How to LA: LA Has Been Home to the Homelessness Crisis for Years. Now What? Episode 40

Brian De Los Santos  00:00

Hey y'all. I hope the holiday break treated you nicely, [music in] but we're back to reality. We already know who our next mayor is gonna be. She starts pretty soon. And when she does, all eyes will be on how she's gonna handle one crucial issue.

00:16

[audio clip] I hate to see people on the street suffer and...

00:19

[audio clip] [street ambi] Homelessness in our city is a huge issue that needs to be addressed.

00:23

[audio clip] My rent's going up and landlord's doing things that they're not supposed to raise the rent during the COVID, but my landlord did anyway.

00:29

[audio clip] Building a big gate around Echo Park Lake is not the way that I want to live and like see my neighborhood.

Brian De Los Santos  00:37

I'm Brian De Los Santos and this is How to LA, the podcast where we help you navigate complicated issues affecting this city. Karen Bass will be sworn in on December 12th, and she says she has a plan.

Karen Bass  00:50

[audio clip] We are definitely going to identify some of the most challenging encampments and make sure that we can get those people housed. Declaring a state of emergency really allows us to rally, bring together the city agencies, and look at especially city-owned land, and fast track things.

Brian De Los Santos  01:08

But we know from talking to experts in the past and from what we see each day on the streets, the homelessness crisis is complicated. I sort of feel like I don't even know what elected officials could or should be doing to effect change. Maybe you feel the same way. The problem seems straight up overwhelming. [music fades out]

Brian De Los Santos  01:27

[street ambi] So we're in Mar Vista/Culver City area, and this is a sizable encampment that is on Venice Boulevard by the 405 overpass. This is like a scene of almost every other freeway overpass you see in LA, where there are tents, people have belongings, or just folks having their life on the street. It paints a picture of the crisis here in LA.

Carlos Santiago  01:56

[street ambi] When you see a lot of homeless with trashes and everything- Would you like to come?

Brian De Los Santos  02:02

This is Carlos Santiago. He's the owner of a taco truck on Venice Boulevard. And every day when he gets to work, he's got a lot to clean up.

Carlos Santiago  02:11

We have a lot of trashes everywhere. Even poop everywhere. So I have to clean it. Yeah, I have to wash it and then you know. Yeah, seriously.

Brian De Los Santos  02:21

So this encampment, it's basically taking up all the sidewalk under the overpass. There's not much room to walk through. They also have porta potties here and it seems like a hand wash station as well.

Sebastian Arias  02:34

I keep the bathrooms clean, as clean as I can.

Brian De Los Santos  02:37

That's Sebastian Arias. He's an ambassador for Pit Stop. They provide toilets, hand wash stations, and needle receptacles at encampments all around LA.

Sebastian Arias  02:45

I help everyone, every way I can. If someone's overdosing, I help them with that. If people have donations, I facilitate that as well. Some people don't feel very safe when they're walking through, so I have to escort them.

Brian De Los Santos  03:00

He has Narcan on hand and is also ready to provide CPR if needed.

Sebastian Arias  03:04

[traffic sounds] And I just administer and do CPR.

Brian De Los Santos  03:07

Just because it's you, so you're already working here like, okay, I might as well, if I know [Sebastian: Yeah.] something... That's awesome.

Sebastian Arias  03:12

You know, you get used to it at some point. I mean, it's still, it's still terrible.

Brian De Los Santos  03:16

[music in] This was one Sunday afternoon in Mar Vista, but scenes like this are playing out all over LA. People from all over the city want change. The question is how. What are the best solutions right now? For answers, we talked to some of LA's experts on the issue to better understand how this new administration should and can step in.

Gary Painter  03:42

Well, what I hope that we hear from this administration is a vision of how to move forward in the short run to address [music out] the crisis on the streets. And then in the long run to make sure that we have enough housing built so that low and moderate income households are not at risk of becoming homeless.

Brian De Los Santos  03:57

This is Gary Painter. He's back with us to give us the big picture on what Karen Bass's administration can address first.

Gary Painter  04:03

I'm a professor in the Sol Price School of Public Policy, and I'm the director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute. I would anticipate that we'll see the new mayor working pretty closely with the various department heads within the city and then reaching out to partner agencies in the county to make sure that we have a coordinated effort to address the homelessness crisis.

Brian De Los Santos  04:27

Yeah, last time, we were talking about some of the problems that the mayor-elect's gonna inherit. What are some of those main obstacles you foresee with Karen Bass's agenda with homelessness?

Gary Painter  04:38

In the short term, there have been recent ordinances passed by the city council, 4118 in particular, that outlaws where people can sleep if they're living on the streets. And I know that this has been an ordinance that doesn't actually address homelessness, but instead, kind of where residents of Los Angeles actually see homelessness. The mayor is really going to have to work with the City Council to make sure that there aren't ordinances passed that are just kind of putting band aids on issues around where people are allowed to, or not allowed to sleep.

Brian De Los Santos  04:50

And Gary, I want to go back real quick to 4118. Can you spell it out for us? Like, what's the pros and cons of what you've been hearing?

