Citing recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Gov. Gavin Newsom orders state agencies to clear homeless camps and encourages cities to do so
Gov. Gavin Newsom orders state agencies to clear homeless camps and encourages cities to do so
And this is the fucker people kept bringing up as a potential alternate to Kamala.
Yeah, fuck this guy. He was an asshole during covid as well. He might as well just convert to being a conservative at this point.
Fuck off, other states were literally shipping homeless to Cali to prove a point.
Gavin still absolutely could be a valid candidate
I'd rather have Joe back, man.
I have worked with unhoused populations in L.A. for the past 7 years and have past experience managing a housing provider agency. I currently work at a housing services agency.
The idea that the communities have "substantial resources" is laughable. It seems like there's a lot of money, but there really isn't. My agency is one of the larger agencies in L.A. and we struggle. It's not even "the heads take all the money in pay". Nah, there's just not enough money.
It's definitely not as easy as "just build more housing", though I wish it were. Even "housing first" doesnt work well enough and it even backfires quite often.
Newsom's idea of moving people along doesn't work either. That's what was happening before housing first came along and it didn't help shit.
I will say that substance use issues, physical and mental health need a lot more attention and treatment options that are available to all.
If anyone wants to discuss the issues, feel free to AMA. I'm open to suggestions that'll make my job easier.
If anyone in the L.A. area wants to help, the following link has connections to jobs at a lot of services providers in L.A. county.:
Edit: left out some words
Also, when it comes to money for our agency, most of our money comes from private/corporate donors, local taxes, and the Feds. The state doesn't provide as much financial assistance to our agency.
That money also has to cover transportation (ubers/whatever) to places to obtain documentation, paying for client necessities, moving vans if needed plus the moving crew, security deposits and other move-in costs, utility setups and past due bills, damage mitigation to keep clients from being evicted..I can go on and on. There's not enough money.
What are the issues with housing first in LA? Because it's worked in other countries to great effect. I'm guessing it has something to do with the high cost to purchase the housing in LA due to their zoning laws and such? Maybe the US's lack of free mental and physical health care as well?
Sorry for the late reply, sleep and all. Just woke up so I may ramble a bit.
tl;dr: Housing first is hard because not everyone is ready or wants housing and it's more people than everyone thinks. Also, having a roof over head doesn't always help if supportive services aren't available. So you're right about the access to services.
To clarify, housing first does work in L.A. Just not to the extent that could be considered successful overall. Successful housing first depends a lot on the client. Those motivated to improve their situation tend to do well. Other successful clients are usually able to obtain some kind of steady income, such as disability or retirement. Almost all have some kind of support system outside of our services. We've housed tons of those clients, especially during and just after the pandemic.
Also, the one area where I do highly push for housing first and more housing units is with unhoused families. Those families cannot be split up, shouldn't be split up, and rightfully refuse to be split up. Unfortunately, the vast majority of new homeless housing projects are geared towards single individuals, and families will not work in those units. There are some new developments geared toward families but unfortunately there are too many unhoused families for them to make a big difference.
To the difficulties with housing first. The bulk of the remaining unhoused populations are those that are considered difficult and/or impossible to house independently. It's a larger number than people realize. The reasons vary, but the main ones are severe mental health issues and/or substance use issues.
Severe mental health issues prevent a lot of our clients from performing basic life skills so they need more supervision and assistance than is available. There is a severe lack of mental/physical health treatment options to assist these persons. Obviously we can't force people to get help, so we have to try and deal with them in whatever state they happen to be in. But they can't be permanently housed until they have some kind of stability or permanent support.
One common problem is a mental health issue mixed with violence and anger management issues.There are many who tear apart units like twisters in the Midwest due to whatever ails them. Theres been violent threats, physical violence, and other similar activities. There are some that have no desire to care for anything so once they're housed, the unit becomes a biohazard. I'm not joking. We use a biohazard cleaning company quite often. These clients tend to keep being shuffled around until they can find assistance to help with stability. Unfortunately, being shuffled around doesn't help with stability, so it's hard to get stuff done and they destroy units along the way. Due to anger, violence, and/or destruction, these clients tend to burn bridges we've built with landlords. So that keeps others from using those units. We also spend a lot more money than necessary in damage mitigation than we can really afford.
To move on to the substance use issues, many of that population refuse housing assistance for a variety of reasons related to drug use. These clients we literally can't house. Again, we are unable to force people in to housing or treatment. Unfortunately, the numbers of that population keep growing and growing thanks to excessive drug use of all kinds. We assist them, but not with housing until they ask.
There's a growing population that won't be rented to due to past evictions, credit history, criminal history (including sex offenders), etc. Until laws change, those clients won't be housed in their own unit.
There is another growing population that refuses to be housed for whatever reason. They range from what some would call lazy (there's usually deeper issues to a person than "they're just lazy") to people with deeply held beliefs against participating in modern society, such as "sovcits". We still assist them, just not with housing until they ask.
There are others that have their own reasons, but in the end, most fall into the mental health and/or substance use issues.
(I kind of cut a few things short due to length. Feel free to ask for clarification.)
