During the COVID-19 pandemic, Los Angeles has scrambled to disburse rental assistance to residents facing housing insecurity, but at the same time, continues to criminalize unhoused residents by ticketing people for sleeping, sitting or camping in public spaces. LA City Council recently expanded this rule to restrict camping within 500 feet of schools, daycares, parks, and libraries and has introduced a potential local ballot measure banning encampments entirely.
On a daily basis, Angelenos see their neighbors living on the sidewalk, visibly in need of mental health and substance use services. But rather than giving case managers time to build trust and relationships with unhoused residents and connect them to resources, local officials instead post notices to vacate the premises under threat of citation, causing service providers to lose track of their clients. Even with a new poll showing that most Angelenos support a right to shelter, only a fraction of that percentage support tax measures that would actually pay for it, bringing us back to the root of the problem.
Displacing and criminalizing people experiencing homelessness is a historical practice tracing back to the Great Depression. In more recent history, the closure of the state psychiatric hospitals in the 1980s combined with policymakers’ unwillingness to invest in a comprehensive housing and services system left many people with nowhere to go but the streets. As a result, over the decades, Los Angeles fortified a system where, instead of being met with care and resources, people experiencing homelessness or mental illness were locked up in Los Angeles’ infamously inhumane Men’s Central Jail. Today, 43% of people in LA jails have an identified mental health need.
What’s important to remember is that these practices are the result of a series of classist, ableist and often racist policy decisions that can be undone.
Some steps down this corrective path are currently being taken. California authorized an alternative crisis response number (9-8-8) that local jurisdictions are currently using to reduce police response to mental health crises. Venice and Hollywood launched a pilot program allowing unarmed mental health clinicians and outreach workers to respond to non-emergency 9-1-1 calls for people experiencing homelessness. In Los Angeles County, the Alternatives to Incarceration Initiative is overseeing several programs that divert eligible people out of the criminal legal system and into mental health care, substance use treatment and housing.
If we are to truly address the needs of some of our unhoused neighbors, we must prioritize low-barrier housing and services for people with mental health needs, substance use disorders and criminal records.
Studies have found that people who are provided with low-barrier access to housing that does not disqualify them for drug use and supports residents with rent and mental health services are more likely to remain housed and experience other benefits to their recovery, compared to those without these responsive services. An analysis of LA County’s Office of Diversion and Reentry housing program, which adheres to harm reduction and housing first models with intensive case management services, found that 86% of housed participants had no new felony convictions after 12 months.
While some may object to housing resources being prioritized for those who use drugs or have been involved in the criminal justice system, the longevity of LA’s housing crisis has proven that demonizing this behavior does not help solve the problem. “War on Drugs” policies have done little to reduce the prevalence of drug use other than to establish the very criminal records that create barriers to housing, particularly in communities of color. It is time to abandon Prohibition-era solutions and instead center our responses around the needs of our vulnerable neighbors.
Unhoused residents face barriers to housing services that many Angelenos do not have to consider. Most LA residents are free to use drugs in their homes, have pets, have more than two bags of belongings, and do need to adhere to a nightly curfew. What individuals experiencing homelessness don’t need is to feel like a prisoner within shelters or long-term housing. While funding and political momentum is moving in the direction of permanent supportive housing as a solution for Los Angeles’ housing crisis, we must seek to end the contradictions and provide housing that meet the needs of our neighbors rather than punishing them for not living according to our demands.
Erica Webster is a program officer for LISC LA and LA County’s Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) Initiative. To learn more about LISC LA and its ATI work visit: https://www.lisc.org/la-incubation-academy/