1.

I think we should gather the homeless in a rocket and blast them into outer space. We have the technology.

2.

Another poor attempt at humor.. or is it irony archiperv?

I'm not sure I at all get homeless blogger's point here. But to claim the Federal Government is leading the way in anything here is complete BS. The Feds have done nothing but make the problem worse - by cutting public housing programs, then turning affordable housing development over to a market based tax credit system, then demolishing public housing to make it mixed income (ie. housing less poor), then by cutting Section 8 vouchers, then by offering paltry homeless funds with a million strings attached. Mangano is fine but where is the money to build this supportive housing nirvana?? Today's funding levels are a drop in the bucket of need - and cities and states are expected to pick up the tab.

3.

1. move them to the bank of LA river.
2. move them to furnished abandoned building around the county.
3. move them to the new Park Fifth building.
4. Give them Orange county

take ur pick angelenos

4.

I want to know why they all have nice camping tents. What happened to good ol fashioned shanty town making?

5.

as someone who lives just steps from skidrow, my own observations have led me to the conclusion that chronic homelessness is nearly always the product of drug addiction and/or mental illness. the non-governmental organizations who currently serve these people can at best provide palliative care, but they are not capable of curing them. until we get serious about treating these people as medical patients (some of whom will require life-long care), they will remain on the streets.

as for skid row, i believe that such a concentration reinforces the cycle of despair and hopelessness by isolating the homeless in an environment where drugs, prostitution, and all manner of crime are normal.

6.

> The Feds have done nothing
> but make the problem worse

How about the geniuses at organizations like the ACLU, who suscribe to the theory that homeless people should be given the most permissive latitude possible? That if they're loitering on the street or sidewalk for hours, or days, on end, it's cruel to tell them "get the hell out of here!" Or it's cruel to even direct them to the nearest shelter, much less to actually cite them for violating a variety of city codes, such as littering or indecent exposure.

7.

Giving these people low cost housing will not help the addiction or the mental illness that perpetuate homelessness.

Nor does grouping them all together do anything but strengthen what ever mentality it is that got them there in the first place. That is to say,if everyone around you is in just as bad a shape, or worse, what motivates you to do any better? And if having this situation i.e Skid Row is(considering the damatic increase in homelessness) proving to not have a substantial positive effect is now too becoming a strain on an other wise developing communitty, wouldn't it make sense to either change the game completely or at least relocate?

I don't think NIMBYism would be such a huge issue if Skid Row was actualy a very effective system which provided results accordingly.

8.

The problem with helping the homeless is that our own problems with the cost of housing tend to erode our enthusiasm for finding cheap housing for others.

9.

Nonsense, the homeless deserve to live rent free in downtown or beach adjacent housing paid for by the state or federal government.

Just because the average hardworking California citizen struggles to afford rent in either location doesn't mean that we can't provide housing free of charge to whatever maladjusted addict wants to live here.

Oh wait, that's exactly what it means.

How about shipping them all to Detroit, where houses cost $5-10k, and GIVING them homes to own outright as long as they promise to stay there and fix them up and meet with their social worker once a week for 12-18 months?

Homeless problem? Solved. Detroit's urban blight? Solved.

10.

So you're walking down the street on any given day, and you pass by 4 homeless guys camped outside some old building. 3 out of 4 times the smell of alcohol and empty beer cans and bottle shaped things suspiciously wrapped in brown paper bags are not too far, I wonder "who in the fuck is selling these guys alcohol???, That is the last thing they need, I understand that the guy at the local 7/11 is just doing business, but still, the fact is by selling him that giant can of King Cobra at 11 am he is only perpetuating the illness/cycle. For what, a buck fifty? just adding to the problem. That's the real evil right there, not some yuppie NIMBY guy who wants the streets around his loft void of urine, feces, beer bottles etc . . .

Clearly, prohibiting anyone of age from buying alcohol is wrong, even if homeless, but if the City/Gov or the powers that be mandated and enforced strict laws that REQUIRED a VALID ID for ALL trying to purchase alcohol, I think we would have a lot fewer homeless drunk guys roaming the streets at the all hours of the day.

If cops have the time to stake out horny men in airport bathroom stalls I think they can manage to stake out liquor stores for propper ID checking

not a solution, but . . .

11.

