How Los Angeles is Grappling With its Homelessness Crisis

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Do you think New York is intense right now? You should see California. They have wildfires, a recall election for the governor, plus street homelessness much more extensive than here, and it's dividing the state. According to a June 2020 report, "The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority counted an astonishing 66,436 people living unhoused across that one county, LA County around a thirteen percent increase from before the pandemic".

"In one district, Council District 11 in LA, which includes Venice Beach, the figures were up by 40%." Few disagree that this is an emergency, but like in New York, there was vast disagreement on this solution. What can New York learn from California? Joining me now to discuss the ongoing issue of homelessness in LA, and other things California intense is Jamie Lowe, contributor to The New York Times Magazine and author of three books, including the forthcoming Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California's Wildfires.

She is by coastal in this respect, living here in Brooklyn, but maybe you saw her New York Times Magazine piece this weekend called Los Angeles Goes to War With Itself Over Homelessness. Thanks for coming on, Jamie. Welcome to WNYC.

Jamie Lowe: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.

Brian Lehrer: Los Angeles Goes to War With Itself Over Homelessness. For listeners who haven't been to Los Angeles since before the pandemic, or maybe ever, can you paint a picture of the homelessness in LA and how it's similar to or different from what we have here in New York?

Jamie Lowe: Sure. It is devastating. There's no other way to really describe homelessness and encampments that are unfolding throughout a really huge geographic area, and LA is different from New York in that sense that it is spread out over a large area and New York is really condensed, and it's much more visible in Los Angeles because I think there is a right to shelter in New York, which means that a lot of the people who are unhoused can have a place to stay every night if they want to, the city is mandated from a nineteen seventy-nine law to actually provide that, but LA doesn't have that. There are a lot more encampments. There are a lot more people who are unsheltered every night and living in encampments

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Brian Lehrer: That's going to be news to a lot of New York listeners who think that the right to shelter is maybe more of a universal thing in the United States, or at least in other supposedly progressive states. As you say, we have that legal right to shelter here after the old court case, Callahan versus Carey, former Governor Hugh Carey, California has no equivalent.

What do they do? Are there attempts to make housing right in LA or are there different attempts at housing that population, or when we're talking about LA in particular, the weather is seen as so benign that outdoor encampments aren't seen as much as a threat to the unhoused people themselves? Or how do they approach it?

Jamie Lowe: They approached it in many ways. Many are ineffective and the weather is actually getting less and less benign as the climate crisis is colliding with the homelessness crisis. Being outside in what sometimes is a hundred and ten-degree weather with air quality that's affected by wildfires can be an extreme health issue. That's doubling down on all of the other issues that come with being unhoused in terms of mental health issues, addiction issues, alcohol addiction issues and-- Sorry, I'm rambling. Basically, I think that what was the question again? [crosstalk] I'm sorry.

Brian Lehrer: That's okay. I forced you to ramble because I asked you a three-part question. I know from your article that California's Governor, Gavin Newsom, recently proposed a five billion dollar rent relief plan to prevent an immediate surge of unhoused people. How's that supposed to work?

Jamie Lowe: That actually is not going to affect the numbers that you mentioned at the beginning of the show, that there were 66,000 unhoused people in LA County, 41,000 in LA City, a hundred and fifty thousand in California. That was all pre-pandemic. This rent relief bill is going to help people from becoming a victim, basically.

It's people who couldn't pay rent for the past year and a half due to losing their, jobs due to less income that they were at risk, at very high risk actually, of becoming unhoused. There's still a crisis. The crisis that existed before the pandemic and the rent relief bill is really to just address what happened in the year and a half past.

Brian Lehrer: When COVID hit, officials stop large-scale cleanups at most encampments in attempts to stop the spread of the virus, you report in your piece. How did that change the area, I guess you're looking at the Venice Beach area in particular, but LA in general?

Jamie Lowe: I think the encampments really grew and they became much more entrenched because there was less-- A lot of the sweeps that were happening prior to the COVID, people would have to move their tents, sometimes once, twice, three times a week. A lot of times those sweeps included throwing out IDs, essential information. They weren't always beneficial to people who are unhoused.

