“‘What if we knew the cure for AIDS but only produced enough to treat a small percentage of AIDS victims? Wouldn’t the public be outraged? Yet that is exactly what we’re doing with homelessness: We know the cure—supportive housing—yet we don’t provide anywhere near enough of it.’ Three years ago Carla Javits, former president of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, put the situation in perspective and strengthened my resolve to work to provide more housing with supportive services. One of the most obvious sites for it is the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration campus.
“In 2004 I went to the West LA VA campus to see the New Directions facility. I was powerfully impressed by the effectiveness of their rehab program for chronically homeless veterans and by the story of what New Directions went through to gain use of the building. When John Keaveney, the co-founder, told me there were three other buildings like it sitting empty on the campus, I thought he was kidding. We walked into one that was really in bad shape—ceiling tiles hanging, plumbing that didn’t work, and he said, ‘See, I told you so.’ I knew then that part of my work on homelessness would be to persuade the federal government and local political leaders to work on getting these buildings restored and filled with homeless vets. The process has begun. I’ll keep going on this until the vets move in.”
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Housing the homeless across the region
Los Angeles County is the homeless capital of the United States, with about 74,000 people living on the street or in temporary housing on any given night. This doesn’t count the 6,000 homeless people in jail or hospitals. Contrary to popular belief, most of the county’s homeless people lived in the region before they became homeless. One third are chronically homeless; veterans make up about 12%.
Eliminating homelessness in LA County is not progressing as fast as it is in other cities such as Denver, San Francisco, or San Diego. A large part of LA’s problem is that the County and LA City governments are two separate bureaucracies, whose political leaders have not signed a 10-year plan to end homelessness, as many other metropolitan leaders across the country have. Plus there are 87 other cities in the region. Coordinating all these governments may seem impossible, but it must be done. LA County’s homeless will not be housed until each city does its fair share. Politicians will not work to create more supportive housing until voters get mad and demand it.
