Creating Homelessness in the Antelope Valley, Part 1
Speaking of veterans, there’s a guy named Joey Gallo, a disabled vet with three serious medical conditions. Up until recently, he was living on his own land, with his cat and dog, in a remote location in California’s Antelope Valley. Officials began to show up and order him to get rid of stuff — at first, trash and weeds. Next, it was a motor home they said he couldn’t keep. Then, they escalated their demands and made him demolish some sheds.
Finally, they came back and ordered him to tear down his home. You’ve heard of the Stand Down, an event where homeless veterans can get help. Adding outrageous insult to injury, one government minion presented him with a flyer giving the date and location of the next Stand Down — as if to say, “Welcome to your new life, loser.” Will Gallo’s next stop be Skid Row? If so, he may meet some neighbors there.
We have already offered (satiric) lessons on “How to Become Homeless.” One way is to be a resident of this high desert region which is, unfortunately, only an hour or so travel time from Los Angeles. The local administration is trying very hard to cause massive homelessness out there. The photo on this page gives an idea of the sparseness of the population in the high desert region. There might be half a mile between dwellings. Yet the authorities insist that anonymous neighbors are constantly making “eyesore” complaints about various structures and vehicles, many of which are only visible from the air.
Under the aegis of the L.A. Weekly, Mars Melnicoff devoted six weeks to investigating the horrifying situation, and accomplished what promises to be an award-winning piece of journalism, “L.A. County’s War on Desert Rats.” A message comes through loud and clear: the victims of the Antelope Valley Land Grab are living national treasures, the quintessence of all the qualities that made America great.
The writer shows how the rugged individualists at the hardscrabble butt-end of nowhere are being systematically removed from their homes for some murky, as-yet-unknown reason. It’s kind of like one of those “sweeps” of the homeless that cities do before the Olympics or the political convention. Except these folks are on their own land — or what used to be their land — so the process is taking just a bit longer.
Melnicoff says,
The government can define land on which residents have lived for years as ‘vacant’ if their cabins, homes and mobile homes are on parcels where the land use hasn’t been legally established. Some have been jailed for defying the officials in downtown Los Angeles, while others have lost their savings and belongings trying to meet the county’s ‘final zoning enforcement orders.’ Los Angeles County has left some residents, who appeared to be doing no harm, homeless.
Melnicoff tells their stories. Some are retired people, who thought they were finished with hard labor, and figured they had earned the right to enjoy the little corner of the world they had paid for and fixed up to their liking. She tells of people who live frugal, thrifty, minimalist lives, and sincerely practice recycling far beyond sorting trash into different-colored buckets.
They came here to get off the grid, practice “VONU,” make monumental art, race their dirt bikes, commune with the spirits of the ancestors, or whatever. That’s why people settle in environmentally inhospitable areas in the first place: they possess a fine willingness to trade the convenience and amenities of the city for the space and opportunity to do things their way. They are people who can’t afford lawyers when they’re being railroaded, hogtied, and hung out to dry. They came here to get away from the depredations of gang members, and ran afoul of a much more dangerous gang — the bureaucrats of Los Angeles County.
(To be continued.)
Source: “L.A. County’s Private Property War,” LA Weekly, 06/23/11
Image by AlishaV (Alisha Vargas), used under its Creative Commons license.
Los Angeles and the Vets
A journalist’s first instinct is always to quote statistics, and there is nothing wrong with that. For instance, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans says, “107,000 veterans are homeless on any given night” [link is ours]. USA Today says that out of every four people experiencing homelessness, one is a veteran. One in four is 25%, and if you multiply it out, that would make a total of 428,000 homeless in the U.S.
However, in 2009, the National Alliance to End Homelessness put the total at 656,129, and you know things have only gotten worse since then. It’s not an exact science.
In the era of information saturation, it’s nice to think that readers have developed enough savvy to know that statistics can mean a lot of different things. Nothing is more tedious than a dispute with someone who says, “You’re wrong, because according to this other survey, only 22% percent of the homeless are veterans.”
