A new government-run homeless camp in East Hollywood is coming under fire for not only its exorbitant cost but also from critics who claim city leaders once again missed the mark in addressing California’s homelessness crisis.
Los Angeles’s latest attempt at tackling the thorny issue is an idea that had been politically unpopular for decades but officials have now decided to embrace. Taking a page out of San Francisco’s playbook, Los Angeles has created a government-run tent encampment.
The “urban campsite” is part of a pilot program that opened in late April on a fenced-in parking lot next to the 101 freeway.
HOMELESS CAMPS MAY SOON COME TO LA CELEBRITY NEIGHBORHOODS
The lot can hold up to 70 tents or approximately 120 people in 12-by-12-foot white squares painted on the asphalt. Campers can bring in their own tents and whatever belongings they have. There are a half dozen porta-potties on one side of the lot. The site also provides showers, three meals a day, and 24-hour security. The homeless men and women at the site are also entered into the county’s database and will ideally get the social services they need.
The kicker, though, is the price tag.
The campground costs about $2,663 per participant per month. That’s higher than typical 1-bedroom apartments cost in even the toniest parts of Los Angeles, according to a search on Apartments.com. And though the per-tent cost at the campsite covers more than just a square space to sleep, there are people who remain skeptical of the city’s newest pricey venture and believe it’s like putting a Band-Aid over a gaping wound.
“If you can paint lines on a sidewalk for the same cost that you can give someone the rent for an apartment, I’m concerned that our city is making the choice to paint the lines rather than actually get people into housing,” Shayla Myers, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, recently told NPR.
Los Angeles has seen its homeless population grow for decades. The coronavirus pandemic created an economic slowdown that has made it difficult for some people to remain stably housed. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said homelessness was up 13% from January 2019 to January 2020. In Los Angeles, there were more than 66,000 homeless people on a given night.
The 2021 homeless census was canceled due to COVID-19, but homeless advocates have said people in tent cities in Skid Row, Hollywood, and Venice Beach appear to have risen. It’s a trend residents of Los Angeles know all too well.
Failed liberal policies coupled with decades of neglect and mismanagement have turned a once-manageable homelessness problem into a modern-day nightmare. Elected officials in Los Angeles have long lamented the horrors of homelessness while failing to pass any meaningful legislation. They’ve thrown millions of dollars at the problem only to watch the numbers go up.
Homeless advocates have accused those in charge of using the crisis to further their own careers and manipulating an environment that has allowed them to dodge accountability for years.
Despite the costs tied to the government-run east Hollywood encampment site, City Controller Ron Galperin, Los Angeles’s primary budget watchdog, told NPR that “doing nothing also costs a lot of money.”
“When people are on our sidewalks, that is already costing us money in terms of public safety, police, and fire emergency services, paramedic, sanitation, street services, hospitals, [and] jails,” he said.
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Some homeless advocates are worried that the new encampment means more police enforcement for those who refuse help or can’t get in.
“It can’t be the type of offer that leads to criminalization and displacement and the shutting down of other public spaces,” Myers said.
Los Angeles’s pilot program has less than a year to produce results. The social experiment is supposed to wind down by the end of the year, when the lot is scheduled to become a construction site for a new affordable housing project.
