 Los Angeles is now coming together to confront the greatest moral and humanitarian crisis of our time. Let me be clear once again, we are here to end homelessness. Five years after Los Angeles voters approved tax increases to raise one and a half billion dollars to address the region's homelessness problem, there are more people living and dying on the streets than ever before. Many of these men and women are both frequent targets and perpetrators of violence. The mayor, who did not respond to our interview request, has partially blamed this failure on the pandemic, which slowed new housing construction and limited shelter capacity. It's true that COVID caused a surge in homelessness, but the city's plan was already failing. In 2019, homelessness spiked 13 percent in LA County. This has happened way before the pandemic. Tens popping up, places that we didn't see it before. It's just getting worse and worse. Think about any city that has 70,000 displaced people on the streets. It's unprecedented and it needs an emergency response. Everybody's looking for the next position of their career rather than focusing on the task at hand. The centerpiece of LA's plan was to spend the $1.2 billion building 10,000 supportive housing units over a decade. Even if the city were able to pull that off, it would merely put a dent in the problem. A new housing project opened in Los Angeles as one of the first under Measure HHH. We will see an opening of one of these about every three weeks this year. By my calculations next year, it might be every two weeks or less. Five years into the 10-year plan, just 14 projects are in service. Of the promised 10,000 supportive housing units, the city has completed fewer than 700. It would take more than 30 years to house all of the people currently homeless in LA County at that pace, according to a federal court order. As the homeless population exploded, some shelter providers implored the mayor to spend more of the money on immediate shelter, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment. But Garcetti went all in on his ambitious 10-year plan. Los Angeles' approach to the homelessness crisis is a series of colossal failures. The city has proven itself to be incapable of solving homelessness, but it could take more modest steps of helping alleviate suffering and restore peace and safety to the streets. It could also bring an end to many long-standing policies that caused these men and women to end up homeless in the first place. Los Angeles has the largest unsheltered homeless population in America, and Ground Zero is a 50-square block district known as Skid Row, officially turned into a containment zone by the city in 1976. The problem has escalated into a full-blown humanitarian crisis. In a scathing court order issued in April, Federal District Judge David Carter called the city's inaction so egregious and the state so non-functional that it is strongly likely in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. A federal judge calls LA's response to the homeless crisis structural racism. It's a problem that's rooted in misguided government policies decades in the making, but Judge Carter's order places blame for the city's failure to address the immediate crisis squarely at the feet of Mayor Garcetti. The process of making good on the mayor's plan to build 10,000 units of supportive housing has been rife with cost overruns delays and possible corruption. We have local politicians who are in bed who are being investigated by the feds, our own city council people, what? That's the kind of stuff that's shown on me like what the fuck are we doing? Local public radio affiliate KCRW has documented instances of corruption surrounding the city's homelessness housing plan, with developers receiving taxpayer money to build homeless housing, reselling the properties to themselves for millions in profit. Carter notes that the improper relationship between City Hall and real estate developers is neither isolated nor new, and that the FBI has been investigating the possible corruption in City Hall since 2017, a probe that has led to the prosecution of real estate consultants, political fundraisers, and even most notably, former council member Jose Huizar, whose council district included Skid Row. In June 2020, Huizar was arrested by federal agents for using his position to cover up illegal activities. They've said let's keep the status quo and allow the developers to continue because they are carrying it out in good faith and they're doing it well. Well, no, it's not being done well, it's not being rolled out in in the way that it was promised, and it's not being done in good faith. Andy Bales runs the Skid Row based union rescue mission, which runs entirely on private donations. He says the organization shelters more than 900 people a night and moves more than 900 people into permanent housing annually. He's been a fierce critic of the city's approach, which he says has been slow, expensive, and capable of serving only a fraction of the homeless population. I wish I could say I was shocked at the pushback from LA County and LA but it's unexplainable. Judge Carter has ordered the city to put $1 billion in Skid Row so that he can monitor how that money is spent. He's also ordering the city to provide shelter for the more than 4,600 people living on the streets of Skid Row