Secretary of Veterans Affairs meets with LA Mayor Eric Garcetti about homeless veterans; tour of Skid Row's Union Rescue Mission; a surge in homeless families.
What's our best bet for breaking the cycle of family homelessness?
This is a part of KPCC's special report on the rise of homeless families in Southern California, Broke. See the full feature here.
Downtown L.A.'s Skid Row is the last place some homeless families would go to for help.
"We used to, just a few years ago, not see any families with children on the streets of Skid Row," says Andy Bales of Union Rescue Mission, which provides services to the homeless in the area. "In the tents of Skid Row, that's not true anymore."
The burgeoning number of homeless families in Southern California has forced many to look for aid from providers like the Mission.
That's led to a record number of them staying in the Mission's shelter.
"This is the first year in our 125-year history where women with children outnumber men," says Bales.
Space is at such a premium that rooms that were once chapels and playrooms now have to pull double duty.
At night, cots will be arranged wall-to-wall so families can sleep.
"We're at the breaking point," he says. "We either have to add more staff, more space or find another place. We don't know what to do."
Bales joined Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president and CEO of L.A. Family Housing, and KPCC correspondent Rina Palta to talk about the solutions on the city, county and state levels, and whether they'll be enough.
Interview Highlights
When we hear that we're at this crisis point of family homelessness, more so than in the Great Recession, what are some of the possibilities fueling this?
Klasky-Gamer: It's always an economic crisis – a loss of hours in full-time work, someone going from a 40-hour a week job earning $10 an hour going down to 38, or it could be a two-headed household working and they still can't afford a typical apartment in Los Angeles. So I think there's always an economic crisis that's tied to family homelessness.
A number of different strategies have been used to try to help reduce the homeless population, especially among the issue of homelessness in families. Which strategies prove more effective than others?
Palta: The Department of Housing and Urban Development did study these things. They assigned families to different solutions between a Section 8 voucher, which is basically, "we will subsidize your rent for life, so long as you need it"; rapid rehousing, which is temporary rental assistance for families up to 18 months; and then there was doing nothing, [which is] letting people sit in the shelter system and see how they resolve on their own.
In terms of the strategies that was most effective in that study, it was Section 8.
When it comes to getting monetary support from government entities, what have been the biggest obstacles?
Klasky-Gamer: In the past, the biggest obstacles revolved around political will. But today, particularly here in Los Angeles, there is the greatest political will that we have seen both at the city and the county level. The city recently passed HHH, which is a housing bond measure, and we are fortunate that the county has voted to bring onto the March 7th ballot Measure H. And Measure H is going to bring new resources for those services that support housing.
Any sense of how much money that could carve out specifically to aid homeless families?
Bales: Not for families. I think it will highly lean towards where it's been going, which has focused on the few and individuals but not addressing children. If it isn't leaning towards families, it needs to. Otherwise, we're going to suffer the consequences.
There all sorts of issues on the agenda for California's legislature heading into 2017. How much of a priority is homelessness for state lawmakers?
Palta: I think it's a priority for some legislators, especially from Los Angeles where the crisis is really out of proportion with the rest of the state. There is some movement to try to get this declared an emergency in Los Angeles, or to get CalWorks raised, or to get more funding for affordable housing. We'll see. The governor's budget comes out next week and we'll see what his priorities are.
Bales: Even if you lifted the CalWorks payments to $840, you're not going to be able to afford much housing. Sky-rocketing rents are the biggest driver of what we're experiencing right now in L.A.
Klasky-Gamer: But our governor has also spent a lot of time focusing on the housing development system – changing the process by which developers can build new housing, whether they are market-rate developers or affordable housing developers. We have, in the city of L.A., less than a 3 percent vacancy rate at all income levels of housing. So we just need to increase production across the board of new housing in our region.
What sort of monitoring is in place to make sure money from social welfare programs is money well-spent?
Palta: Historically, there's been an interest in funding things like food stamps where it's very restricted how you can spend that money, and there's more and more restrictions, it seems, every year on what exactly those food stamps can go to. That's opposed to giving people a check to go spend how they will.
How do you "sell" funding for homelessness when it comes to families?
Bales: If we don't address these kids who are experiencing homelessness, they will be devastated for life. ...If you went out to talk to every chronically homeless person on the streets of L.A., it's quite likely that they experienced homelessness as a child. Today's thousands upon thousands of chronically homeless children are going to be tomorrow's chronically homeless adults.
