is not becoming a national trend.

L.A. Mayor: “L.A. is homelessness capital of America”

Many news outlets throughout the country and the world covered the Mayor’s news conference yesterday, when he announced L.A.’s homeless count. He said Los Angeles is the “homelessness capital of the United States.”

Is this news? Not really. We all know that our great city is inundated with people living on our streets.

Perhaps the rest of the country is finally realizing the extent of our problem.

Here is a few of over 200 outlets that covered this:

Kansas City Channel 9
Palm Springs Channel 2
San Jose Mercury News
Los Angeles Daily News
United Kingdom News
Brisbane, Australia

Housing California Looking To Add Affordable Housing To Infrastructure Bond

Housing California, a state-wide housing coalition, is looking for people to write letters in support of adding affordable housing to the Governor’s proposed Infrastructure Bond.

The Governor is proposing a $222 Billion bond to fund schools, highways, and levees. Unfortunately, affordable housing is not included.

If you want to write a letter in support of more housing, you can access Housing California’s website here.

The Sprawl of L.A. Matches The Sprawl of Homelessness

The L.A. County Homeless Count will be officially released today. With access to the study early, the Los Angeles Times published some of the results this morning. Here's the article.

The main result… homelessness is spread throughout the county of Los Angeles, and is not just concentrated in downtown.

Another result… 78% of the homeless that were surveyed said they were already living in the area before they became homeless--dispelling the myth that people are coming to L.A. from other parts of the country.

The count was done a year ago when they counted homeless people in 500 census tracts. Then they used a formula to estimate the number in the other 1,300 tracts.

Another interesting result… the total number of homeless in the county that was announced at 91,000 last July, has been revised to 88,000.

When The Faith Community Practices What They Preach

Faith, Denver-style, is seeking to make a difference in reducing homelessness in that Colorado city. Here's an article about it.

The Mayor of Denver challenged each congregation or place of worship to “adopt” at least one homeless family. The hope is that the faith community will help mentor these families, and provide rental assistance.

There are 10,000 homeless people in Denver, and 43 percent women and children. Faith congregations were asked to sign a commitment card providing up to $1,200 for rental assistance and other help.

Homeless advocates say that 75 to 80 percent of the families who go through this mentoring program are able to access and maintain permanent housing.

With the thousands and thousands of faith communities in the Los Angeles region, clearly this major community stake holder could have a tremendous impact in reducing the number of homeless in Los Angeles.

Wouldn’t it be something if leaders from the myriad of faith communities in Los Angeles stood side by side to challenge their congregations and places of worship to sign commitment cards to help the homeless?

Helping those who are hurting in our community is God’s work…

Feeding Hungry American Kids Has Doubled since 1990

The Institute For The Study of Homelessness and Poverty has posted a recent study on the School Breakfast program. You know, the program that feeds American children who would typically go to school hungry without this free hot breakfast served in the school cafeteria.

It’s a great program to ensure that our children have enough nutrition in their stomachs so that they can study hard and gain an education that will take them beyond poverty. Here's the study in a PDF file.

The study shows that the number of hungry children in this program has doubled since the 1989-1990 school year. There were 855,102 California kids that used this program last school year.

It’s clear that if these children are not fed and helped with an education, they could very well become the next generation of homeless.

The big question is… why has the number of hungry kids in our country doubled?

Both L.A. Mayor and City Council President Agree On Agenda

The Los Angeles Times reports today that newly City Council-elected President Eric Garcetti and Mayor Villaraigosa sat down in a Hollywood restaurant last week to discuss priorities and agenda. Here's the article.

High on both of their agendas is homelessness.

I’m not surprised. Councilmember Garcetti has been an advocate for solving homelessness in his Hollywood area ever since he was elected. He has trumpeted the PATH Mall and Project Y!MBY (Yes! In My Backyard) for years. He has also committed to supporting more affordable housing.

The stars (or at least our local politicians) seem to be lining up in resolving homelessness in Los Angeles. Let’s hope their political attention spans will stay focused enough to really make a dent in reducing homelessness in our city and county.