Yanwen Fan Fan 1

Dr. Philip Broadbent

Writing 39C

6 May 2018

Why LA exists the serious homeless problem and why the problem are still worsening?

“Walking to park after park, I just didn’t feel safe in any of them.” Telling by Mark

Horvath----A former homeless who were experiencing his first night homeless. After being fired

from a well-paying job in the television industry, he suddenly realized that he had no money and

no place to go. No one was able to help him and no one taught him how to survive the first night.

Although he was desperate and afraid, he kept walking from Koreatown to North Hollywood.

(up to 11 miles) The first challenge for him was to find a place to sleep because it began to get

dark. When he decided to stay in a park near his old house, he found gang members there, so he

left to find a new place. Dangers were everywhere, especially happened on the outdoor people.

The crime was nearby. If he slept without a safe environment, shootings or beatings may happen

to him. Living outdoors was like expose your life to extreme danger. Fortunately, he found an

empty and safe place to lay down, ending his first day of homeless.

No matter you are a visitor or a resident in the city, you’ll see the same scene: people

without permanent housing staying in the shelter, abandoned building or vehicle; or in any other

unstable or non-permanent situation. Streets are common place for them to live. They are called

homeless people.
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Why homelessness is a problem? “According to the National Coalition for the

Homeless, when you focus in on single adult homeless males, about 16 percent of them

suffer from some form of severe and persistent mental illness.” (“madness in the streets,

homelessness and crime behavior”, Best MSW Programs) Many of them have

substance abuse problem. Some of them carrying AIDS and other infectious disease.

However, what brings to my attention is the crime caused by homeless people.

“There is evidence that a large percentage of jailed individuals may also have been

homeless at the time of arrest. The most striking finding was that nearly 21% were classified

as homeless when they were arrested and 40 percent said they had been homeles s at some

time during the past few years.” (“madness in the streets, homelessness and crime behavior”

Best MSW Programs) The researchers have found strong relationship between homelessness

and crime: 15.3% of the U.S. jail population used to be homeless. Homeless people who
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suffer from mental illnesses or drug abuse are likely to be emotional and aggressive. Resu lt

from lacking food, water and other resources (such as medical treatment), they fighting for

the limited resources which makes a lot homeless people engage in high level illegal

activities. Finally, those survival skills become crimes. These things always happen around

us, such as the businesses complained about the burglary caused by homeless people and there

was no cost for them because some legal problems. Tourists are robbed when visiting a city etc.

For example, resident in Irvine should be familiar with this topic, they protested tent city because

they think homeless people made their children and their lives at risk.

Here are the data gathered from a newspaper describing the recent situation for homeless

problem:

Los Angeles County's homeless population has soared 23% over last year despite

increasing success in placing people in housing, according to the latest annual

count released Wednesday.

A 26% increase toppled years of stagnant or declining numbers in Santa Monica,

bringing its homeless population to nearly 1,000, the highest number in a decade.

City officials said more than half the homeless people came from other parts of

the county.

A brighter picture emerged from Long Beach, which conducts its own count. The

city recorded a 21% decline in its homeless population, crediting a nearly 200%

increase in permanent housing there. But the actual decrease — 482 people —

barely affected the regional totals.

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In Los Angeles County, the most drastic increase — 48% — occurred in the San

Gabriel Valley district of Supervisor Hilda Solis, where the count rose to just

under 13,000. (Smith, Doug.& Holland, Gale. “L.A. County homelessness jumps

a 'staggering' 23% as need far outpaces housing, new count shows”, Los Angeles

Times, 31 May 2017.)

Los Angeles is the third most homeless city in the world---beating Mumbai and Mexico

City. As we can see, the number of homeless people have increased a lot in different area of LA

county. Homeless problem is worsening these years.

What caused this problem?

First, during the great depression, thousands of workers were thrown out to the streets.

The nation was in worst depression. Many unemployed workers sought for living resources.
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Because they were in a shortage of money and food, they became vagrant. The situation had

been relieved as the U.S. began recovering from the depression in the late1930s. However, the

sociological component of the homeless population has changed since the 1930s. Almost half of

them were former mental patients. Mental illness patients were sent to nursing homes or

community mental centers although there were not enough mental health facilities to serve them.