How does any member of the public know whether the spending that they approve of in elections is worth it?
Bales: The truth will be in the numbers: how many people are still left on the streets? I can tell you that HHH, the city proposition that passed, will be really made null and void if we don't get the services added to the buildings [which could be funded through L.A. County Measure H]. The challenge is if we don't deal with skyrocketing rents and create affordable housing, despite H and HHH and everything that we're all doing together, we will have more people pouring into homelessness than are ever escaping homelessness.
Current VA Secretary McDonald: I'd 'undoubtedly' stay if Trump asked
President-elect Donald Trump has yet to choose a replacement to run one the biggest bureaucracies in the world: The Department of Veterans Affairs. It's one of his last cabinet positions left to fill, though not for lack of trying. The current secretary, Robert McDonald, was installed by President Obama in 2014 to fix a department riddled with scandal.
To an outside observer, McDonald would seem like the ideal pick for businessman-turned-President-elect Trump: McDonald is a veteran, a Republican and former head of corporate giant Proctor & Gamble.
In addition, several of the nation's largest veterans groups have written to the Trump camp strongly advising him to keep McDonald at the helm.
But the secretary told Take Two Thursday that he'd yet to hear from Trump.
"I'm sure if I were asked — while I've not discussed it with my family — we would certainly consider it and undoubtedly do it," Secretary McDonald told Take Two's A Martinez.
Highlights
We're talking to you at a major turning point for the VA. President-elect Donald Trump has interviewed several potential candidates to take over as secretary: the president-elect has also faced pressure from some of the nation's largest veteran's groups to keep you in place. If you were asked, would you stay on?
Well, I've always done my duty. As you know, I went to West Point and 'Duty, Honor, Country,' means a lot to me, so I'm sure if I were asked, while I've not discussed it with my family, we would certainly consider it and undoubtedly do it. But I've not received a call from the President-elect.
(Follow-up questions can be heard in the audio above)
We spoke to you on this program last January when you were in Los Angeles addressing veteran homelessness. There were about 2,500 homeless vets in the city, and you'd JUST unveiled plans to develop the VA campus in West Los Angeles. One year later, how would you describe veteran homelessness in Los Angeles?
I would say that we're making progress, but we're not at the end of the road yet. As you may know, from that count last January, we discovered that we decreased veteran homelessness in Los Angeles in 2015 by 32 percent while general population homelessness went up over 6 percent, so that was a 38 percentage point reduction.
We're pleased with that, but obviously, any night that we have any veteran on the street without shelter, without care, that's one night too many — one veteran too many. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm working with Mayor Garcetti and the county and others to get the number down to zero.
Three states have announced an effective end to veteran homelessness since you took control of the department in 2014: Connecticut, Delaware, and Virginia. But in an op-ed you penned Tuesday, you said your "greatest challenge" as Secretary of the VA has been the City of Los Angeles. What about LA has made putting an end to veteran homelessness particularly difficult?
I think the challenge in L.A. is one of all the great reasons that people love to live here: the weather. When I do my count at the end of January each year here in L.A., I see license plates of homeless veterans from all over the country. Secondly, the scale here is just so large. The third thing is the affordability of housing. It's not unique to Los Angeles, but obviously, there's not a lot of low-cost housing here, so we need creative solutions.
Last night, I had dinner with a developer who's looking at buying a defunct hotel and turning it into low-cost residences for veterans. We need those kinds of creative solutions.
Donald Trump has pushed for veterans to have a choice over where they get their care, but some analysts say that further steps toward privatization could erode the VA. Press the blue play button above to hear the Secretary's thoughts.
(Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
4 things to know about this week's storms
There’s been a lot of hopeful talk about the upcoming storms lifting us out of the five-year drought, but not all storms are a good thing for a parched California.
According to a recent Wired article, warm rains expected this weekend could negatively affect our snowpack, melting a much-needed and concentrated water supply that would be released into rivers and oceans during the summer. These rains could also mean flooding and landslides in the areas including the Sierra Nevada.
So will the rain help break the state’s drought? Marty Ralph is the director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. He spoke with Alex Cohen to give a better picture of what the rain means for California.
Here are four takeaways from the conversation with things to know about California's storms.
1. This weather system we're seeing is called an atmospheric river.
MARTY RALPH: It's a region in the atmosphere that's loaded with water vapor and has strong horizontal winds. It transports amazing amounts of water vapor — 20 times the amount of liquid the Mississippi transports. When that hits the coast or mountains, it can produce heavy rain and snow.