before the end of 2021. Judge Carter criticized Garcetti for failing to declare a state of emergency, which he says could have eliminated bureaucratic hurdles to building new housing. The mayor has said Carter's order will derail the city's plan. Stay out of our way. Roadblocks masquerading as progress are the last things we need. Carter's critics accuse him of overstepping his role and his aggressive ruling in an Orange County homelessness case led another district judge to grant several city government's requests to remove him from their cases on the grounds that he's biased and the LA city attorney has appealed Carter's ruling. LA County is asking to be dropped from the suit altogether. This is a deadly status quo and people don't just die. They die a horrific death of assaults and rapes and heat and cold and wet. It is a brutal spiral to death that we're leaving people in. I'm a believer in the right to housing but at the same time you don't have a right to every park bench. The city has an obligation to protect its public right of ways. If someone is homeless that is a tragedy and we need to work on that and get them into some form of transitional housing. But even if the city quickly were to build more emergency shelters not all the men and women living on the streets of Skid Row would necessarily abandon their sidewalk encampments to go live in them. I don't want to live in a shelter because I might as well just go back to jail. Seriously. In 2006 a year after a homeless woman was beaten to death on the streets of Skid Row then Los Angeles Police Department Chief Bill Bratton launched the Safer Cities Initiative and sent 50 police officers to patrol the neighborhood and issue citations for minor infractions. Proponents pointed out that in just a few months the number of people sleeping on the streets was cut almost in half. We've broken the back of the problem said Bratton. But homeless activists said that many of those people just dispersed to other parts of the city and that the city was criminalizing homelessness. And the Garcetti administration ended the program in 2015 when an LAPD officer fatally shot a homeless man. I don't think the criminalization side is reasonable at all. Once we start incarcerating people for quality of life issues then we've just increased our costs with the carceral system. We've retraumatized people and I don't think there's a moral reason to do that. The idea that this is criminalizing homelessness is an absolute red herring. It's a total myth that you can't both be compassionate and regulate public spaces at the same time. Elizabeth Mitchell is an attorney representing the LA Alliance for Human Rights, the group of downtown business owners, residents and homeless people who sued Los Angeles. She points out that when Judge Carter issued an order in Orange County allowing city governments to clear encampments they did so without arrests by sending social workers to offer shelter and mental health and drug and treatment services and informed those living there that they had two weeks to move their belongings from the area. If you look at this approach that we are advocating for, we have sheltered over 4,000 people without a single citation or arrest. So I don't see how that could possibly be criminalization. Everybody agrees that law enforcement should be an absolute last resort but regulation of public spaces needs to occur again for everyone. There's a danger that law enforcement could take a more aggressive approach if the city fails to act. LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva sent a team of deputies out to Venice Beach in mid-June without consulting the city council and vowed to start clearing encampments in the coming weeks with or without city approval. Several weeks later the Los Angeles City Council on July 2 approved new prohibitions on camping near shelters, parks, elementary schools and entrances to homes and businesses. Literally the only goal is to get people sheltered and off of the street as fast as possible throughout Los Angeles. What we can't accept is people dying on the streets while the city bureaucracies churn out overpriced housing that helps too few. The suit also argues that the damage done to downtown residents and entrepreneurs by the city's incompetence constitutes a taking of property. Daisy Suarez, the proprietor of Desuar Day Spa in downtown LA agrees. We have customers that refuse to come inside because they just completely don't feel safe. We have customers writing very negative review saying like you just got to be careful that massage was amazing but I wouldn't recommend you go in there because it's dangerous. So when we have customers calling us and saying hey I don't feel safe I'm gonna cancel my appointment it's just so hard. Suarez is named in the suit as is her brother Leandro, a Navy veteran in a wheelchair who has often been unable to navigate around encampments blocking sidewalks. We had a lot of encounters with people that were aggressive people wouldn't move people wouldn't give them the path obviously tense and many times we had to go and rescue him. A person took out a stick on him and threatened to hit him. She also says her two young children witnessed an attack on her husband walking around the area causing her to move the family 30 minutes outside of the city. With the kids in the stroller