Finding a Way Home

July 27, 2006

FINDING A WAY HOME

When Equal Isn't Fair

AFTER HER 5-YEAR-OLD SON was killed in a car accident, Susan Burton turned to drugs and spent 15 years cycling between jail, friends' couches and living on the streets. She eventually pulled herself back, bought a home and opened it to women in Watts who have nowhere else to turn.

June 25, 2006

OUR SO-CAL LIFE

Homeless in Life, Nameless in Death

THE OLDEST cemetery in Los Angeles, opened in 1877, is Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. Some of the most well known families in Los Angeles — including the Boyles, for whom the neighborhood is named — are buried there. So are thousands of Angelenos whose names we will never know.

June 12, 2006

FINDING A WAY HOME

Housing Homeless Families

CHristine elks, a mother of three young children, has lived in so many places in the last four years that she must stop to count them on her hand. There was a friend's couch in North Hollywood. A shelter on skid row so dangerous they spent their days in a park across town. And, perhaps most horribly, there was a "pay shelter" in South Los Angeles: a dark, cramped space the size of a small gym where the Elkses slept, for three years, with 11 other families — nearly 50 people in all — separated by little more than sheets. Colds and other maladies were common inside, as were fights and gunshots outside.

May 19, 2006

FINDING A WAY HOME

Shortchanged in San Pedro

TO UNDERSTAND WHY HOMELESSNESS is such an intractable problem for Los Angeles, one need look no further than San Pedro. That's where more than two dozen acres of former military housing originally intended for homeless families are instead being sold for millions of dollars.

May 4, 2006

EDITORIAL

Not in their backyard

FOUR WEEKS AGO, JAMIE KRONICK moved into her first home in six years. She had been sleeping on the streets of Santa Monica, often in a doorway if the building's owners didn't make too much of a fuss. Now Kronick, who is 50, lives in a clean, well-lighted studio apartment in Silver Lake so new it smells of fresh paint.

April 18, 2006

EDITORIAL

Much ado about not much

AT FIRST GLANCE, NEWS THAT a federal appeals court has blocked Los Angeles police from arresting people for sleeping on the sidewalks may seem like a big deal. But the ruling and worries that it will make it difficult for the police department to clean up skid row are much ado about almost nothing.

April 6, 2006

EDITORIAL

Don't get cocky, kids

THE AIR WILL BE THICK WITH CONGRATULATIONS this morning on skid row, where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, members of the County Board of Supervisors and others are scheduled to gather to announce a 10-year plan to end homelessness in Los Angeles. The plan, three years in the making, comes just two days after the supervisors voted to spend $100 million on improved services for the homeless on skid row and beyond.

April 3, 2006

EDITORIAL

Homeless politics, L.A.-style

LATE LAST MONTH, the county Board of Supervisors announced a $100-million plan to improve services for the homeless on skid row and beyond. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was barely consulted about the plan, and he didn't know when it was being unveiled. But he can hardly complain because in December, when he held a news conference to announce a record homeless grant from the federal government, he waited until the last minute to tell the county, leaving too little time for most supervisors to make the event. The mayor's office announced a new homelessness czar a few weeks ago; the county followed with a similar appointment a week later.

March 23, 2006

EDITORIAL

No breaks for Skid Row

THERE IS AN EMERGING CONSENSUS, long overdue, that the police should aggressively enforce the law on skid row. The question is how aggressively. Police Chief William J. Bratton is considering two proposals. One would sweep thousands of homeless people from their tent-and-box cities; the other would allow them to remain but would arrest those who commit even the most minor crimes.

March 5, 2006

EDITORIAL

Our city, our duty

THERE ARE ENOUGH HOMELESS people in Los Angeles to fill the Kodak Theatre, home of tonight's Academy Awards ceremony, 26 times over. For one night, Los Angeles is the capital of glamour and style, but it is the capital of homelessness every day of the year.

February 18, 2006

EDITORIAL

Homeless in the foothills

IT'S TOO EARLY TO KNOW how real it is, but the attention being paid to skid row and homelessness by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the county Board of Supervisors and many other community leaders is encouraging. Now comes the first major test of this supposed new resolve.

January 30, 2006

EDITORIAL

The drug that keeps addicts alive

LOS ANGELES HAS THE CHANCE to save hundreds of lives this year for only a few dollars each. By simply distributing naloxone — a safe and legal drug- overdose medication — the city could drastically reduce the number of deaths due to overdose, which has become one of the state's most urgent public health crises.

January 3, 2006

EDITORIAL

A musician of the streets

READERS OF THE TIMES HAVE watched Nathaniel Ayers — musician, schizophrenic, street dweller — creep for eight months toward a better life under the empathetic eye of columnist Steve Lopez. Ayers' is a hard case, mired in decades of sporadically treated mental illness, cemented by habit to a patch of sidewalk at the mouth of a tunnel in downtown Los Angeles. He also is the public's window into the promise and difficulties of a new approach in California to cases like his, offering assistance for the whole person rather than treatment for a disease. For the first time in years, thanks to a 2004 ballot initiative, public health agencies will have enough funds to seek out people like Ayers rather than limit who can be helped.