Yeah, it is the ALCU's fault for having the darned notion that people without home's have civil and human rights too. That the homeless have a right to sleep somewhere and should not be targeted for stupid offenses like jaywalking, thereby creating a cycle where folks don't pay fines, get arrested on a warrant and cycle their way from jail to the streets and back... (not to mention being shipped out of town or told they can't buy what they want)

Robert make a great point. Support for public housing is universal in places like Sweeden and Singapore, where 1/2 live in subsidized housing and therefore it is perceived as for everyone. We live in a country where the free market in real estate is Godly and therefore we all struggle paying 1/3 of our income for housing.

If you believe in the free market dominating our lives, then you have to accept the consequences of a million homeless and 50 million who can't afford health care. I am so sorry you all don’t like having to see this fact in front of your downtown lofts but get real. Think about what it would be like if you were like my friend – who got fired from her job because she was sick too much (they didn’t provide sick days or health care), became homeless and then could not get a job without an address or place to get well. As someone who has interviewed hundreds of homeless, this is the common story. Nearly half of homeless DO work, half are NOT addicted and mental illness is not taken care of.

No one gets FREE rent anywhere. In the best case (Section 8), you pay 1/3 of your income like the rest of us. Most of the so-called affordable housing built with tax credits has rents of like 700-1000 – quite a lot to pay for anyone making below the median income.

12.

To say that someone of mind and body, someone who is completely free of illness & addiction and thourgh no fault of their own is unable earn a living i.e food, basic needs, and shelter in this country is an insult to millions and millions of people who have through some miracle of god apparently managed to get by, and not perseverance.

This whole guilt trip speech is tired to say the least. It is exactly the reason why even with the "heroic" efforts of the 80's Even more people find themselves on the streets. These sad tales do nothing but garner a few donations and false promises while all together missing the root of the problem.

But yes, let these agencies keep throwing money at the problem and maybe this time it will go away.

13.

"Support for public housing is universal in places like Sweeden and Singapore"

Big whoop-de-do! Those countries also are mono-racial, without America's unique history of slavery and then massive waves of immigration. Or in the case of Singapore, the government will crack the whip (literally too), or worse, when it comes to drug users and graffiti taggers, meaning that nation isn't full of all the pushovers who've allowed a scene as extreme as LA's Skid Row to develop through the decades.

A large fraction of the homeless in LA are people of African-American background---not Latino, not white, not Asian, but black. There was an observation that if race and low-income origins, combined with prejudice, were a big reason for this, then how come there isn't an equally high number of homeless Latinos on Skid Row?

The best way to handle this quagmire is to encourage the homeless to move to the neighborhoods where all of LA's do-gooders live, including the well-paid attorneys and community activists whose hearts bleed just as long as the problem doesn't get too close to their own backyard.

14.

"We live in a country where the free market in real estate is Godly and therefore we all struggle paying 1/3 of our income for housing."

No 9 did have a point. If the high cost of housing is a big factor behind the homeless problem, then a lot of people facing that issue should consider re-locating to a town like Detroit, where housing is a lot less expensive.

15.

This is not a housing issue its a mental health issue. Its Ronnie Reagans fault.

16.

Singapore is hardly "mono-racial." Quite the opposite, really: there are huge Malay and Indian minorities. I've seen arguments that the capital-intensive industrialization that began there in the '70s was motivated in large part to reduce the country's dependence on the Malayan migrants who worked in the country's then-dominant textile and garment industries.

Patty Cake is right, though. Large numbers of these individuals need to be reinstitutionalized. To say that they have the right to sleep on the street is to ignore the notion of informed consent: most of these individuals cannot be considered competent without treatment of the sort that they cannot receive outside a much stricter environment than the Skid Row free-for-all.

17.

Yes! everyone have the right to sleep on the streets!

people do that in hundreds and thousands sleep on colorado blvd every new years'eve!!!!

I just find that ridiculous that city of Los Angeles would only allow them to do so (huge #) in the skid row "distric" but if they all start to move to let's say Century City, Bel Air,what would they do? let them do that?

Wrtie the Mayor and ask him to help the homeless people out.

18.

The Downtown homeless on the streets for the most part are:

White or black (there is one asian guy I see on the street downtown who is mentally ill) Don't see too many Latinos

Drug addicted or mentally ill. This is a very high percentage.

In need of the help of the Christian Right (rather than worry about things like gay marriage or discarded stem cells). If the current downtown estimate on the streets is under 800 homeless, every Church in Los Angeles should "help" one person...it would end homelessness on the streets. Where is the outrage from Lou Shelton, Focus on the Family and Rush Limbaugh?

