Location, Location, Location

A large barrier to resolving homelessness is the placement of housing and services. That’s why the federal government offered up unused military facilities for homeless housing.

The LA Times editorial board comments on a controversy in San Pedro related to property formerly used by the military. Here is the piece…

TO UNDERSTAND WHY HOMELESSNESS is such an intractable problem for Los Angeles, one need look no further than San Pedro. That's where more than two dozen acres of former military housing originally intended for homeless families are instead being sold for millions of dollars.

Like many of the best bits of beach-adjacent real estate left in Southern California, this property has a tangled legal history. For decades, it housed workers for the nearby Long Beach Naval Shipyard. When that base closed in the 1990s, the plan was to use many of the 545 housing units for the homeless, under a federal law requiring that the needs of the homeless be considered when the government disposes of surplus military land. Locals erupted in opposition, so a series of scaled-down proposals were considered.

Finally, in 2003, the city agreed to only a pittance of homeless housing on the site, over the loud objections and threatened lawsuits by advocacy groups such as Volunteers of America, or VOA, which had proposed building much more. The Department of Housing and Urban Development sided with VOA, a national faith-based charity that provides healthcare, housing and other services to the needy, and ripped up the city's agreement with the Navy.

The Navy then sold a 42-acre chunk to residential developer Robert Bisno for $88 million and gave 28 acres to VOA. The group said it would build 155 units of emergency and transitional family housing, something Los Angeles desperately needs.

All's well that ends well, right? Not quite.

Shortly after VOA acquired the rights to the land last May, it turned around and sold 19 acres to Bisno for $31.3 million — a tidy profit considering it received the property for free. As for the remaining nine acres, the Los Angeles Unified School District recently stopped by, interested in the site as a possible home for a school.

These deals may be unsavory, but the federal Base Closure Act includes a provision that allows homeless agencies to sell land they acquire from the military — as long as the money is used for other homeless services. VOA says the money from its sale is going into a trust fund that will be used to research "innovative solutions" for ending homelessness. The agency says it can do the most good this way.

It may well be right. But one of the most innovative and straightforward solutions for ending homelessness is the kind of housing that should have been built in San Pedro. The L.A. City Council — especially Councilwoman Janice Hahn, in whose district this property lies — can help VOA live up to its commitment by rezoning the remaining land for more multifamily housing. That would allow VOA to build as many family units there as possible.

The provision of the Base Closure Act requiring consideration of the needs of the homeless was a response to one of the great shames of our time: the estimated one in five homeless who are also veterans. Programs to assist the homeless, veterans and non-veterans alike, are planned for both Ft. Ord in Monterey and Treasure Island in San Francisco, a former naval station. This city's homeless deserve a second chance, too, in San Pedro.

Mentally Ill Homeless: From A Child’s Perspective

Here’s an interesting book. The author sent me a brief note and his link to the book:

I am an award-winning author of books for adults and children, including The Outsider,a memoir about my father's experiences with schizophrenia and homeless, which won two book awards. I hope you won't mind my sharing some good news. My children's picture book about the homeless mentally ill, Broken Beaks, has been chosen by the Washington Post's KidsPost as the book of the week:

"This short story, beautifully illustrated by Robert Ingpen, takes minutes to read. But its powerful message about people who are homeless and mentally ill -- or those who are simply different -- will linger with you for a long time."

--Washington Post Kids Post Book of the Week, May 14, 2006

Nathaniel Lachenmeyer

More Violence on Skid Row…

How much violence will it take, before level-headed leaders decide enough is enough?

The LA Times reports more of the same in “Skid Row”:

Two men were fatally stabbed on skid row Tuesday in what appeared to be separate and unrelated incidents.

Police believe that the first man, in his mid-40s, was stabbed in the chest near 6th Street and Towne Avenue in downtown Los Angeles about 5:30 p.m. He walked about a block west, to the corner of 6th and Crocker streets, before he fell to the ground.

About four hours later, a passenger exiting a bus near Main Street and Olympic Boulevard saw a man on the ground bleeding and called paramedics. The man, in his mid-30s, was taken to California Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Los Angeles Police Capt. Jodi Wakefield said a preliminary identification had been made of the first man but the second man wasn't carrying identification.

Last week, a 49-year-old woman was stomped to death on skid row, a case that officials said underscored the need to improve conditions in the district.

