by John Lawrence
Rising Rents Plus Fewer Jobs Equals Increased Homelessness
More and more people are hitting the streets because of rising rents and lowered wages. Jobs are disappearing as robots are taking over. Jobs in retail are going fast as brick and mortar stores like Sears are closing everywhere. Almost 3000 stores have closed so far this year. Amazon and other online retailers are eating their lunch. Soon another large category of jobs will disappear as long haul truckers and FedEx drivers will be replaced with self-driving trucks. Even the gig economy will be affected as self-driving Ubers hit the road. For all these reasons homelessness is increasing.
Average rent reached $1,748 a month in San Diego County at the start of March, 2017, increasing 8 percent in a year, said MarketPointe Realty Advisors. The weighted average rent for a studio was $1,372 a month; a one-bedroom, $1,549; two-bedroom, $1,823; three-bedroom, $2,255; and $3,033 for a four-bedroom. Wages are not keeping up with rising rents resulting in a high number of evictions. The mathematical consequences are increased homelessness.
The problem of homelessness is a two edge sword. Downtown tourist districts don't want the homeless around to discourage convention goers and tourists from enjoying San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but that is where all the homeless services are concentrated - downtown. San Diego and LA have done a good job of resurrecting their downtowns. The only problem is that the people who spend money often times have to walk in the street as the sidewalks are chock full of homeless tents and tarps. But a lot of homeless, including little old ladies in their nineties, sleep in LA in their cars. What is the song - the Little Old Lady from Pasadena. Hardly who the Beach Boys had in mind.
In an article in the LA Times, In Venice, where money meets misery, hoping for an end to homeless camps, Steve Lopez reports:
I was on my way to the home of Nikoletta Skarlatos to talk to her about living in the center of a homeless encampment. She had asked me to arrive pre-dawn, because she had an early call to her job as a Hollywood makeup artist. ...
Skarlatos stepped outside and did a quick check of her property, looking for human feces. With few public toilets, and a few hundred homeless people in the area, residents have to watch their step when they leave their homes.
‘You can’t even walk down the sidewalk’
Venice is where gentrification meets alienation, where money and misery live next door. High-end restaurants line Rose Avenue and Google manufactures money in a fenced-off compound with patios, barbecues and manicured grounds, even as people sleep in tents and pee into buckets while residents beg police and city officials for help.
“I’m done,” said Skarlatos, exasperated by years of dealing with noise, trash, threats from street dwellers and unkept promises from city officials.
Residents are fed up with dealing with the homeless while homeless advocates plea for mercy for "some of the least of these our brethren." Compassion for the homeless meets the quotidian desires of ordinary people for safe and cleanly streets. While politicians gridlock themselves about what to do about it, these two groups - the homeless and the better off - are at odds with each other. Each group needs to be taken into account for this problem to be solved.
No Self Respecting Metropolis Should Have People Sleeping on the Streets
The article goes on:
No self-respecting, civilized metropolis should have 50,000 homeless people, many of them physically and mentally ill. And residents and merchants shouldn’t have to step over urine puddles and poop piles as part of the daily routine.
Los Angeles voters seem to agree, because last year city residents approved a $1.2-billion bond for housing and county residents approved Measure H, a quarter-cent sales tax increase that will raise about $355 million a year for homeless services.
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is calling on San Diegans to support a proposed hotel-tax hike he's said would, in part, help reduce homelessness. The Mayor's plan would provide about $10 million annually to help the homeless, a far cry from the $355 million that LA would provide with their sales tax increase. Is Faulconer serious about "solving" the homeless problem? Evidently not, until his buddies at the Chamber of Commerce have to step in some human poop. Then something might get done. If the business community hears enough complaints from tourists, they might even tax themselves to get something accomplished. In the meantime, they have no qualms about criminalizing homelessness and forcibly removing them especially before big events equating San Diego with a Potemkin village, all show and no real solution.
San Diego, self-styled "America's Finest City," got a thumbs down from Trip Advisor in their Review of Downtown San Diego. This is what some of the commenters said:
Downtown San Diego looks really nice in pictures, but there are homeless people EVERYWHERE! They live in shanties all over the streets. And there are lots of crazy, aggressive ones.