somebody came randomly hit him from the back he's on the floor the kids are screaming knocked him down unprovoked and after that I was like I gotta get my kids to safe her place this is not their environment that I want my kids to grow. Between 2018 and 2019 violent crimes perpetrated by homeless suspects increased 22.5% with a 48% increase in skid row and downtown LA. Violent crimes against homeless people increased 19% citywide in the same period. I've seen people get beat up run over tents being burned on purpose I just can't believe what I see it's just unfathomable it's really difficult to watch. Harry Tajjian is co-owner of an upholstery supply business in skid row where he says he's seen conditions deteriorate on the block outside his building. After mid 2016 it changed where the tents did not move the tents started getting bigger and bigger their contents started flowing from one side of the sidewalk to the other and now well into the streets we have vendors that fly in from all over the world they just can't believe what they see when they come to Los Angeles they're eager to see the best city in the world and they see this they're just blown away and I've never heard once a customer walk in say yeah this time it got better it's constantly getting worse and worse and worse. Both Tajjian and Suarez traced the decline that began in 2016 to a federal court injunction prohibiting police from seizing property people are storing on the sidewalk or street. What's happened over the last 20 years is through these series of decisions and settlements it's had a complete chilling effect on city and county officials. Federal court rulings and settlements have shaped homeless policy not only in Los Angeles but nationwide with the February 2021 Martin v Boise settlement making clear that cities couldn't clear encampments without offering adequate shelter a term that's never been precisely defined. So the question was by the alliance is there a way that we can use the courts to do the opposite to unhandcuff the city of Los Angeles to unhandcuff the county of Los Angeles and the officials to really do what they say they want to do which is solve this comprehensively. Mitchell says Judge Carter's order gives the city an opportunity to bypass this morass of settlements and begin to move people off the sidewalks and into temporary shelter but instead of embracing that opportunity Garcetti has appealed the decision. The mayor is just kind of gaslighting us in a way I have no respect for the mayor Garcetti I absolutely think that he is the disgrace. Dummy's usage of funds from HHH is just unbelievable ridiculous. Our city our county LA Times have all pushed back and fought the judge and made disingenuous claims that we can't put a roof over everybody's heads in three months. Well I can guarantee you if you appeal and take it to the Ninth Circuit court and to the Supreme Court yeah you can't get it done if you're appealing. In Judge Carter's report he also criticized Mayor Garcetti for his failure to spend a significant portion of the 1.2 billion dollars that the city has borrowed on constructing temporary shelters like the sprung structures, tiny houses or even 3d printed homes. The Garcetti administration claims to have moved more than 30,000 people into permanent housing using existing housing stock but the growth of LA's unsheltered homeless population is far outpacing new housing construction. It was working with Judge Carter and hearing a lot about these tiny homes we started doing some research on them and they seemed like a good option to add to the mix. Bob Blumenfield is a city council member whose district in the San Fernando Valley has a relatively small homeless population compared to the rest of LA. After consulting with Judge Carter he was able to secure funding to build 52 tiny homes with 100 beds in the parking lot behind his office administered by a nonprofit that will provide meals, amenities like laundry, internet access, storage, drug and mental health counseling and 24-7 security. Temporary shelter is costly but far cheaper and quicker to construct than permanent supportive housing which is averaging about $550,000 per unit in LA. The total cost of this cabin community was 3.1 million dollars or $31,000 per bed. The perfect is often the enemy of the good. Yes it would be wonderful to put everybody into permanent supportive housing that's the goal but when you look at the numbers that is not going to happen we can't tell people that until we have all the permanent supportive housing that it's okay to die on the streets or to live on the streets in horrible, horrible conditions. Blumenfield's cabin community model is based on a similar idea launched in Riverside County last year at about a third of the construction cost per bed. The ability to have sort of a door to shut four walls that surround you being in your own space I think that was important to people because your mind can finally rest. Tyler Atonin is the program manager with CityNet the non-profit the city contracted with to run the site which sits adjacent to a parking lot less than two miles from downtown Riverside. Since launching in March 2020 the site with 30 units has served 160 people moving 43 into permanent housing. You don't know what's going to happen on the street. Coming in here I had my own base which was a lot bigger