Homelessness up 12% in Los Angeles

The homeless population jumped 12% in the last two years in both the city and county of Los Angeles, according to figures released Monday, demonstrating the continuing difficulty of taming the problem amid soaring rents, low wages and stubbornly high unemployment.

Countywide, 44,359 homeless people were tallied in January, up from 39,461 in a 2013 survey, according to a biennial report by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Well over half — 25,686 — were in the city of Los Angeles.

Veteran homelessness dropped 6% countywide, to 4,363, but the report did not break out a comparable number for the city. Mayor Eric Garcetti and federal officials have pledged to house every homeless veteran by the end of the year.

The number of tents, makeshift encampments and vehicles with people living in them soared 85%.

“It’s everywhere now; the encampments are in residential neighborhoods, they’re outside of schools,” said L.A. City Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents Venice. “It’s jarring. … It shows we’ve got a ... lot of work ahead.”

Advocates for the homeless blamed public officials.

“The city and county have done such a terribly poor job of creating affordable housing, basically they’ve ignored the issue,” said Steve Clare, executive director of Venice Community Housing.

“We need shovels in the ground,” skid row activist General Jeff Page said.

In a press release, Garcetti cited “significant progress” in housing veterans but said “we must do more to end homelessness.” He called for a “regional approach to homelessness because this issue requires a strong partnership across all levels of government, the private sector, nonprofits and the philanthropic community.”

The rise comes at a time of renewed local focus on the problem.

After decades of squabbling and inaction, the city and county resolved old differences over homeless service tactics and began pursuing nationally recognized solutions. Those include rapidly re-housing newly homeless people and creating so-called permanent supportive housing, with mental health and addiction counseling, for the chronically homeless.

Home for Good, a public-private partnership coordinated by the United Way of Southern California and the Chamber of Commerce, spearheaded an effort to catalog every homeless person in a database and link them to appropriate housing and services.

But the campaign has so far proved no match for the region’s high cost of housing and lack of new money for low-income housing or rent subsidies for the destitute, homeless advocates said.

Many other big cities reported similar increases in homelessness, including New York City, where the homeless population topped 60,000 this year, a record, according to the New York City Coalition for the Homeless.

But though New York houses most of its homeless people in shelters, about two-thirds of L.A. County’s destitute sleep under freeway bridges, along off-ramps and in sidewalk shantytowns, the January survey found. The number of tents, makeshift shelters and vehicles with people living in them jumped to 9,535 in January, from 5,335 in 2013.

Gentrification downtown and in Venice eliminated cheap hotel rooms, motels and single-room apartments that were once the last resort of the poor.

Growing tensions in the city’s rapidly changing neighborhoods were underlined by the fatal police shootings of two unarmed homeless men on skid row and in Venice in just over two months. The LAPD is investigating the March 1 death of Charly Keunang and the killing last week of Brendon K. Glenn.

Mark Ryavec, president of the Venice Stakeholders Assn., called on Garcetti, L.A.County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, Bonin and City Atty. Mike Feuer to “accept that fixing this situation is their responsibility, not just the LAPD’s.”

The tally is based on a street count conducted by 5,500 volunteers over three days in January, shelter censuses and demographic extrapolation and analysis. The number is required for federal funding to tackle homelessness and is used to estimate program needs and assign resources.

Los Angeles has the nation’s largest concentration of homeless veterans. The Obama administration, which also vowed to end veteran homelessness nationally, has roughly doubled funding to the county, offering $105 million in homeless grants and services, according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.

Funding was $62 million in 2013 and $56 million last year. The city housing authority has also dedicated 500 rent subsidies to veterans whose discharges make them ineligible for VA services as well as to the chronically homeless.

But advocates say in some cases veterans and longtime homeless people are shoving aside those newly homeless because of the affordable housing crisis.

“What’s happened is existing resources have been re-targeted to the chronically homeless, but the pot hasn’t been significantly expanded,” Clare said.

The city’s affordable housing fund, which in 2008 totaled $108 million, plunged to $26 million in 2014.

In his proposed budget, Garcetti called for $5 million in general fund money and $5 million in yet-to-be negotiated taxes on Airbnb short-term rentals to replenish the coffers. As part of his back-to-basics agenda, the mayor proposed spending $31 million annually on sidewalk and other improvements beginning in the next budget year.

Christine Margiotta, vice president of community impact at United Way of Greater Los Angeles, said she thinks the numbers show the need to not just help find people housing but address the causes of homelessness, such as low wages, unemployment and increasing rental costs.

She said a lot of work has been done in the past four years, with community partners providing housing to 20,000 of the region’s most vulnerable people.

“I think it’s critical we don’t lose sight of that and become disheartened,” she said. “We just need to redouble our efforts ... and have a strong eye toward prevention in the future.”

Alice Callaghan, a longtime advocate for the homeless on skid row, criticized city leaders for failing to stem the loss of housing.

“All we get from City Hall is breezy poetry — ‘I will house everybody by next year.’ That’s absurd. There’s no housing to put people in,” Callaghan said. “It’s very depressing. I don’t think people understand how bad it is.”

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