19.

"White or black"

Actually, based on what I've seen on most of my trips to downtown, mostly black.

And the situation went off the deep end to begin with because of all the nonsense and naivete of non-religious liberals, who do represent the largest portion of the city-based populace.

20.

This is really unbelievable to me. If it makes all of you feel better to blame those living on the streets, go right ahead. You will find a way to shirk society's responsibility for anything. It does not matter that the US has by far the highest homeless population in the industrialized world, as well as the leat affordable housing. If it makes you feel better to think its a black thing, that disgusts me. The truth is that 30% are white, 24% hispanic. The only thing race affects is the fact that it makes society less prone to feel responsibility and solve the problem. Liberals feel good giving hand-outs but that solves nothing.

However if you want to look clearly at the issue, the lack of housing at the very low income range is clearly the "root problem." There is a deficit of several hundred thousand units at this income range in Los Angeles. People earning less than $15/hour simply can not afford what the market provides any more (and getting a subsidized unit is next to impossible). 1.6 million in the county live below the poverty line. And once you are homeless, you have to come up with like $2-3k for security deposits and first and last months rent.

And BTW - most homeless (58%) are not the "chronic" you all seem to have stuck on your mind. 7/8 homeless do not live in skid row. Families headed by single mothers are the most numerous homeless grouping. We need to put people in housing with services to get people on the right track - like San Francisco is doing with amazing results.

21.

If housing it too damn expensive here and there's not enough affordable housing, leave! Like someone already mentioned, the Detroit area is full of cheap real estate. There is no "right" to live exactly where you wish. I'd like to live in Bel-Air but can't afford it, should I simply begin sleeping/defecating on the sidewalk there?

There's plently of solutions to this, all of which would be decried by the pathetic bleeding hearts.

av2ts, why don't you invite a bunch of homeless to live with you? After all, these people deserve a place to live! Housing is too expensive! They're not actually crazy! Right...

22.

If affordable housing at the Very low income levels is really the root of the problem here, Why in the fuck stay in one of the least affordable reagions in the country?

and considering Newsom's, "keep them away from the tourist" mindset, I wouldn't be praising SF, their homeless aren't going anywhere but away from Union Square.

And for their own benefit, lets "pretend" that the real issue IS some undiagnosed mental illness or addiction, rather than some BS "life is too expensive" reasoning.

23.

Hundreds of people DO leave Los Angeles every day, including many of the poor undesirables you all seem to so badly want out of "your" city. People that have lived here their entire lives, with family, Church and friends here are all being forced to leave. Soon LA will be only for the rich and you all will have your way. It will be a perfect market outcome. The poor do not deserve to live in this great location - they should all live in Detroit or Lancaster. But wait, who will cut your lawn, serve your Frappe, clean your toilets?? Do we want them all to clog the highways from the high desert?

The problem is the gap between wages and housing. Why is that so difficult to understand? Add to that the fact that the fastest growing jobs in LA are at the low-income service level. So the region obviously relies on the poor, unskilled, but we don't want them living anywhere near us.

Of course mental illness plays a role - as does drugs. But does anyone think living on the streets helps those conditions?

24.

> Hundreds of people DO
> leave Los Angeles every day

Yea, but look at background of the tens of thousands who replace them:

There are about 1 million unauthorized immigrants in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, almost twice the number of any other metro area; the unauthorized are one-tenth of the area's population (10 million). In 2004, about two-fifths (41 percent) of California's unauthorized population resided in Los Angeles. No other metropolitan area had as many unauthorized immigrants as Los Angeles----New York had the second largest metropolitan concentration with slightly more than half a million unauthorized immigrants.

Unauthorized family incomes are about half of incomes of families headed by U.S.-born citizens, nationally and in California. In 2003 in California, unauthorized families had an average income of $29,700, compared with $54,600 for native-born citizens. The average family income for unauthorized immigrants was lower still in Los Angeles ($26,300). Moreover, unauthorized immigrant families were much larger than native-born families (by 37 percent in California and 43 percent in Los Angeles), which further reduced the income available to individual members of these families.

25.

av2ts is right about the majority of the homeless--they're not crazy or drug-addicted. When we're talking about Skid Row, though, we're talking about the "hardcore" homeless. The indigent with children are spread more evenly across the city and county.

On that tip, right now I'm reading the classic 2001 Quigley/Raphael/Smolensky paper, from The Review of Economics and Statistics 83(1), that argues that a lack of affordable rental housing is the cause of the bulk of the homelessness problem.