Gary Painter  05:20

I think from the public's perspective, it makes sense that there are some places that encampments should not be and, and cannot be, because it does actually impede the public's well-being. And so I think the, the recognition that something has to be done is universally believed. But I think the policy options that we've seen to date are simply: This is okay for an encampment. This place is not okay for an encampment. What we really need to do is to have the same urgency we had during the pandemic, which was, we actually need to bring people inside as quick as possible because people are at risk of dying on the streets.

Brian De Los Santos  05:58

I think there's like opinions of [laughs] of all sorts, obviously. But the, the thought about bringing people inside, because some people have said it's inhumane- Can you talk about why that strategy's maybe the better one?

Gary Painter  06:12

If we're thinking about every single person who currently is sleeping on the streets either in tents or unsheltered completely, that there is going to be a few people who prefer that. But I think that what's most important to recognize is that they might prefer that way of sleeping compared to the alternatives that have been offered to them. [Brian: Mmm.] And so in many cases, people don't want to stay in a congregate shelter because of trauma they may have experienced previously. And so for them, an offer coming inside to a congregate shelter is not attractive compared to their own tent outside.

Brian De Los Santos  06:52

People who experience homelessness, they're not a monolith in, of how they come into this experience, right? Um, [Gary: Absolutely.] whether it is housing insecurity, it is mental health. Can you break that down for us?

Gary Painter  07:02

Of people who are experiencing homelessness for the first time, and they've been homeless less than a year, 59% of single people are coming to homelessness simply because of economic insecurity. They can't pay the rent. But once someone's been on the street, what data show, people start to rapidly experience deterioration in health. In addition, people experience assault, and the rate of acquiring substance abuse disorders living on the streets is actually pretty rapid. And so what we see then, is that that population roughly doubles the incidence of having a mental health condition, a substance abuse disorder, etc. And so then, if people have lived on the streets for more than a year, they're going to need many more support services when they do come inside.

Brian De Los Santos  07:52

If you were to become mayor, in this era of Los Angeles, what's the first thing you would do?

Gary Painter  07:56

Declare a crisis, um, in the same way that we would have, you know, if we had an earthquake, we would have a crisis. So we would ask, you know, for disaster assistance, if you will. And what's useful about that approach is that you recognize that you have to rapidly coordinate resources to make sure that people have a place to live. And then number two, I would simply, you know, kind of come together and, and with my city council, my planning department, my department heads, especially in housing and, and figure out, how can we make sure that we build housing more rapidly that can be rented to our low and moderate income households?

Brian De Los Santos  08:37

[music in] Alright, y'all. So that's an expert, academic perspective from USC's, Gary Painter. But we also wanted to check in with the folks on the ground, those who work closely with unhoused people, or have been unhoused themselves. We're curious- Do they have faith in the new administration to actually do those things? We spoke to Theo Henderson. He's a community activist and host of the podcast, We the Unhoused, and he's pretty skeptical. [music out]

Theo Henderson  09:04

I was living out on the streets myself for eight years, and I have lived experience being unhoused. The issue is, because they don't believe unhoused people are human beings, they also don't believe unhoused people are part of the community. That's the problem.

Brian De Los Santos  09:18

If you could explain what would be a first step to getting people off the street as you, a person who's on the ground, what would turn the page to start helping people who are experiencing homelessness?

Theo Henderson  09:31

We're gonna to have to really face the fact that we've been held hostage by lots of people that distain the poor and have created policies that have demonized and criminalized these unhoused. And we have to be honest with it. We have to meet unhoused people where they are. But the reality is when you're in traumatic situations or have uh, various types of illnesses, or dealing with the demons of living out on the street, you're not going to be neat and proper and perfect at all times. You're going to be reflective of the harshness and the dystopian reality that goes on out in the street.

Brian De Los Santos  10:07

Can you explain to me what it means to meet unhoused people where they're at?

Theo Henderson  10:11

So one is: using substances. We don't make harmful videos, calling them zombies and things like that. We meet them where they are at the harm reduction site. Training, you know, getting them well, getting supportive housing. If they have relapses, we need to have all of those kinds of solutions.

Brian De Los Santos  10:29

[street ambi] So if this next administration is gonna tackle this crisis, all hands are gonna have to be on deck. They need to get the homeless population proper housing and treatment facilities, and more affordable housing built, fast. But Sebastian, the Pit Stop ambassador, brought up another point that really needs to be acknowledged. [to Sebastian] We know that the homelessness issue is a tough one, and it's not easy to discuss or to find solutions. But you're here and you work here. What do you think some of those needs are for them?

Sebastian Arias  10:56

[sirens in background] [street ambi] I don't think they need donations like this, like food. Like this is the real problem. They don't think they deserve the help. At least that's what I'm seeing, you know. I try to talk to people, and they say [music in] that they don't want to get better. Out of five people, only like two actually want to get better. It's very tight knit. Everyone here knows each other, everyone helps each other. You know, there's the occasional disagreement every now and then. But uh, it really is like its own little society here. [music swells]

Brian De Los Santos  11:33

Okay folks, I hope this gave you at least one picture of this crisis from a few different angles. We've got the housing affordability issue, which is gonna require a ton of new affordable housing units. We've got the crisis of people living in the streets who need to get inside. And there's the more complicated mental health and addiction challenges that have yet to be addressed. There's a lot to unpack here, but we're not going anywhere. We'll be covering these and more angles as our new administration rolls out. That's all we have for you today. Hasta mañana. [music out]