Also. landlords will only take so much from our clients. If one of our clients causes so many problems that we have to relocate them to avoid eviction, it tends to burn connections to those units.
Not all landlords we work with are scum, but those that are scum are super scummy. Almost every housing program has caps on rental assistance per month and every housing voucher we can connect a client to also has a cap. Landlords that do not want our clients will price units just above the caps so they're inaccessible. Yes, a small part of the reason there are high rents in L.A. is to keep extremely low income/low income individuals out of units. (Example: generally, housing vouchers pay up to $2400/mo for a single individuals. Landlords are aware of this and will market their units at $2500. The housing authority typically will not pay over the cap, so those units are inaccessible. We have watched this happen over and over again over the last 4 years since vouchers became widespread.) Landlords that suck, really really suck.
For some transparency: We pay security deposit up to 2months rent, monthly rent (depending on the client's situation) and up to $1500 as a landlord incentive. The landlord also has access to 24 hour assistance, a direct line to case managers and supervisors, damage mitigation funds, and a few other "perks". We still have a really hard time finding landlords that will work with us. This is usually due to the general stigma against unhoused populations.
There's more I can say about housing first, but this is a long rambling comment already sorry.
Sorry for the second reply, I just want to add some more info to my other comment.
We also provide temporary shared housing ourselves. We master lease complexes to house those who are difficult or impossible to house on their own. We work with other teams and agencies to obtain housing vouchers through permanent supportive housing initiatives. Once we can connect them, they move out, and we move a new person in.
Here's a tiny bit of financial insight to our spending.
For our agency ran, master leased, shared houses, we pay around $1600/mo per unit. (A unit here is one private bedroom with private bath. The rest of the house is shared. Average of 25 units per property, all fully furnished that we also pay for) We cover all utilities - gas, water, sewer, wifi, electric - which varies from $2K - $5K+/mo. Some complexes we also provide food which costs us ~$3K/mo per property. In addition to those costs, we are responsible for all general repairs. Not counting repairs, we're paying around $46K/mo per master lease. Including repairs puts us at or over $50K.
(For some perspective, $46K is more than what one of our base level case managers make in a year.)
We also work with property owners that provide shared housing that they manage. They're willing to ignore a ton of things as long as we pay them, it's temporary, and the clients don't completely ruin the properties. For those clients, we pay up to $1500/mo plus security deposit and utilities. We also provide up to $1800 in furniture and basic necessities upon move in.
We also have clients in their own apartments that we pay for. These clients are typically the most probable for program success, meaning they have stability and regular income or are close to obtaining a voucher and have support services. We pay security deposit, up to $2400 monthly rent, a $1500 incentive fee, utility deposits plus 6 or more months of utilities, moving assistance, plus a furniture allowance. That's usually around $10K per client move in, plus monthly assistance until a voucher is obtained or the client can demonstrate full independence and the ability to cover the rent themselves.
The above data are for our program only. We have around 450 clients at any given time that we are paying something for. It gets really really expensive. Even more so you add in the other programs our agency has.
Thanks for making me ashamed of my state, asshole. Then again, my love is actually for the Bay Area and specifically Oakland, so little change there. Fuck off, Gavinator.
no longer any barrier to local governments utilizing the substantial resources provided by the State, in tandem with federal and local resources, to address encampments with both urgency and humanity
With those "substantial resources" and a sense of "humanity", you'd think they'd build housing for those in need.
Nope! It just means shuffling people experiencing homelessness to another place. What an absolute asshole!
Shuffling them to other places is how many arrived in California to begin with. But an eye for an eye is bullshit. The la times has no love for newsome
San Diego did a study and found that most homeless people there were natives who had been fully employed and watched over years as rent got worse and worse until they were evicted.
The idea that all the homeless are from red states who gave them a bus ticket is a myth meant to relieve us of any feeling of responsibility or empathy for them.
Really disappointed in Newsom here. He's done a lot to try and improve the housing situation here (though not nearly enough, it's a lot more movement than this issue has seen in years), so I really expected better than this of him. The camp sweeps are just the biggest fucking waste of money. The state spends millions of dollars playing whack-a-mole, tormenting the people in our society who need the most help and just wallpapering over the problem, and it does absolutely nothing to help. Arguably, it makes things worse. That money could be better spent on direct action, building affordable housing, funding rehabilitation, etc. But we gotta blow it out our ass just tormenting people because whiny wealthier people want them moved now.
And we have the audacity to mock communist regimes for fake grocery stores, as if this is any better. You can't fix homelessness by making these people miserable. The extra frustrating part is that the real fixes are far, far cheaper than this stupid fucking band-aid system we've developed.
Really disappointed in Newsom here.
same here.
i liked him before because he was the only democrat to force the issue of gay marriage by providing marriage certificates to same sex couples while he was mayor of san francisco.
cynically: it's san francisco so he knew he wouldn't receive any political blow back for the stunt; but it came at a time where even obama publicly espoused anti-gay marriage views; so it felt like there was hope that my life partner wouldn't be deported because i couldn't sponsor him for citizenship due to doma.