than my tent. Lisa Care was living on the streets in a tent for two years before CityNet offered her a pallet shelter and eventually found her an apartment. She says the privacy and security offered was enough to bring her off the street when offer of a group living shelter wouldn't. There is no comparison whatsoever. This place is like living in one bedroom mansion or something as opposed to the shelter. I take my chances on the street before I go back to the shelter. We saw that over 80% indicated that if they had an opportunity to have their own space they would accept shelter whether it might be for mental health purposes or just really wanting that own personal space. We found that our population was more open and we're really excited to report that it has been a success. Hafsa Keika is Riverside's homeless solutions officer and says that while she believes more permanent supportive housing is what will ultimately end homelessness that transitional options like pallet shelters actually help achieve that goal. It's not one size fits all. Some of the individuals who may be struggled with getting into permanent housing were able to find this as a pathway filling out paperwork document ready ID all of those things some individuals struggle with and so by having the shelter and the shelter case management they're able to get ready for that step. There are even lower cost options used in other cities like 3D printed homes in Austin and Mexico City produced by a startup for $4,000 in 24 hours and in 2016 Reason profiled a local artist constructing tiny homes for the homeless for only $1,200 apiece. Instead of partnering with him and offering land for the homes the city seized and appounded them. The more than billion dollars that the city has borrowed could be used to build shelters like this but the city government has failed to allocate much of the money to fast temporary solutions. But other homeless service providers and activists and the editorial board of the LA Times have expressed concern that Judge Carter's order will derail the plan to put homeless people into permanent housing by prioritizing substandard temporary shelters. Amy Turk points out that while temporary sites are cheap to build they can be expensive to run. With one parking lot campground the city administers costing more than $2,600 a month per person. Can't just set up a shelter without knowing how you're going to get people into permanent housing because then people will just stay in your interim shelter for a very long time. It is more costly to run a shelter with 24 hours staffing and security. You cannot look at a place like Skid Row and think like oh we don't need an immediate response but we can't at the expense of perhaps clawing back money that we've designated for permanent housing or not having enough for the permanent housing side. Turk is CEO of the Downtown Women's Center another Skid Row service provider that helps homeless women find food services and housing. Turk's group has backed the housing first approach championed by the city and owns two buildings offering permanent supportive housing in Skid Row. They found housing for 79 women and 124 children in 2019 according to their annual report. Turk says the goal should be to move people experiencing homelessness into permanent supportive housing as Downtown Women's Center helped Suzette Shaw accomplish. People living in Skid Row are living in less than third-world living conditions you're always in a state of survivor mode whoever you are and wherever you came from. A homeless rights activist Shaw has lived on Skid Row for more than eight years though she never slept on the streets instead living in single occupancy hotel rooms and shelters and then the Downtown Women's Center helped her find a permanent place in this building. Having my own home now and space that I can create and make that of my own home and slowly working to a sense of normalcy I close that door and it's my sanctuary you know what I'm saying. But while Shaw is a notable success story LA's homeless population continues to grow year over year and three quarters of the city's homeless remain without shelter but we should not leave this deadly status quo all of the housing that we could possibly do would be the correct response. A high percentage of LA's homeless population has mental illness and substance abuse problems and LA County has concluded it has fewer than half the available mental health beds necessary to serve its population. The judge's order directs the city and county to spend more of the funds to expand mental health and substance abuse services within 90 days. Their substance abuse and mental health services are atrocious so by requiring the county to actually treat people who need treatment means it's life-changing. But there's also a significant percentage of people who aren't severely mentally ill or addicted to drugs at the time they become homeless. They might be living at the margin pushed out of housing by a combination of high rents and inability to navigate the housing assistance bureaucracy. The city exacerbated this problem on Skid Row in the 1950s and 1960s by condemning and demolishing over the course of a decade half of the existing single occupancy hotels that housed many of the neighborhood's extremely low income residents. UCLA economist William Yu is the latest