Rehab the author instead

I read with great amazement Heather Mac Donald’s Nov. 18 Op-Ed, “Skid Row in Rehab,” in the Los Angeles Times. I don’t believe it is a coincidence that the article appeared on my second birthday as a clean and sober member of society. I don’t believe in coincidences anymore, but that is another story.

I do believe in numbers, but it is well known that numbers are only as good as the analysis behind them. In fact, I learned this while earning my bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering with an emphasis in thermal fluids — a degree that makes me a rocket scientist. That — along with the law degree (juris doctorate) I earned, with grades that placed me in the top 10% of my class, while also working full time — should mean I’m pretty smart, right?

I am so smart that in 2004 I sold a home I owned so that I could support my crack habit and alcohol problem. Selling my home in concert with the crack and alcohol habits led me to homelessness very quickly. I was homeless when I entered the Tarzana Treatment Center exactly two years and one day before The Times published Mac Donald’s article about the life “without responsibilities” that I “chose” to live. Did I choose that life? Maybe, but it’s a stretch. I do know I didn’t choose the stepfather who evolved into a sexual predator, and I didn’t choose the recurrent major depression I suffer to this day as a result of his depravity.

But the rocket scientist in me wants to talk some more about numbers involved when Mac Donald claims: “Reality: Many people are there because they choose to live without responsibilities.”

“Many” is a number. Am I one of those many? I don’t know because I don’t know how many “many” is. Is it the same “many” used to describe the “vagrants [who] call officers by their first names?” Is it the same “many” that describes the people the author met on the streets? I wonder if Ms. Mac Donald spent many days on the street to meet the many people she met. Or was it just one day? And what does “met” mean? Did she shake a hand or did she talk to the “people.” Were the people she met homeless? Or were they just people? Maybe they were just a number like me.

More numbers: According to the article, “serious” crime dropped by 32% over the last 12 months. For the sake of argument ,I’ll hypothesize that “over 12 months” is about the same period as “mid-September 2006 to ... recent months.” Next, the “number of people sleeping on downtown streets” dropped from 1,876 to “just over 700,” which means the number of street sleepers dropped by 63% over about the same period of time that “serious” crime went down 32%.

If the population dropped 63%, shouldn’t we expect the amount of crime to reduce as well? And if the “population” of street sleepers decreased by 1,175 during that same period, is it really surprising — or even significant — that there were 261 fewer victims of “violent” crime in the skid row homeless population? Remember, analysis is more than just citing numbers, it also matters how one interprets and then uses the numbers to support a position in which one already believes. Having lived the life, I have my own opinions.

A word about my credentials, lest the interested reader wonder. I currently attend monthly meetings of the Antelope Valley Homeless Coalition, where I am actively involved in setting up a working homeless court. The homeless court will enable homeless people with misdemeanor warrants the opportunity to clean up their record so that they can more readily compete for housing and jobs. This is a necessary step to re-integrating into society, given that it is difficult if not impossible for a homeless person to obtain employment, or even an apartment, with the variety of warrants one accumulates for “violations of city ordinances.”

Incidentally, it does not surprise me that there are more arrests for “aggravated assaults and drug trafficking” than there are for “violations of the city ordinance banning sleeping or lying on the sidewalk.” Why am I not surprised? Because violations of city (or county) ordinances give rise to tickets, not arrests: One does not get arrested for sleeping on a sidewalk; one gets a ticket. I know.

I also volunteer regularly at Grace Resource Center in the Antelope Valley, which I further support through a monthly contribution of $200. Recently, I also raised $2,000 for the center by participating in a fundraising event. While volunteering at Grace, where I oversee a “Hot Meal” service every month with my 16-year-old daughter, I talked recently to a man about why he became homeless. (I didn’t just “meet” him and/or ask whether he wanted more policing, although being homeless as he was and not having access to even one of the “50 to 140 empty shelter beds on a typical night on skid row,” I suspect he has greater worries than whether or not there should be more police to give him a ticket for illegal camping.)

The man I spoke with told me that he was homeless because the city sold the plot of land he could afford to live on, and he couldn’t afford anything else on his Social Security disability. I wonder if Ms. Mac Donald found that problem, or even asked about it, while meeting her “people.” I wondered what I would earn on Social Security disability, consideration given to my six-figure salary. So I looked at the Social Security Web page and ran their “quick calculation.” Guess what? I drop to about $25,000 a year. That means I would only “earn” about 19% of my original salary. Me, the attorney and rocket scientist.

For comparison’s sake, I wondered what a person would earn on Social Security (more numbers) in the event he or she suffered a disabling condition in the immediate future, and assuming a salary of $60,000/year, which may be more representative of middle-class America. I calculated that $5,000 a month reduces to $1,658 a month, only 33% of the original salary.

Let’s talk about more numbers. For example, a mortgage is a good number to discuss. If we assume our middle-class American has a monthly mortgage of only $1,000 (quite a low number by today’s standards in California), we’ve already allocated 60% of our “disability income.” Now let’s add a gas bill of $20 (or $100, if it’s winter) and an electric bill of $100 (or $20, if it’s winter). Forget the telephone and cable TV; we can’t afford those. But we have to eat, right? So we will add $100 a week for groceries, which corresponds to about $400 per month. We now have total expenditures of $1,520, which is equivalent to 92% of our total “disability income,” and we’ve only paid the mortgage, a couple of utility bills and eaten (maybe: We don’t have a car to get to the store, and I haven’t included the cost of a monthly bus pass, $62).

Can we do it? Could you live, or simply exist, on only 33% of your current gross salary? It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, about the ease with which you could slip into homelessness, even without “choosing” that “life without responsibilities.”

It’s late as I write this: 1 a.m. I’ve been up late a lot lately because I recently formed a nonprofit corporation to raise awareness of homelessness — specifically to show the public who is on the street, why they are there and how we can help. I also want to raise money for a solution: permanent supportive housing.

I will end with this: It is not a coincidence that I seek to raise funds for permanent supportive housing and that the L.A. Times ran a positive article on that subject by Susannah Rosenblatt the day after Mac Donald’s. I believe we need to heal homelessness, not slander it with meaningless, manipulated numbers and vague references to “people” one meets.

It isn’t rocket science: Permanent supportive housing heals rather than perpetuates homelessness.

Donald E. Arnold is an attorney who currently practices in Encino. He recently founded a non-profit corporation, No-2-Know, Inc., which seeks to raise awareness of issues surrounding the homeless.

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