Gavin you still have not provided the housing people need you are a failure. Now you wish to tear down the little they have. Disgusting.
People seem to confuse his politics. He's seems to be pro equal rights, but otherwise centrist(-ish?).
Whether those are his genuinely felt thoughts or a cynical play for a national run, I have no idea.
But he's been trying to get them off the streets since he was a mayor. This isn't new.
He's been trying to erase them. He doesn't care where they go, a grave or a cell.
I agree this is likely to cause suffering cause relocating sucks, and there probably isn't shelter space for these people.
He has a valid point that the camps have a lot of negative impacts. I've seen fires started,l in my city, heard horror stories about the conditions that develop.
That said, I don't know how much better the alternative is.
About housing, I mean, it takes more than a few years to build the tens of thousands of houses needed, and every year the state assembly is doing more to help with building more dwellings and preventing local govt and orgs from blocking construction. I'm not thrilled about response but it seems like they're doing a lot to help with infill development. I'm not an expert, so feel free to correct me.
And 10% of those homeless will literally shit in the houses and destroy them. But many more of them could thrive given sufficient help.
You have to be prepared for the first while doing what can be done for the second. It's a difficult problem, but it gets a lot easier if your goal is to cut it down by half or more instead of eliminating it completely.
Most of the homeless will cooperate with you. They want out too. It's good for everyone to get those people out. It's going to take time, and money, and effort.
So trying for another hobo riot huh? History is like in books and stuff all they gotta do is read one on occasion.
The Panic of 1893;: A time of strikes, riots, hobo camps, Coxey's "army", starvation, withering droughts, and fears of "revolution", (A Focus book) https://a.co/d/dmEcsJH
What the fuck are a population of weakened and hungry, some suffering drug addictions, and also many mentally ill people, going to do protesting against well funded well organized and militarized police armed to the teeth with lethal firearms, and willing to use them?
“We must act with urgency to address dangerous encampments, which subject unsheltered individuals living in them to extreme weather, fires, predatory and criminal activity, and widespread substance use, harming their health, safety, and well-being, and which also threaten the safety and viability of nearby businesses and neighborhoods, and undermine the cleanliness and usability of parks, water supplies, and other public resources.”
I don't even know where to begin.
“The order requires state agencies to adopt policies modeled after a California Department of Transportation policy directive that “prioritizes removal of encampments that pose threats to life, health, and safety, while partnering with local governments and nonprofit providers to facilitate offers of shelter and supportive services in advance of removal.””
Unless they're setting people up with homes, this sounds like an excuse.
If the shelters were safer and had space, the people in encampments would be using them already.
I presume all the members of the encampments will be given social house, right? Right!?
Bulldozed into the ocean you mean?
A nice oceanfront property
This guy sucks about as bad as the ghouls running Texas and Florida.
Newsoms been moving rightward since he got more national airtime and I fucking hate it. No good person survives politics, if they were ever even good they either leave, die, or turn into an asshole.
He was preparing for the 2028 presidential election. If Harris wins though...
Right on schedule https://youtu.be/XqF7XojXzd0
Going off on a tangent, but are vacancies keeping rent high or are they a result of overpriced rent not responding to market pressure? It seems like vacancies should mean low demand at the current price, which, in my little econ 101 view of the world, should push the price down.
Vacancies happen when landlords refuse to lower the rent that they're seeking to meet falling market value. Don't believe landlords.
Econ 101 falls apart when landlords are allowed to participate in a pricing cartel. They can also make more money off the asset in their book worth X amount than they can filling the unit with a tenant at a lower price. This is possible because they have a minimum percentage filled at a price that covers their costs for the unfilled units.
So there is no incentive for them to lower prices unless they need to raise revenue for some reason.
Great! About time!
Clear them straight into the countless vacancies that keep rents high.
Oh? You just mean spend resources pushing the unfortunate around until they are unseen? Nevermind.
https://calmatters.org/justice/2024/01/california-prison-cost-per-inmate/
Somehow, spending $11,000 per month to trap vulnerable people into the prison system is better than providing rent for a $2,000/month place, with enough left over for food, clothing, basic medical and mental healthcare and providing college or vocational training for free.
An UBI of just $500/month? Nope, those are handouts for the undeserving. The people that deserve money hand over fist are police unions, prison guard unions, prison goods and services contractors of course.
All you need to do is look where (to whom) that $11k is going to answer the question.
For-profit businesses are expected to do what they can to turn a profit. A business whose profits are often dictated by public policy are expected to bend that policy toward their profits. Elected officials who are dependent on fundraising to be re-elected have an incentive to listen to the will of those businesses in their constituency.
Which is exactly why for-profit prisons should be absolutely, without exception, banned from any free country. It's not a conspiracy to say for-profit prisons create more prisoners, it's an obvious and inevitable consequence.
Edit: before anyone mentions California banning for-profit prisons, the industry still makes plenty of money from the system.
39more days!los angeles had the closest thing to the sanctuary districts shown in ds9 thanks to their previous mayor's recommendation. if the bell riots happen, it'll be there.