2. Warmer storms mean less snow, and more flooding.
RALPH: The storm this weekend is forecast to have very high snow levels. That means the snow will occur in the higher parts of the mountains, but the middle parts will get rain, contributing to heavy runoff in the rivers so there are some flood warnings.
3. We're prepared for flooding...depending on how long storms last.
RALPH: The major reservoirs in the Central Valley are at levels where they're prepared for flooding-like storms to occur. If we get a series of atmospheric storms, over a week or more, that capacity to absorb the crest of the floods will be diminished as the reservoirs fill up, but that has yet to be seen.
4. Warm or cold, these storms could bring some drought relief.
RALPH: The drought is ameliorated by having rain and snow. It's clear that the northern half of California has come out of drought conditions over the last nine months. Southern California is still a bit dry and these storms could help alleviate that in the next week or so. In the case of flooding, when water needs to be released from dams, that water goes to the ocean. However, it has environmental benefits. But ultimately, if we get into too high a flow condition, that water has to be released and we may have been able to keep it.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue media player above.
State of Affairs: Budget preview, a look ahead to Inauguration Day, and 2018 fundraising
On this week's State of Affairs, who will be traveling to the inauguration from California, how much money has been raised in the upcoming race for governor, and some big changes in voting laws.
Mary Plummer, KPCC's senior politics reporter, and Katie Orr, KQED's politics and government reporter, joined Take Two for our weekly look at government and politics in the Golden State.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue media player above.
Court documents reveal foiled sting operation on Lunada Bay Boys
Locals only! Never has that phrase been more appropriate than in Lunada Bay on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
A group of territorial surfers there have been accused of harassing people in and out of the water, and assaulting them by throwing beer bottles, dirt clods and fists.
It's been an ongoing problem for years, one local police haven't managed to fix.
Megan Barnes, who has been covering this story for The Daily Breeze, spoke with A Martinez about an update on the Bay Boys case — a foiled sting operation.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue media player above.
It can be hard to give away money to buy fruit and vegetables
Universal love: Theme parks balance innovation with nostalgia
The first week of 2017 has been a landmark week for Southern California's amusement parks.
On Wednesday, Disneyland hit capacity for the first time this holiday season. At California Adventure, Monday marked the final checkout for the famed attraction Tower of Terror, which is closing to make way for a new "Guardians of the Galaxy" makeover.
And at Universal Studios Hollywood, where attractions based on other popular movies, like Minions and Harry Potter prevail, a new attendance record was broken — people were turned away at the gates for the first time in the park's history.
For more on all this, Take Two's Alex Cohen spoke with Robert Niles from Theme Park Insider.
It's really what Universal's been working towards for the past several years. If you haven't been to Universal Studios in the past three or four years, the park looks completely different than the last time you were there. They've spent hundred of millions of dollars transforming that park. The big centerpiece of it all is the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter which opened last spring. This was the first Christmas season that the Harry Potter land was opened. I know I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. Visiting Hogsmeade over the holidays, I think, was an irresistible draw for a lot of people. They've put a lot of money into improving that park to make it a more attractive draw for people in Southern California and it really seems to be paying off this holiday season.
On what's coming down the line for Universal Studios Hollywood
"The big news is that there will be an entire land devoted to Nintendo coming down within the next few years. It's going to be something that's obviously very interactive. You think about rides like the Buzz Lightyear ride or the Toy Story ride at Disneyland and California Adventure... There's a lot that's happening with interactivity these days so this is an opportunity for Universal to take it up to the next level to give us the opportunity to drive a Mario Kart in real life."
Disney's replacing the Tower of Terror. How do they maintain the nostalgia while keeping current?
Disney is a master of playing with nostalgia. They just dropped a commercial promoting the return of the Main Street Electrical Parade which we all thought had glowed away forever twenty-some years ago. Well, it's back! It's coming back for a limited-time run this spring at Disneyland park.
You never know. If at some point "Guardians of the Galaxy" falls out of favor, maybe twenty years from now, they say, 'Hey look! The Twilight Zone is back!' Disney never truly throws stuff away because their fanbase is so attuned to nostalgia. In one form or another, things come back, whether in full form like the Main Street Electrical Parade or some type of tribute or nod or reference to it that we'll see at the park in some form in the future.