Can we just accept the fact that, for a number of reasons, sociological surveys can’t be exact, and move on? In fact, here’s a destination to aim for: the plain, unvarnished truth that 100,000 homeless veterans are too many, and 1,000 homeless vets are too many. One homeless vet is too many. That’s the signal, and everything else is just noise.
Perhaps the biggest news on this front is the battle over some prime real estate smack dab in the middle of Los Angeles. Back in February, the ACLU demanded an investigation of what the Department of Veterans Affairs has been doing with the 387-acre piece of property. The deed, dating from 1888, specifies that it should be used as a home for disabled veterans, and forbids its use for anything not related to veterans. Portions of the veterans’ land have been leased out to a car rental company, a charter bus outfit, a hotel laundry, and a deluxe private school, and the finances looked murky.
The very next day, it was announced that the local government and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs had started a project designed to house 60 veterans within two years. (There are an estimated 8,000 homeless vets in Los Angeles, so that only leaves about 7,940 on the streets.) Question: How is the military capable of flying into another country and setting up a complete base within hours, yet unable to create housing for just a few more than 60 personnel, and a bit quicker than 24 months?
In June, the ACLU filed a lawsuit alleging that…
… the federal Department of Veterans Affairs has misused large portions of its West Los Angeles campus and failed to provide adequate housing and treatment for the people it was intended to serve.
This was reported by Martha Groves, who further explained,
The complaint, which seeks class-action status, was filed in U.S. district court on behalf of four disabled homeless vets; the Vietnam Veterans of America, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Vietnam-era vets and their families; and a descendant of one of the property’s original owners.
About a week later, Matt Sledge told The Huffington Post readers about a brand new report from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. It indicated that although homelessness in the metropolis was declining overall, veterans as a class have been making up an ever-larger proportion of the homeless.
The reporter names one of the stumbling blocks:
The chronically homeless have burned through their social safety net of friends and family. Physical or mental disability — along with addiction — often contributes to their plight… VA officials, however, disputed the notion that space on the West L.A. campus provided under a “housing first” rubric — which would not require those suffering from addiction to stay sober for housing — would be appropriate for the land.
Following the debate has been a surreal experience. On June 8, one news source said that $20 million had been committed a year ago to convert a building into therapeutic housing. It said the project was not completed, which would seem to imply it had at least been started. Same day, a different news source, Congressman Henry Waxman, announced that the president has signed a 2011 budget item for the $20 million renovation of an existing building. Is that supposed to refer to the same project, which was supposedly already funded and had begun?
Then, on June 16, a fellow named Dave Bayard, the VA’s regional public relations director, told Sledge that the buildings on the land are around 60 years old, seismically unsafe, environmentally unsound, vermin-infested, and possibly lined with asbestos. He said,
These are not places where someone could live.
They got a bad case of “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.” Five days later, Fox News quoted VA spokesperson Josh Taylor:
The VA plan calls for three of the 12 buildings to be renovated to provide housing for homeless veterans. The other structures would be used for outpatient clinics and research facilities involving the care of vets… he said the VA’s renovation plans have been in the works for months.
A mere two days after that, BusinessWeek published a story by Jacob Adelman outlining the ACLU’s objections to the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center’s plan. Attorney Mark Rosenbaum noted that it included no commitment to care for disabled veterans who need permanent homes. He said,
It is a direct slap in the face for tens of thousands of homeless vets. If you want to imagine a document that says `We don’t care about you and we’re turning our back to you,’ this is that document.
Furthermore, what first seemed to be a promise of three renovated buildings turned out to be only recommendations for which three buildings to renovate. Even the one they talked about in early June as already financed and underway, as it turns out, also awaits its turn for Congressional approval like the other two. It’s just possible that work could begin in December. Or not.
Reactions?
Source: “Homeless vets sue VA alleging inadequate housing and treatment,” LA Times, 06/08/11
Source: “Homelessness In Los Angeles Drops,” The Huffington Post, 06/16/11
Source: “VA moves to renovate buildings in LA for homeless,” Fox News, 06/21/11
Source: “ACLU faults VA plan for homeless Los Angeles vets,” BusinessWeek, 06/23/11
Image by Elvert Barnes, used under its Creative Commons license.