One of the biggest reasons for this shortfall, by the way, is the illegality in most single-family areas of auxiliary dwelling units. Living over a garage might not be everyone's idea of paradise but it beats the hell out of being on the street.

26.

Pete, I thought 'granny flats' were allowed in R1, with ZA approval? I have to say I think this is a very minor issue. The cost to build these units is not cheap. The costs must be recouped by property owners. In addition, they offer privacy and space, therefore they rent for a premium over normal MF dwellings. In this market, only deep subsidies of dense MF projects can allow any kind of affordability to begin to tap the very low income range.

27.

av2ts, they can only be built as "bachelor" units with no kitchen facilities beyond a hot plate, and in most cases require additional off-street parking. The former limits the attractiveness of such a unit as a rental, while the latter can make it significantly more expensive to build.

You're pretty much dead wrong about the need for heavily subsidized dense multifamily housing, though. A couple of papers in the '80s found no statistical relationship between the number of public housing units per capita (which is really what you're talking about) and the number of homeless per capita in a city. Chicago has almost as much per capita public housing as NYC yet has almost no homeless population, while NYC has a huge one. Much more significant was the presence of rent control/stabilization, which is positively correlated with homelessness. Of course, the presence of rent control may actually just be a proxy for the combination of high housing demand and extreme NIMBYism that characterizes large cities on the coasts, since such situations almost inevitably produce a rent control movement as a result of rapidly increasing housing prices.

By a large degree the most significant factor for homeless population was annual mean temperature: cities without significant winters, like Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco, have the largest homeless populations, since they attract the "hardcore homeless" (who are often shipped to these places, to be sure, by lazy social services agencies).

28.

I think you missed the point. I doubt the majority of people despise homeless peole as you seem to think so, or that we want them shipped off to God-knows where.

The main problem is that what ever system, organization etc that led to Sikd Row as we know it in downtown LA has clearly failed.So why keep a system that has failed to provide results? Why not do something completely different?

I don't see homeless people as a problem, but having a skid row here that is inefficient, yes that is a problem.

as was stated earlier "I don't think NIMBYism would be such a huge issue if Skid Row was actually a very effective system which provided results accordingly."

Kate's comments just prove that it is possible to get by in this "great location" even with the lack of affordable housing.

29.

My point was not about what correlates with homelessness across the country, but about what Los Angeles must do to lower its homeless population. You said restrictions on granny flats were one of the biggest reasons for the shortfall of VL income units here. My point was that this is marginal as most granny flats aren't able to/don't serve the VL income population. Plus I would argue most SF areas in cities around the country restrict a 2nd unit in back alltogether. It is only a CA state law that made cities here permit it.

Maybe your larger point is the familiar refrain that we need less restriction on new construction. But this is a red herring to me. Developers are born to complain about red tape, while communities think the Planning Dept and LADBS don't go far enough in eliciting community imput and requiring higher development (design, traffic/parking mitigation, etc.) standards. Personally, as someone up close to both sides, I think the mix is about right. The problem of the time it takes is one of adequate personnel, which always gets shorted. Permits more than doubled in 5 years but staff stayed steady...

Irregardless, easing the process to build more market housing will have only a very marginal trickle down effect. The most direct and cost effective route is building more units as close as possible to the VL income range. Simple as that.

30.

JayA, I was not responding to you, but some of the comments above made my stomach turn.

If your concern is the efficiency, then no system is as efficient as skid row. In a place as transit poor and spread out as LA, concentrating services and shelters together made perfect sense. The only thing that has changed is people now living downtown means that people actually must see what the results of this efficiency has produced - and it is not pretty.

The problem of homelessness is not skid row. The LA Times reports there are just 8-900 people even living there now - 1/3 have gone elsewhere since the LAPD started fining and arresting people for loitering and jaywalking (1000+ tickets). So only 1 in 100 homeless in LA County stay in skid row. Skid Row becomes the obvious "face" of homelessness, but I have a feeling people are speaking on the basis of self-interest (property values and perceptions of safety) rather than any concern for the well-being of homeless people - or efficiency of services. Organizations that work down there are heroic and do a great job. They are not the problem either. The FREE MARKET dominance of our housing market is to blame. I know that is not PC on a real estate blog but it is the inescapable truth.

31.