AND
As a downtown of a major US city, it's a little disappointing. First, it's not that clean. There are far too many street people and homeless which spoils any good feelings about the city or yourself. Other cities have similar problems, but seem to solve them. San Diego can't attract and keep businesses, especially retail when it has a dirty edge to it. To make downtown attractive will take a commitment from city hall as well as a lot of money.
Oh, how those reviews smart. The loss in tourism revenue would probably pay for some very fine accommodations for the homeless, but the political and business types never think about that. They don't want to be known as the ones who solved the Homeless Problem. They want to be known as the ones who built another football stadium and got an NFL team here.
There have been myriad plans with myriad advocates, even homeless czars such as the one San Diego hired for $175,000 a year, money that would have been better spent by handing out 20 dollar bills to the homeless. She quit after a short while. Fifteen years ago when I was an elected member of San Diego's CCAC (Center City Advisory Committee), they paid another "expert" $100,000 to come up with a plan to end homelessness. That was $100,000 down the drain! There are no lack of present day plans, the latest being Housing First.
Is Housing First the Solution?
The Housing First approach is to get the homeless into apartments without asking them to get clean and sober first or to make any other demands. Then provide social services to help them solve whatever problems are plaguing them whether it be lack of a job or addiction to drugs or applying for benefits which they have a right to but don't have the skills necessary to fill out the paperwork.
Housing First is all well and good, but there is one problem. Where to get the money to build or rent the apartments? In San Diego Single Room Occupancy (SRO) apartments have by and large been demolished and high rise condos built in their place. SROs traditionally were the cheapest form of accommodations for those who couldn't afford high rents. They might have common facilities like bathrooms and kitchens. For their occupants at least they had a roof over their heads and a place where they could lock up their possessions and have some privacy.
There are those who advocate tiny houses that could be built for a couple thousand dollars, but the $64 question, as always, is where to put them. And are the homeless forever to be the objects of charity and not worth a city's tax dollars? Charity alone has proven to be inadequate. Portland, OR, Eugene, OR, Olympia, WA, Seattle, WA, Austin, TX and Madison, WI - liberal oases all - are some of the cities that have implemented this solution. In San Diego a group has formed to advocate for the same thing. The San Diego Union reports:
Advocates of a proposal to create areas for homeless people to live in small houses rather than in tents on sidewalks are showcasing the idea at a North Park church this week.
“This frame can go up in two hours, “ said Jeeni Criscenzo, president of the nonprofit homeless advocacy group Amikas, as she stood next to a an unfinished wooden structure next to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in North Park.
“It’s not a luxury thing, but it’s not a tent.”
Amikas formed in 2010, and for more than a year Criscenzo and others in the group have been pushing for San Diego to allow homeless people to temporarily live in small houses instead of tents.
The big idea behind tiny houses is that the homeless would have a "lockable space" for their possessions and wouldn't have to fear getting ripped off. However, lockers would be much cheaper and would provide the same thing albeit at a reduced level. Why doesn't the Mayor contract with Public Storage? They build self storage lockers all over the place. Certainly, some could be provided for the homeless. I leave it up to the Mayor to work out the details.
In San Diego, the Alpha Project, founded by Bob McElroy is doing excellent work. Their latest project is opening a pizza restaurant where formerly homeless persons are being trained to be cooks. They also provide affordable housing for very low income individuals.
Speaking of affordable housing, the San Diego Housing Commission owns 2,221 affordable housing units and is rapidly moving forward on buying additional multifamily properties. However, it still is not enough, obviously, if the homeless population keeps on growing. Katheryn Rhodes and I did a series on affordable housing: Is Affordable Housing in the City of San Diego an Oxymoron?. Katheryn has done her homework and uncovered numerous funds entailing millions of dollars that the City could be using to build affordable housing. But they just sit on those funds. There's $28.7 million in the Low and Moderate Income Housing Asset Fund (LMIHAF) alone. But the City doesn't want to get into the business of providing for free what people who aren't homeless have to pay for. They don't want to be a homeless magnet.