The Unavoidable Problem of Human Waste
We have talked about the inordinate amount of time, energy, and financial resources that are spent on preventing benches from being slept on, or even sat on by people experiencing homelessness. The same brand of madness goes on over public bathrooms. The object is to make the homeless disappear by not providing any public toilets. Now, nobody can find a place to take a leak, and don’t even think about the other thing.
Someone with money can spend a few bucks in a store or restaurant, thus earning the right to perform natural functions in their facilities. Someone without money can hold it till they get home. Someone without a home can pee in an alley. What a brilliant solution — not! This is a lose-lose-lose outcome for everybody except business owners, who pick up some extra revenue by capitalizing on an unavoidable human need.
There is a terrific organization called STREATS — that stands for “Homeless Individuals Striving To Reach Educate And Transform Society’s Views on Homelessness.” Its media division has produced a video called “Gotta Go.” About half-an-hour long, it contains lively commentary with some humor from some very articulate people on the subject of going to the bathroom.
We have talked about the ongoing conflict between housed residents and “rubber tramps” in Venice, California. Last fall, for instance, two people were arrested for dumping human waste from a camper toilet into the street. The prosecution wanted to put them in jail for 90 days, but the judge has ordered a 36-months probation, to pay restitution, and to get the heck out of Venice.
There is reportedly a legal RV waste disposal facility 7.7 miles away from the area where the Venetian vehicle dwellers tend to cluster, and it costs $10, which sounds reasonable. But there might be many reasons why people living in a parked RV could not or would not vacate the space they had claimed. It’s a tough problem.
In a newsletter, a local citizen gloated over the fate of another pair of miscreants, a couple with a nine-year-old child. They too were charged with dumping waste in the street, and their RV was seized as evidence and towed to an impound yard many miles away in the San Fernando Valley to await a release from the police. The citizen says, “Beautiful evening for a walk to the SFV.”
This is from Dana Goodyear’s “Street Scene” column in The New Yorker, a while back, reporting on the Skid Row area of Los Angeles:
Plastic outhouses were removed because people were using them for sex and drugs and deals, and now there are several self-cleaning, European-style public toilets whose doors automatically open after an interval.
This controversy carried quite a history, as shown by a piece written by Penelope McMillan 20 years earlier, about a particular settlement known as the “Love Camp,” with a distinctly different reputation than those of other Skid Row encampments of the time. The journalist wrote,
Its residents, numbering around 50, rotate cooking, cleaning and security duties and share the $70-a-month rental cost of the portable toilets.
What portable toilets? The ones that were a symbol to the camp’s inhabitants that they would not sink beyond a certain level, and would indeed rise again to take their places in society. The portable toilets that were snatched, one day at dawn, by a city work crew. On the same day, the camp’s leadership kept an appointment with city officials to supposedly arrange a “model cleanup,” to be used as a prototype for future sweeps meant to clear out the homeless population. Strange that the city’s idea of a “cleanup” should begin with stealing the toilets.
Just last week, Kathleen Edgecomb reported from New London, Connecticut, about the shutting off of a new fountain on a downtown plaza because people experiencing homelessness used it to clean themselves. Actually, the last straw was when a passing cop discovered an intoxicated man washing solid matter out of his pants. The homeless were accused of using the whole area as an outdoor toilet. The reporter quotes Cathy Zall, director of a 50-bed shelter, who reminds us that being homeless is not a crime, and that the majority of the problems are caused by a very small minority.
In Eugene, Oregon, there are a few areas where a tiny fraction of the people who live in vehicles can safely park, and the city provides portable toilets and garbage collection. Apparently, some cities did get a clue, to some extent. It’s not rocket science. In fact, humankind has figured out how astronauts can go to the bathroom in zero gravity, for Pete’s sake. Surely we can think of ways for people to go to the bathroom in a modern city.
In Austin, Texas, an online commentator complains that the hundred or so people who are turned away from the ARCH shelter every night tend to hang around the neighborhood and relieve themselves in streets and alleys, and that Waller Creek is called a “giant alky toilet.”