So if Los Angeles is such an expensive place to call home, and if that creates homelessness or great pressure on low-income people so that they're far more liable to end up on the street, then why are so many "unauthorized immigrants" moving to it? Why aren't they moving to less expensive communities similar to Detroit or Kansas City? And what's true of dirt-poor immigrants applies double (or triple) to people who are in far worse shape financially and emotionally.

32.

av2ts, you're naive if you think that we have a "free market" housing system. Most of the housing in American urban areas is in the jurisdiction of suburbs that are, for all intents and purposes, homeowners' soviets; in central cities, the principal complaint of homeowners is that city governments aren't behaving in the same way! Socialism is socialism no matter the level of government at which it's promulgated, and in land use we effectively have socialism for the rich.

Marginal, trickle-down type changes will have a substantial impact. The loss of cheap housing that leads to homelessness is a result of the rich-NIMBY-driven inability to build housing in areas where the market actually wants it (namely, near job/activity centers), due to the resistance of wealthy homeowners in these areas.

A combination of modest supply increases--achievable much more easily through deregulation than through public housing construction--and a significant increase in the purchasing power of housing vouchers (making Section 8 mandatory and offsetting compliance costs with a tax cut, etc.) could effectively solve the homelessness problem for all but the hardcore homeless.

33.

Why aren't they moving to less expensive communities similar to Detroit or Kansas City?

They are, actually. Illegal immigration to inner-city Los Angeles has actually fallen substantially in the past decade and has risen sharply in the South, Midwest, and inland West.

Illegal immigrants go where there are abundant low-skill jobs and cheap housing. That's not Los Angeles, and that's why illegals are actually leaving the city in droves for both cheaper parts of California (Bakersfield, Fresno, San Bernardino, the Coachella Valley, etc.) and for cheaper places altogether. A large portion of the growth of urban areas like Boise, Salt Lake City, and Spokane has been Mexicans and Central Americans leaving California or skipping it altogether.

Dowell Myers at USC and William Frey at the Brookings Institution have some fascinating numbers about this phenomenon. It's the reason that illegal immigration has become a national issue: illegal immigration is now truly a national phenomenon.

34.

Pete, you are a bit delusional if you think we have socialist "Soviets" controlling the production of real estate in the US. Socialist theory says nothing about the state regulation of the capitalist built form. Capitalism is wholly dependent upon the state regulating the workings of capitalists in every sector, including housing. Regulation is not socialism, it is a way to make capitalism palatable. Socialism is about who OWNS the means of production. In the US, 99% of housing is built by the private sector for the private sector at whatever prices the market will bear. Socialism would include a good dose of cooperative housing, public housing and (arguably) community ownership of the land beneath private housing.

35.

katie, so many migrants have traditionally moved to LA because it has historically been a dynamic, job rich environment close to Mexico, where many have family or friends. As Pete correctly notes, this is changing because of the housing price issue - and the comparative lack of well paying jobs for the unskilled. The same market forces that bring capital to Los Angeles, drive cheap unskilled immigrant labor here as well.

36.

To this blog, to the people responding to you, Skid row IS the problem. Yes, obviously there are homeless people else where in Met LA. But that doesn't affect DT they way Skid row does.

Along with what Pete mentioned, A vast portion of the Mexican's that did in the past move into the poor LA areas managed to solidify a growing middle class, again, even with LA prices.

37.

> Illegal immigration to inner-city
> Los Angeles has actually fallen
> substantially in the past decade

> As Pete correctly notes, this is
> changing because of the housing
> price issue - and the comparative
> lack of well paying jobs for the
> unskilled.

Unless that trend is significant and long lasting, it will be hard to see it having much effect on a major statistic that's already been reached, and that still was quite applicable to Los Angeles as recently as 3 years ago:

In 2004, about two-fifths (41 percent) of California's unauthorized population resided in Los Angeles. No other metropolitan area had as many unauthorized immigrants as Los Angeles

38.

av2ts, perhaps "soviet" is too strong a word--but "cooperative corporation" would not be. The aim of nearly every suburban government is the maximization of the value of owner-occupied residential property. In order to accomplish this, these governments use quantity controls--the most distorting form of regulation--that effectively redistribute wealth from the relatively poor (who have fewer choices about where to live and must pay more for housing) to the relatively rich. It may be capitalism, but it's nowhere near a free market.

Katie4M, you should note that only one other urban area in the United States has more people than Los Angeles, and it's New York--which isn't exactly hurting for illegal immigrants, albeit more often of the Caribbean and East Asian variety than Mexican and Central American (although this is changing).