If Not in Your Back Yard, Why Put Homeless in Ours? : Downtown: The hasty move of the Union Rescue Mission seems designed to spare state workers from seeing unkempt street people.
A shocking process is under way to move hundreds of homeless men who seek shelter from the elements each night in downtown Los Angeles. The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency is enticing the Union Rescue Mission with millions of taxpayer dollars to encourage it to find a new home.
Why does the CRA want to give the Rescue Mission $6.5 million to buy a new home and then millions more in payment for its Main Street facility, where it has served the homeless for more than 70 years? It’s simple. For a long time, the CRA has been pressured by the state of California to get rid of the Union Rescue Mission’s 800-bed shelter on Main Street, because a new state office tower is being built around the corner.
State officials have made it clear and the redevelopment agency has agreed: It is unacceptable for well-groomed and stylishly dressed state workers to be confronted by the sight of the homeless huddling down the block. The situation can be compared to a potential home buyer demanding that his real estate agent evict his new next-door neighbors because the family has no concept, understanding or appreciation of social graces.
The CRA is buying into preposterous arguments that hard-working state employees have no business being subjected to the real or imagined daily threat presented by people who might not have shaved, showered or slept in a bed. What the CRA should do is to fix up the existing mission so that it can become a shining example of a redevelopment project for the homeless. Instead, the agency is transferring blight from one neighborhood to another. To call this an outrage is an understatement.
While the CRA and the state are trying to give the Union Rescue Mission the bum’s rush, they don’t intend to sweep the homeless clear of Main Street and move them far away. No, the mission’s moving vans will need to travel only a few blocks to Central City East, an area popularly known over the years as Skid Row.
The rationale for this is disturbingly clear. Central City East is already home to the largest concentration of homeless service shelters in Southern California: Los Angeles Mission, Fred Jordan Mission, the Weingart Center, L.A. Men’s Place, Transition House and a host of single-room-occupancy hotels. The CRA seems to be saying, “Hey, what’s one more mission? After all, most of their homeless friends are already there, so they will feel more at home.” The agency would have you believe that this forced migration of the homeless is intended to improve the quality of their lives. This is hypocrisy at its best.
Why should the Union Rescue Mission be offensive to state employees, yet be acceptable to the blue-collar women and men working in Central City East? What the state doesn’t want to confront before it moves into its gleaming office tower, we manage to deal with on a daily basis with a good measure of compassion.
But the story doesn’t end there. The CRA’s handling of this phase of the Union Rescue Mission’s relocation has been rushed, incomplete and contrived. The mission entered into an agreement to buy its hoped-for new home months ago. It was done in great secrecy. Neighbors were not informed. Neither was the City Council.
The whole matter is being brought before the City Council only days before escrow is scheduled to close on the proposed new site. An artificial sense of urgency has been purposely created. There has been no formal and thorough city review and no compelling research to justify the relocation. There has been no meaningful consultation with the Central City East community. Worse yet, during a time when the CRA says that it’s running out of funds, it hasn’t convinced anyone that less expensive relocation sites are unavailable.
The deal to move the Union Rescue Mission to a new home at 6th and San Pedro streets will be considered by the full City Council on Friday. The council should see through this raw deal and disallow the CRA action.
A careful deliberation by the City Council could only benefit the homeless population on Main Street and might even save the taxpayers money. The Union Rescue Mission has been serving the homeless at its current site for generations; why the rush now?
