Los Angeles has tried next to nothing to solve its homelessness crisis. Now, the city is re-legalizing more homeless encampments, a self-defeating position that ensures that this problem will never be solved.
The Los Angeles City Council voted 10-3 to repeal homeless encampment bans in several neighborhoods in the district that includes Hollywood. The councilman who represents that district, Hugo Soto-Martinez, says that banning encampments just makes it harder for city workers to find and connect homeless people with resources. Among those voting in favor of creating more homeless encampments is mayoral candidate Nithya Raman, who claims that Mayor Karen Bass’s homelessness strategy is not working.
LOS ANGELES HOMELESSNESS CRISIS BECOMES CENTRAL FIGHT IN BASS-RAMAN MAYORAL RACE
The truth is that no one here — not Bass, nor Raman, nor Soto-Martinez — is doing much of anything to solve homelessness. All of them, including Bass, support allowing homeless encampments to pop up and blossom, based on some mistaken impression that it is compassionate or that, because it makes homeless people easier to find, it makes it easier for city officials to preach the gospel of “resources” to them.
The reality is that legalizing encampments is enabling. The homeless people who live in encampments are aware that homeless shelters exist — more awareness of “resources” will not magically persuade them to seek a homeless shelter. Encampments are public health and safety hazards, from the fires to the unsanitary conditions to the drug-addicted violence. Legalizing more homeless encampments just ensures you will get larger, more plentiful homeless encampments.
PROSECUTING THE HOMELESS FOR THEIR OWN GOOD
Los Angeles has spent billions on homelessness alone over the past several years, and the result is the city having more homeless (unsheltered or otherwise) than it has since 2005, including a jump of some 12,000 unsheltered homeless people since 2015. What little progress has been made in digging into that number under Bass has begun to roll back, with a near 8% increase in unsheltered homelessness in the past year.
The willingness to tolerate (and even green-light) more homeless encampments is an unwillingness to address the problem. So long as Los Angeles Democrats prioritize enabling the homeless lifestyle over cleaning up the city, the city’s quality of life will degrade, and Los Angeles’s homelessness crisis will continue to eat billions of dollars with little to no success in reducing the city’s homeless population.