The Intersection of Compassion and Self Interest
What it boils down to is that taxpayers are going to have to pay to provide some kind of accommodations for the homeless either out of empathy or self interest in having a clean and safe downtown. This raises conservatives' hackles as they are fundamentally opposed to providing free stuff of any kind, much less housing and social services, to people who can't pay for them themselves. The free market philosophy espoused by conservatives says that either you pay the going rate in the market place or you go without. Problem is not providing a place for the homeless is interfering with everyone's (conservatives included) enjoyment of a clean and safe city. So taxpayers have to decide is it worth it to spend some of their money to get the homeless off the streets? Is it in their self-interest to do so?
While the Housing First approach may be the ultimate solution, there are a number of stop gap measures that could be taken at minimal expense. It seems that, although there are no lack of suggestions, politicians are loathe to implement any one of them instead preferring to let everyone - homeless and homed - suffer. No politician wants to risk taxpayer wrath at the polls by being the one responsible for giving money and resources to the homeless.
At a minimum sanitation facilities could be provided - port-a-potties and dumpsters for trash - without busting the budget. Portable showers and lockers are already available in San Diego sponsored by a non-profit group - Girls Think Tank. Their efforts should be scaled up. These things could be provided very cheaply, but where? Maybe mobile is the solution.
In an article entitled City camp could be San Diego's homeless solution, authors George Mullen and Brian Caster write:
The time has come for us to seek out a realistic way to manage our worsening problem of people living on the streets of our city and to do so in a manner that best serves our city’s entire population of 1.35 million. With this in mind, we propose the establishment of “Camp Hope San Diego” on city-owned land adjacent to Brown Field.
Our homeless brothers and sisters deserve our respect, support, prayers, and help. They do not, however, have the right to reside on public lands of their choosing — especially when it negatively impacts San Diego’s progress and potential and presents health hazards to themselves and to the rest of the population. Our city must decide which lands to designate for them. Unfortunately, our leaders have abdicated this responsibility and allowed our homeless population of 8,692 to camp wherever they choose.
Have you walked downtown’s East Village lately? 17th Street encampment? Commercial Street underpass? Courthouse area at night? MTS trolley stops? How are the adjacent homeowners and businesses being impacted? Have you hiked Balboa Park’s trails recently? San Diego River in Mission Valley? Tecolote Canyon? Do you feel safe doing so?
The authors get it right that both groups - ordinary citizens and the homeless - are affected by this problem. Their solution has been criticized as providing a "concentration camp" for the homeless. The problem is that Brown Field is a long way from downtown where most homeless services are concentrated. This solution apart from the distance from downtown would entail a City Code provision that the homeless were not allowed to camp out on the streets, i.e. they could be forcibly prevented from doing so.
I think that the authors have some good ideas which should be taken into account, but there are areas much closer to downtown adjacent to public transportation which would serve just as well. I think free transit passes for bus and trolley lines should be provided. That way homeless persons could get anywhere they needed to go to access other services. More than one location could offset the "concentration camp" pejorative. For those who don't have them, free cell phones should be provided. There are free cellphones and services such as Access Wireless already available to anyone, not just the homeless. There is no reason for any homeless person not to have a cell phone. Since many of the homeless provide their own tents on the streets, there is no reason that they could not provide them themselves on a designated vacant lot or lots.
Security at such designated places should not be a problem as anyone can dial 911 if there is a problem. This applies to homeless as well as the homed. There should be multiple locations where homeless people could safely pitch a tent, have access to sanitation facilities, free transportation and communications. All this would cost the taxpayers next to nothing. By the same token people would not be allowed to camp out wherever the hell they felt like it, namely on city sidewalks, alleys under freeway underpasses, bridges etc. They would be transported by a city HOT (Homeless Outreach Team) team to one of the designated locations if they did not go there voluntarily or to jail as a final resort.
This would be a temporary solution until Housing First accommodations could be provided. Section 8 in which HUD provides vouchers to subsidize rents for poor people is a fantastic failure as has been well documented. So until society and the people who run it, the politicians and billionaires, have a change of heart, there will be little if any money available for Housing First, especially in the era of the Trump administration and conservative free market Republicans controlling everything. It will be up to local jurisdictions, cities and counties, to step forward with at least partial solutions to the homeless problem which is only going to get worse due to rising rents and decreased job opportunities.
other articles on homelessness by John Lawrence and others found here