researcher to find a strong correlation between high housing prices and homelessness in a survey of American cities. California is home to some of the least affordable urban housing markets in the country including the LA Metro area according to the US Census Department's American Community Survey. A county survey found that 60% of newly homeless people cite economic hardship as the leading factor in their lack of housing and that two-thirds became homeless while living in LA County. The approach of local and state officials has largely been to promote measures like rent control and mandating low-cost housing in new construction. But market urbanists have long said that housing is simply too expensive to build because of zoning permitting and onerous over-regulation. There's this whole line of thought we have a simple supply and demand problem and we need to cut you out of the picture and just let people build housing. There's always truth some truth and there's always a little bit of both sides of this. You know you just make it really easy to create supply you may end up with just a lot of housing that's out of reach. If there's so much supply even the expensive housing would become cheaper right? You know in theory but that's often not what we see in practice. We see wealthier people moving to Los Angeles and that's also a recipe for gentrification. But several studies have demonstrated that increasing the housing supply would bring down the price of housing for the poor. A Journal of Urban Economics study of the Bay area found local land use regulations are closely linked to the value of houses sold. A Brookings Institution study of California found cities with less restrictive zoning and large populations issued more multifamily permits and a Federal Reserve study found that in metros where demand for housing is high more regulations correlated to almost double the increase in housing prices. Even regulation meant to directly address the problem by mandating affordable housing caused prices to rise two to three percent faster according to a 2009 HUD study. Since the housing market structural problems won't be fixed anytime soon the homeless population is likely to keep growing and Mayor Garcetti may be headed out the door after reportedly being offered an ambassador ship to India from the Biden administration. But his successor will have to decide whether to continue on the course he's set by fighting illegal battle while spending taxpayer money on six-figure permanent housing units or to shift course in favor of cheaper faster emergency shelter to more immediately address the deteriorating conditions in the city's public spaces. Los Angeles appears to be incapable of delivering adequate housing on its current path which is why Judge Carter ordered the city to offer some form of shelter for everyone on skid row by October. The 9th Circuit overrode that order on June 10th pending an appeal to be heard on July 7th. How could anybody be blind to the suffering? Really it's all a matter of when people don't have a roof over their heads it becomes very survival of the fittest. It's beyond a disaster and yet the officials seem to be allowing it to get worse rather than intervening. Judge Carter sees the current situation as not only a failure of current city leadership but a result of decades of government neglect and abuse. Starting with the city creating and sustaining the squalor of skid row by making it a containment zone in 1976 condemning and demolishing thousands of inexpensive single room occupancy hotels using eminent domain to seize homes and poor communities for highway construction and driving up housing prices through exclusionary zoning and excessive permitting. All policies that he says were designed to segregate and disenfranchise the costs of which have fallen disproportionately on black Americans who make up 42 percent of the homeless population despite being only seven percent of the city's population. You're talking about 400 years of racism that has contributed to homelessness so how do we undo that overnight is the big moral question of our time. At the heart of this is really the systemic failures that are embedded within our system that have allowed redlining and the displacement for Suzette Shaw and others to no longer exist in their former communities and have to come to a place called skid row because they had no other place to go. I feel that it's wrong to criminalize homeless yes absolutely but my staff deserve to feel safe my clients deserve to feel safe it's not about criminalizing them it's about helping them. The judge's initial order was very fair especially towards the homeless population who need that funding it's just not fair for the city to take their time and do their process where it hasn't worked in the last 10 years the mayor's been in office for eight years and there's never been a decline in the homeless population. How can you say a judge is flowing me down when we've developed 641 very expensive slow to develop units while 5700 Angelinos have died on our streets. The county in the city appealing the judge's order to immediately put a roof over everybody on skid row add that to the record of corralling and containment because all that the city and county are doing is building the case against themselves for not wanting to address homelessness on skid row.