Shameful Fumble

Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana warns that housing the homeless threatens to become a political football. If true, then the supervisors have fumbled away a chance to take the lead. And, to extend the metaphor, the losers are not the politicians who are conniving for field position but the spectators--the homeless and the voters.

There are thousands of people in Los Angeles without homes--from downtown to the San Fernando Valley. To dramatize their plight, a group of relief workers raised a small tent city downtown over the holiday season. The tents, now dismantled, housed 200 to 300 people. They sat, symbolically, on vacant land between Los Angeles City Hall and the County Hall of Administration as if challenging both governments to act.

The city moved first to replace the tents with something less temporary--even though the tent-city organizers were directing most of their pleas to the county, which administers welfare programs. Operating under the aegis of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, labor unions have donated workers and materials to built an emergency wooden shelter, now nearly ready for occupancy, near 5th and San Julian streets.

Then Supervisor Ed Edelman made a sensible proposal to have the city and the county work together to improve communication and better serve the homeless, especially those in the downtown area where the problem is the most severe and most visible. He wanted Mayor Tom Bradley directly involved because he knows that only with officials of the highest level participating is it clear to all that the issue has top priority. Edelman has learned of the scope of the problem and the lack of government coordination through hearings that he held last summer and visits to Skid Row.

Dana, who has himself tried to identify potential county shelter locations, said that Edelman’s proposal would “make a big political football out of this.” His ally on the board, Mike Antonovich, agreed. Presumably any visibility gained through this effort would help Bradley’s reelection bid and thus affect a renewed challenge of Gov. George Deukmejian. If helping the homeless is such a big political plus, you’d think that the supervisors would be rushing to join in. Or is compassion political and reprehensible only when the other side shows it?

Fortunately, there is a way out. Edelman says that he’s going ahead with an informal effort to pull the city and county players together. With better coordination the county, for example, may learn more quickly when city building inspectors find safety violations at hotels where the county subsidizes lodging for the needy. Edelman’s effort requires no vote by the rest of the supervisors, although their endorsement would add much-needed county commitment.

The emergency shelter also needs money with which to operate. It may be that charities, corporations and private donors will have to provide that money. The operating money should be a moral, if not a legal, responsibility of county government. It leaves that task to others to its shame. But at this point shame is the name of the game.