They didn't always clean up anything. Sometimes it just was that these populations had to move back and forth, and it was ineffective. The sanitation sweep stopped at the beginning of the pandemic because there was a lot of uncertainty about the spread. There was a lot of uncertainty about everything. I think that that meant that the encampments became much more established.

Especially within Venice, you had 3rd Ave, Hampton, there were pockets within Venice that popped up, but there were less monitoring groups that would come by and see what was happening. There were other people and services that were going on, but the sweeps definitely did alter the makeup of the encampment.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, maybe you read Jamie Lowe's New York Times Magazine article this weekend, LA Goes to War With Itself Over Homelessness, any by coastal listeners want to compare the homelessness situation in New York and the homelessness situation in LA, and especially from a constructive standpoint. Do we have anything to learn from each other on any coast? 646-435-7280, for Jamie Lowe. 646-435-7280, or you can tweet a question or a comment @BrianLehrer. Jamie, the recall election of Governor Gavin Newsome. Does it have anything to do with homelessness?

Jamie Lowe: Partly, I think homelessness is the probably biggest political issue in California, in LA County, and LA City. It's going from council members are being recalled. I think that Sheriff Alex Villanova is running on the homelessness issue in a pretty extreme way.

Certainly, it has something to do with Governor Newsom's recall, but I think they-- You can point to a lot of different issues with him in terms of why he's being recalled. I think that partly is just that there's such a huge gulf between how people react to him within California.

Brian Lehrer: What's the heart of it if we can digress that much?

Jamie Lowe: The heart of Governor Newsom, that's a really hard question to answer [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: No, the recall.

Jamie Lowe: I personally think that it is a waste of resources and time because it means that he can't really govern. I think that the effort is being led by extreme political views, that he was not handling the pandemic correctly, that he was not handling the financial elements of California correctly. I can't really speak for why people want him to be gone, but homelessness is certainly a very big issue. He's made a lot of decisions about wildfire resources that are suspect, there are a number of things that did not paint him in the best light.

Brian Lehrer: In the article, you wrote that the conflict over homelessness can't be separated from the gentrification that has transformed the area over the last two decades. That's certainly going to sound familiar to people in New York. Are the solutions--? And this is really one of the reasons I wanted you on this New York show, to talk about your article about LA, is to ask if you think the two cities, and for you who I gather you live in Brooklyn.

If your perception is that the two cities are going about trying to alleviate the problem of being unhoused in very different ways, does the fact that New York has that right to shelter, which forces the debate, I think, into one over shelters or no shelters, and what kinds of shelters, and the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side versus forcing people into congregate living facilities that may not be safe from COVID or anything else?

That's a particularly New York conversation, and I wonder if they're having the conversation about what to do to both serve the unhoused people better, and to serve the people of neighborhoods that feel plagued by so many unhoused people on the streets at the same time. Can you compare and contrast at all in that respect?

Jamie Lowe: Sure. I think that ultimately, the goal is housing for everyone. I think that one of the things that Mayor Garcetti mentioned, and it may just be a talking point, but he mentioned in our interview that there should be a right to shelter federally, that should be a national issue, that everyone should have a right to shelter. I think that that should be the goal that housing and long-term housing is and low income, like long-term housing that it needs to be built. It needs to exist.

I think that ultimately, it's a matter of how do we make that happen? Where that housing can exist and where people can live in the immediate crisis and then be transitioned into long-term spaces that are supported? Because homelessness is not just an issue of not having a house, it's also mental health, physical health, addiction, alcohol addiction, and poverty issue. Ultimately, it's an inequality issue. You have to be able to immediately do things simultaneously where you are solving the immediate issues with long-term issues and being set in motion.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Justin in Basking Ridge, you're on WNYC with Jamie Lowe, who wrote the New York Times Magazine article this weekend, LA Goes to War With Itself Over Homelessness. Hi, Justin.