L.A. City Begins Its Permanent Supportive Housing Program

On May 23^rd, the L.A. City Council’s Housing, Community & Economic Development Committee will hear about the city’s Permanent Supportive Housing Program (PSHP).

This is the $50 million committed by Mayor Villaraigosa to build affordable housing linked with support services. This funding will produce around 300 much-needed housing units for homeless families and individuals.

The national trend today is to build permanent housing, in lieu of shelter, for the homeless. The thinking is that this is more cost-effective. Permanent Supportive Housing (or “Housing First”) becomes a successful model if on-site support services (mental health care, drug programs, etc.) are part of the housing.

Four agencies within Los Angeles are spearheading the city’s efforts: L.A. Housing Department, Community Redevelopment Agency, L.A. Dept of Water and Power, and Housing Authority of the City of L.A.

Here’s what the letter to the Mayor (dated May 5, 2006), from the four department/agency heads, says:

The PSHP will benefit all City residents by providing permanent housing for the homeless, improving the quality of life in neighborhoods, and saving tax paer dollars that now go to managing the homeless problem rather than addressing it…

Through our work on the PSHP, our four departments have set an example for the kind of coordination that is critical to our City. The challenges we face will only be remedied if City departments come together to share their expertise, energies and resources. On the issue of homelessness, we have done just that.

Nearly Two of Every Ten People In Los Angeles County Are Poor

No wonder why our County has such high numbers of people struggling with homelessness… When 20% of our population are battling poverty, it’s a sad fact that almost 1% of our population are homeless.

Median income is reducing, while cost of housing and other living expenses are soaring. People can’t afford to live in our community—and we are not talking Beverly Hills, here. We are talking about the whole County of Los Angeles.

The Public Policy Institute of California recently published a study on poverty in California that revealed these sad facts.

The Institute For The Study of Homelessness and Poverty published some of their selected findings:

· 16.1% of Californians lived in poverty in 2004 using the adjusted poverty measure, compared to the official rate of 13.3%.

· The adjusted poverty rate for LA County was 18%, compared to 15% under the official rate.

· The 2004 median income (adjusted for inflation) for the poorest ten percent decreased 12% since 1969.

· Poor California households with a full time worker increased from 12% to 31% from 1969 to 2004.

· The 2004 median income (adjusted for inflation) for the richest ten percent increased 59% since 1969.

· The adjusted poverty rate for California seniors was 14% compared to the official rate of 9%.

LA Times Blasts City Council’s Moratorium on Residential Conversions

Here is what the Times editorial board had to say about the moratorium:

FOR DECADES, CITY HALL has been trying desperately to woo more real estate developers to downtown Los Angeles, offering tax breaks and other incentives in the hopes of replenishing the decayed historic core with a new residential population of urban pioneers. Now that the long-promised revitalization is finally gathering steam, local politicians are trying to nip success in the bud by shifting their own shortcomings onto private citizens who have the nerve to want to participate in the boom.

Last week, the City Council approved a misguided one-year moratorium, with an option of a second year, on the conversion or demolition of low-cost residential hotels across the city. The move will have the biggest impact downtown, where a growing number of the area's 250 hotels are being transformed into higher-rent loft apartments and even commercial space. The measure was spearheaded by Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes skid row, because she is concerned that many poor residents who live in the hotels will have nowhere to go once the buildings are sold. Even if the diagnosis is right, the cure is dead wrong.

According to estimates, the number of available low-income units downtown has fallen by almost 10% in the last decade, and an additional 2,000 are up for conversion. Assuming that it's a good idea to keep a cluster of run-down residential hotels near a permanent homeless population, the city has two basic options: build the housing itself, or offer incentives to builders. Instead, it chose a third way — forcing private developers to deal with the region's affordable housing crunch by preventing them from freely managing their own property.

As real estate values have climbed into la-la land, and the ranks of the working poor and just plain poor have grown, city officials have made repeated noise about building as many as 5,000 units of affordable housing a year. Instead, they built only a fraction of that. The result is that people across the region are having a harder time finding low-cost housing.

It will take a long time for the city to make up for lost time. A good beginning could be Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposed $1-billion housing bond — which could be on the ballot in November — to pay for thousands of heavily subsidized apartments. Or the city could follow the lead of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and save the buildings by offering to take over and drastically improve the day-to-day management of worn-down residence hotels. There are other solutions out there, but making a long-dormant property market less liquid isn't one of them.