Few of them had been cured but many of them were just released. They don’t have follow-up

medical treatments and in this way as no organization was able to accept such a huge amount of

patients, they become homeless. “The reason is that admissions criteria for mental institutions

have been tightened significantly, and thousands of persons who in former years would have

been sent to mental institutions are no longer eligible to be admitted.” (“The homeless: Growing

Nation Problem”, CQ researcher)

Social service cutbacks also influenced the homeless problem. Homeless people would

get payments from Social Security Disability Insurance (payment give to person who are unable

to work because of mental or physical disability) But in 1980, The Reagan administration

complied with eligibility order by cancelling 158000 people’s qualification for getting the

payment. Though those people’s benefit had been regained, their lost could not be compensated.

“As programs have been dismantled, the disadvantaged are tracked less by the health and mental

health services system. They drift and are generally less well off. Some find temporary refuge in

transient-renter areas or the remaining group homes. But more and more are ending up on the

streets.” (“The homeless: Growing Nation Problem”, CQ researcher) Without the money given

by social organization, those people who could not work were very likely to lose home and lived

on streets.
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The most direct impression of homeless people is they don’t have a living area. (house,

apartment…) Although the government had made efforts1 toward solving homeless problem, one

of the main problems: housing arrangement, seems not solved yet. In addition, housing for the

poor is a long-lasting crisis. As rental costs soar in LA, more and more LA residents become

destitute. Since 2013, Los Angeles County rents have increased an average of 8 percent. Over 60

percent of Los Angeles residents spend more than a third of their total income on rent. “People

are out there mostly because they can’t afford a place to sleep.” remarked L.A. Mayor Eric

Garcetti in an interview. Despite the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars, the

homeless problem is worsening. The LA city officer built small affordable housing unit for low-

income people, the housing is still not enough for those people. “The Southern California

Association for Non-Profit Housing declared in a 2017 report that Los Angeles needs 552,000

more affordable rental homes to meet the region’s low-income housing needs.” (Bellman, Joel.

“Homelessness in California is much harder to fix than we’re pretending. Look at L.A.”, The

Sacramento Bee, 22 February 2018) Also, building too much low-rent housing units will damage

housing company’s benefits. (such as Airbnb) It’s not a perfect way to solve the housing

problem.

Should we leave homeless problem to the government alone? Should the task be given to

private party, volunteer? Since the Federal cutback is a huge burden for social security services,

should we take the responsibility for the poor? There is still a long way to go for solving the

problem.
 Works cited list

1 . “madness in the streets, homelessness and crime behavior”, Best MSW Programs

https://www.bestmswprograms.com/mental-illness-homelessness-criminal-behavior/

2. Smith, Doug.& Holland, Gale. “L.A. County homelessness jumps a 'staggering' 23% as need

far outpaces housing, new count shows”, Los Angeles Times, 31 May 2017.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-20170530-story.html

3. “The homeless: Growing Nation Problem”, CQ researcher

http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1982102900&type=hitlist&nu

m=0

4. Bellman, Joel. “Homelessness in California is much harder to fix than we’re pretending. Look

at L.A.”, The Sacramento Bee, 22 February 2018

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article201209684.html

Footnotes

1. Los Angeles County spends close to $1 billion a year caring for and managing homeless

people, with a majority of the money going to their health needs, according to a new report.
More than half of the $577 million in health spending went to mental health treatment, the

county study found. Another $294 million was for cash benefits and food stamps for homeless

individuals.

While much of the health-related costs are covered by the state through the Medi-Cal program,

welfare payments and food stamps are not. Largely as a result of general relief cash benefits, the

county's biggest payout from its own general fund, $176 million, goes to the department of

public social services, the study found. (Holland, Gale. “Los Angeles County spends one billion

managing homelessness, reports finds”, Los Angeles Times, 05 February 2016)

Supplement

It started with Assembly Bill 109, passed in 2011. The idea of “realignment” was to ease prison

overcrowding in California by simply redefining those crime as “less serious” and “less violent”.

In this case, the city of El Cajon, has seen a 35 percent increase in homelessness. Many beach

communities have seen over 100 percent increases.

Next, proposition 47 was approved in 2014, this law also kept people out of prison.

In 2015, a Supreme Court case limited a city’s ability to criminalize panhandling. Cities cannot

enforce vagrancy laws unless they have cooperation from the District Attorney’s Office, which

that office is loath to provide. Cities are constantly under pressure from the ACLU and local

grand juries to open the parks for the homeless, allow tent cities and refrain from “harassing the

homeless.”

In 2017, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 180, which limits the ability of law enforcement to

send chronic drug abusers back to prison.