How And Why Are Solutions For Homeless In Los Angeles Hampered?

Has the City Council of Los Angeles and its agencies not separated the issues surrounding people who appear to be living on the street from those who are actually living on the street without a shelter over their head? Instead has the Council addressed it all as homelessness, as if a single solution exists, for these two distinct groups?

People who live on the street, with makeshift protection from the elements, for the most part have an established site or area they return to habitually. They are known or recognized by local merchants, police, private agencies and maybe residents. They usually have no vehicle so their mobility is severely limited, especially if they have more belongings than can be carried or carted. Their income may be singly sourced from the government or subsidized by handouts. It is this group of people who are represented in the media, accurately, as homeless.

The other group mistaken as homeless may be disabled on a set income or seniors whose appearance and actions reflect a limited lifestyle now. Then others may be living in a group home with requirements for accountability or living in their car and have a “regular” job, but both may augment their income with unreported handouts. It is these latter two with the greatest potential, if willing, to be helped upward into success and a more hopeful lifestyle.

President Andrew Garfield said, “I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that I may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat.”

However, the bad publicity against the homeless, or those nearly homeless, is often a result of a criminal element conveniently aligning themselves as such. Whether they are trafficking opiates and other highly addictive drugs to a ready and actually fragile client base; or they are stealing from mail boxes, porches and unsuspecting businesses; or they are creating a false narrative for a solution; they are the source of much adversity and disruption in the community. They are foiling issues from being addressed and creating animosity rather than expanding a response by individuals offering charitable goodness.

President Garfield also said “There is no horizontal Stratification of society in this country like the rocks in the earth, that hold one class down below forevermore, and let another come to the surface to stay there forever. Our Stratification is like the ocean, where every individual drop is free to move, and where from the sternest depths of the mighty deep any drop may come up to glitter on the highest wave that rolls.”

The impetus for Proposition 13 was never to create a permanent holding down of one class (renters) of citizens. Yet with over 50 percent of Los Angeles residents now renting their home one has to wonder WHAT HAPPENED? Today’s antagonists of the initiative do not realize the ballot title was more descriptive: “People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation.” Additionally, the protection offered was for the state and communities to have a more generational and economically diverse demographic. The elderly would not be forced out of their home, new residents could afford to buy a home, as well as younger couples could stay in a familiar neighborhood and near family. Yet, somehow this has been undone.

Naïve voters have approved duplicitous bonds and the result is a city budget which is funded surreptitiously. Meanwhile, a horizontal economic stratification, as solid as rocks of the earth, has occurred in Los Angeles. A pool of developers profit twice; first from bonds funding construction of permanent housing for the homeless (possibly a bloated count), and then also the upheaval of entire neighborhoods at discounted land values to construct rental compounds for a growing population of workers with a very modest net income.

Perhaps the solution to stop a widening chasm between economic classes and the profiteering on retaining that chasm is to reduce the budget of Los Angeles. It would remove incentives for over taxed businesses to leave the area and in fact instead create an environment for employers to increase wages. It would then empower people to be able to step up and voluntarily fund solutions at a reduced cost of what the City Council enables.

Will the conclusions the FBI produces, in their investigation of developers and their path into the City permitting process, create a thorough reevaluation of the way business is conducted by and ethics of the Los Angeles City Council members? I hope so.

Meanwhile, the 12th District seat is up for election, on June 4. Each Council Member has 6.66 percent of the vote, out of 15 members. We think Brandon Saario will take seriously the City’s Code of Ethics oath, adopted by the City Council July 21, 1959 and will apply it to his duties with the City.