Skid row sanity
It is natural to want to put the most positive spin possible on this week’s homeless settlement, which allows people to spend their nights on public sidewalks almost anywhere in the city of Los Angeles without being rousted by police. Frustrated advocates, policymakers and observers grasp at any hint of forward momentum after years of official ping-ponging between approaches to the problem. Treat the homeless with dignity and let them get help at their own pace -- by allowing them to camp out near food service businesses and residences? Crack down on crime -- by sweeping the streets and compelling the mentally ill, the drug-addicted and the destitute to move to some other part of town?
So there is some appeal to the agreement, under which the Los Angeles Police Department agrees to stop enforcing, from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., the city law against sleeping on sidewalks. All bets are off once the city opens 1,250 units of permanent supportive housing -- units that put roofs over the heads of a few of the city’s most desperate people while providing the drug treatment, mental health services and job counseling meant to keep them from drifting back to the street. Unlike earlier settlement proposals, it avoids unfairly placing the responsibility for putting up the homeless on the eastern part of downtown that has become known as skid row.
Still, the settlement carries a very distinct whiff of status quo. An agreement that puts an end to legal wrangling is fine, as far as it goes. But there is little here that actually moves the city toward getting homeless people housed.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the city’s policing of the homeless in the first place because it is both cruel and preposterous to arrest someone for sleeping outside when that person has nowhere else to sleep. The settlement provides no deadline for completing those 1,250 units, and city officials have the option of simply accepting the long-term non-enforcement of the sidewalk ban if supportive housing falls off the city’s priority list.
It’s not part of the agreement, but City Council President Eric Garcetti stuck his neck out and said those units will be completed within three years. That’s an important commitment because it keeps the city on track toward housing its homeless as a long-term solution.
Los Angeles cannot tolerate hundreds and thousands of people living on its streets -- for the welfare of the homeless and that of the rest of the city.
