It’s been disappointing to see Gov. Gavin Newsom take a arduous line on homelessness by directing state businesses and departments to clear encampments on state-owned land, reminiscent of freeway embankments, and inspiring native governments to do the identical.
In the meantime Los Angeles metropolis and county leaders proceed to do the arduous however efficient work of reaching out to folks in encampments and getting them into short-term and everlasting housing even when it takes weeks or months to take action.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors final week additionally rejected any try to criminalize homelessness. In a rebuke to Newsom’s directive, it voted final week to affirm its place that nobody must be jailed merely for tenting outdoor.
Mayor Karen Bass’s Inside Secure program to maneuver folks out of encampments into motel and resort rooms briefly has made a measurable distinction within the measurement of avenue homelessness. In the newest rely, the variety of unsheltered homeless folks within the metropolis dropped 10.4 % whereas the quantity dwelling in shelters rose by 17.7%. And the supply of recent city-funded everlasting housing models contributed to the two.2% general lower in homelessness within the metropolis.
Are homeless folks nonetheless shooed off sidewalks by clean-ups and legislation enforcement? Positive. And that’s troubling. However Bass has denounced arresting homeless folks as a means out. San Francisco’s mayor is able to use it as a instrument.
Mayor London Breed has chosen to comply with Newsom’s instance and undertake a “very aggressive” clearing of encampments wherein police cite and transfer folks alongside in the event that they don’t take a proposal of shelter on the spot. This ignores the truth that there are 8,300 homeless folks in San Francisco, however the metropolis’s 3,600 shelter beds are almost at capability. Breed adopted that by ordering outreach employees to supply bus, prepare or aircraft tickets out of city to homeless people — if they’ve a connection to the vacation spot — earlier than providing any companies reminiscent of shelter. This appears much less in regards to the mayor aiding homeless folks than banishing them as she runs for reelection.
Backside line, nothing in San Francisco’s method or the governor’s govt order will scale back homelessness — and Newsom ought to know higher.
As he himself identified in his announcement final month, he has allotted $24 billion in state funds to assist cities and counties present companies and home their homeless residents. He created Venture Roomkey, this system that cities and counties used to maneuver weak homeless folks into empty resort and motel rooms throughout the COVID-19 pandemic utilizing federal emergency aid funds. He began the Homekey program that funds acquisition of housing for homeless folks. And he made $1.3 billion out there in federal funds by the Housing and Homelessness Incentive Program to encourage Medi-Cal healthcare suppliers to spend money on native homelessness packages.
But California has the most important variety of homeless folks within the nation. If there are nonetheless homeless folks right here after spending billions on interim and everlasting housing, it’s as a result of the issue is that massive and that intractable. Newsom’s order and Breed’s sweeps come after the latest Supreme Court docket resolution permitting Grants Go, Ore. to quote and arrest homeless folks dwelling exterior even when there isn’t a out there shelter. However these crackdowns supply solely the phantasm that homelessness will be resolved at specific websites by shifting folks alongside.
Housing is unaffordable, and it’s too tough and costly so as to add reasonably priced housing in cities, reminiscent of Los Angeles, that shield single-family zoning and restrict the place residences will be constructed. Mass incarceration has led to a whole bunch of individuals popping out of jails and prisons with out housing. Structural racism has made Black folks a disproportionate proportion of homeless populations throughout the nation. Even the 24% of homeless individuals who say they’re affected by a critical psychological sickness or the 27% who report substance abuse are, with uncommon exception, desperately poor. Most can’t get the assistance they want until they get housed first.
Homelessness is probably the most stark instance of wealth inequality within the nation. It’s been recommended that some Californians are simply uninterested in seeing it. They’ve “encampment fatigue.” Nicely, nobody has extra fatigue than the folks dwelling in encampments.
The answer is apparent — keep targeted on getting extra housing constructed, purchased or leased. This work of housing homeless folks is dear, and it doesn’t occur in a single day. Transferring folks inside can generally take weeks of outreach. But it surely works.
One other factor that has labored: Medi-Cal suppliers funding homeless companies. The County Homeless Initiative has acquired $114 million in funding from L.A. Care and Well being Web to assist the county’s grasp leasing program that gives residences to homeless folks. Medi-Cal healthcare suppliers are additionally venturing into low-income and homeless housing initiatives — and we hope this assist continues.
It’s encouraging that Los Angeles metropolis and county leaders seem to know what Newsom and San Francisco’s mayor appear to have forgotten: Merely pushing folks off a sidewalk has by no means diminished homelessness, and it received’t work now.