Justin: Good morning. I'm a long-time listener, first-time caller. Having visited family members that live in Santa Monica, which is part of LA County, I can't help, but wonder if part of it has to do with the availability of certain services vis-a-vis. Actually, [unintelligible 00:13:37] problem than actually is to deal with, because I guess in New York, since everything is technically one city, whereas, the County has the whole patchwork of municipalities. I wonder if that affects it in anyway, and if the guests could speak to that. I'll take your response off there.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Jamie.

Jamie Lowe: Sure. Actually famously, Santa Monica was referred to as the homeless of the homeless by Harry Scheer on KCRW on his radio show decades ago, and used to have a severe homeless issue. I think because it is its own municipality, they can make decisions very quickly and effectively, but they also ship homeless off. I have heard advocates speak of this. I have seen the dividing line on the boardwalk where there is an encampment and then it stops right at Santa Monica. I've heard many times of people just being pushed to one side of that line, and that's happened in Culver City, Beverly Hills, the encampments don't exist there because they're their own municipalities.

LA County does have the resources. There is money, there is services. It is a huge bureaucracy to try and actually figure out exactly what the best method is that is both humane and that is not involving a police force, which with the echo park relocation, which is a generous term, I think, there was an encampment that over the course of three nights, the LAPD, they were out there and forcing people to move. That was very complicated. It was a bad way to move a pretty traumatized population because you have people with guns forcing a population to move.

Brian Lehrer: Victoria in west LA you're on WNYC. Hello from New York, Victoria.

Victoria: Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Thank you for your comments. It's really enlightening. I'm a bi-coastal person. I've been going back and forth between New York and LA throughout COVID. Originally from LA, but now I'm New Yorker. I try to tell my friends in New York about how much worse it appears homelessness on the streets and they say, "Well, yes, of course, because the weather's better." I explained it has nothing to do with the weather, but there's a different policy about it.

Thank you for explaining what it is, and it is about the fact that homeless in New York are by rights by law able to be housed, and here they are not. I live in the district, like [unintelligible 00:16:42] bonus district that we're talking about, I'm sure [unintelligible 00:16:44] we're walking right now, we got friends all over, is the fact that there's really no good solutions, it seems. Very liberal community who want to be very helpful to this issue, knowing how hard it is to find affordable housing.

However, it also makes it unlivable for many of us. I can't walk my dogs and take my nephews to the parks anymore because many are benign, but many do are threatening. Many also even use firewood and start to have started fires in our wetlands here just to try to stay warm. I think it's real important that California do take a new position whereby they ensure that folks use these empty hotels or whatever to ensure that they get to have homes and houses, which will help everybody in the community, including the homeless and houses themselves.

$100,000 trailers, which is what they provided to homeless across the parks at the beginning of COVID to keep them safe, did not work because they had rules about needing to be inside at 10:00 PM at night and no drugs, and no alcohol. Well, I don't think anybody would want to live by those rules.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Easier said than done. Is there no political will in progressive California, to set up a right to shelter system?

Victoria: I don't know about that. I really don't know, but it's definitely not, but it doesn't seem away from our current elected officials here. I don't see why it would be so difficult when you've got New York as a model. I'm sure I'm not the only one who goes back and forth between New York and California.

This is just over the course of many years, even before COVID whereby you did not see as much as you think you do, but in a very congested city, like New York City, you do not see the number of homeless on the streets, even now with COVID and with so many jobless as you do here, it's just quite unbelievable. It looks like a lot of emerging market countries I've traveled to over the years. You're wondering how can one of the richest countries and cities in the world treat their people this way.

Brian Lehrer: Victoria, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. This is WNYC-FM HD AM in New York. WNJT-FM 88.1, Trenton. WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms river. We're on New York and New Jersey public radio, few minutes left with Jamie Lowe who wrote the New York Times magazine article this weekend that maybe you saw LA goes to war with itself over homelessness. We have a caller from Savannah, Georgia, Richard, who says he worked in LA City Hall in the past managing grants programs for homeless people. Richard, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Richard: Hi, Brian. I love your show. I worked in City Hall for a decades and managed budgets and also grant programs for a while. It was my experience. Well, first let me back up. I watched the homeless problem get worse and worse. It's shocking now, when you drive down to any place around Sixth Street and Central Avenue and those areas in Downtown LA, it looks like a third world, and they're right. Going back to some of my experience, I don't have a solution for the problem. There's growing wealth gaps that are increasing it, but there's mental illness out on the street. Some of these people won't take homeless shelters if you give it to them. There are people with alcohol problems, there are people with drug problems, there are women and homeless mothers who are working paycheck to paycheck who can't put a roof over their head.

There's numerous problems in the grant programs that I was dealing with. They would provide single-room-occupancy shelters for these people. I don't know about the laws about providing shelter, but I do know that there were a lot of dollars that were going out into a lot of different areas to help people with getting job skills or helping deal with mental problems or drug problems. It's just exploded, though, it's shocking. Downtown LA, Venice, like you're talking about, some of these others it's just horrific.

Brian Lehrer: What's your take as somebody who worked in that field in that city for a few decades? If you can boil it down to a radio soundbite why did it get so much worse in the last few decades, even as the economy in general supposedly was doing fairly well?

Richard: Like I said, I don't have an answer but I saw the growing wealth gap, you've got this anti-tax proposition 13 mentality out there where people don't want to pay for anything. I don't know, minimum wages haven't gone up. I think part of it is a wealth gap, part of it is more complex than that.

Brian Lehrer: Richard, thank you very much for your call. Jaime, did you land on any solutions in the course of your reporting that anybody has come up with? Or even your own novel insights? Do we need to close the wealth gap? Do we need to end the winner-take-all economy in the private sector in order to fight this on both coasts?

Jamie Lowe: Yes, less billionaires in the space would be one thing. No, I think Gary Blasi, he's been involved in housing and homelessness in LA for about 40 years, maybe even longer, actually. He basically just said, "Offer people something better than what they're experiencing and that's how you solve the problem." We need to figure out collectively and we need to prioritize it to say, "This is the solution. If you come here, this is how your life will improve and this is how we're going to help you." This is something that we have to do communally.

I think it has to have everyone's buy on, it can't just be the government because I don't see it happening on either a city, county, or state basis alone. I think everyone needs to want to solve the problem and they have to want to solve it in their own neighborhoods and have to find a way to how's their neighbors.

Brian Lehrer: Jamie, before you go, your forthcoming book Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California's Wildfires on incarcerated California women fighting the wildfires there, very little awareness of that on the East Coast. Maybe you don't want to jump the gun before your book's release date, but do you want to give everybody a preview?

Jamie Lowe: Sure. It's actually a book that was based on an article I wrote for the Times Magazine in 2017, about a woman who was incarcerated and died fighting a fire in Malibu. I ended up spending time with about eight women and really trying to talk about their lives before incarceration while they were incarcerated in county and state prisons, and then what it was like to be an incarcerated firefighter, and then how the program upon release either failed them or really helped them.

In a lot of ways, it did help them and in a lot of ways it failed them and they were faced with the prospect of not being able to use their training and get jobs as firefighters. A lot of the women. It's about them and it's also about the history of prison labor in California and infrastructure and lots of stuff. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Do they forced incarcerated women to be firefighters? Or is it something that they on some level volunteer for?

Jamie Lowe: They use the word Volunteer CDCR at the correctional department, so it's not by strict definition force. However, I would argue that the conditions in county jails and prisons are so devastating and so bad that the option to go to these programs, which are camps that are on the outside that are in wooded areas that have way better food, that have a lot more, "Freedom", even though you're still a prisoner and treated like a prisoner, that option is a much better option. It's a little bit of a survival choice. I don't know that force isn't the correct word, but volunteers isn't either.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly raises questions about the definition of freedom and free will. Jaime Lowe, thanks for all your reporting, and thanks for sharing it with us.

Jamie Lowe: Thank you so much, Brian. I really appreciate it.

 

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