It’s a strange situation. The city apparently paid a design firm a million and a half dollars to create a plan for renovating the creek and the downtown area surrounding it. Then it ditched the plan and is currently looking for another.
Here’s a thought. Whatever money there is for the new plan, take half of that and hire a student instead. (That’s what homeless people do to get their teeth fixed — let students practice on them.) Then take the other half and build some freakin’ restrooms. There you go — problem solved.
Reactions?
Source: “Venice RV Dumpers Sentenced,” 100kissfm.com, 10/13/10
Source: “Street Scene ,” The New Yorker, 05/05/08
Source: “Skid Row Camp’s Portable Toilets Swept Away,” LA Times, 03/11/87
Source: “Fountain incident puts spotlight on homeless issue,” The Day, 06/08/11
Source: “Will the Waller Creek Development be the death of Red River music scene?,” Yelp, 10/24/09
Source: “Private conservancy outlines plan to rescue, revive Waller Creek,” Statesman.com, 04/27/11
Screen capture of Public Toilet in Skid Row, Los Angeles, California, used under Fair Use: Reporting.
Medical Ethics and the Hospital Industry
The lives of people experiencing homelessness are inextricably involved with hospitals. One of the most affecting parts of Richard R. Troxell’s book, Looking Up at the Bottom Line, is the story of Diane Breisch Malloy, whose tragic death in Texas inspired the inauguration of Austin’s annual Homeless Memorial. If this sick woman had been in a hospital where she had probably belonged, she would not have been sleeping in a dangerous spot, and would not have been swept away by storm water and drowned.
A few days ago, we talked about past behavior by an Inglewood, California, hospital that strikes many people as quite irresponsible, and some consider it downright unethical. At the very least, it was lousy patient discharge management. That news story was the latest, but not the only case of what has been rudely called homeless dumping, which looks like a growing trend.
Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Winton writes,
Since 2006, the city attorney’s office and Los Angeles Police Department have uncovered hundreds of cases in which patients were dumped by hospitals across the region at facilities in skid row and other homeless shelters.
Winton previously reported on other examples of what LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo calls a “horrendous and unconscionable practice.” For instance, the journalist wrote about how 54-year-old Gabino Olvera had been unloaded from a Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital van and left on Skid Row. This was done in front of several witnesses who questioned the driver about the lack of wheelchair or other support equipment. Winton wrote,
Olvera, wearing a soiled hospital gown and a broken colostomy bag, was found in February 2007 crawling in a gutter downtown.
In 2009, Winton joined with fellow reporter Cara Mia DiMassa to expose other similar disposals of discharged patients, like the one performed by College Hospital. The patient was Steven Davis, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder:
Doctors at the Costa Mesa mental institution prescribed him numerous drugs to deal with paranoid delusions that had led to an earlier suicide attempt. But that didn’t stop the hospital from hauling Davis into a van and driving him more than 40 miles north to downtown L.A., where they dropped him off outside the Union Rescue Mission. When mission officials complained to the hospital, the van returned and drove Davis a few miles south to another shelter. Davis wandered away without ever entering.
When these various news articles were published, comments from the public voiced emotions that ran the gamut from intense sympathy for the patients to total exasperation. What is a hospital supposed to do with a patient who has nowhere to go? If the person still suffers from the presenting diagnosis, but it’s not life-threatening, what then? If the person has been cured of an acute illness but is still burdened by one or more chronic illnesses, what then? If the person is as well as a homeless person ever gets — what then?
The reporters tell us about a new city law that requires the written consent of a patient to be taken anywhere other than his or her residence. Exactly how this will help any homeless patients is not clear. The Southern California hospitals that have been reprimanded and fined for wrongful disposition of discharged patients have also been made to sign an agreement about future behavior. An injunction orders them to not transport homeless psychiatric patients to the streets or shelters of the “patient safety zone,” in other words, Skid Row and the extended area of downtown and south LA where most of the missions and shelters are.
But… that’s where the missions and shelters are. What if that is exactly where the patient wants or needs to go? Taking them somewhere else just makes it more difficult for them to obtain the needed services. It’s hardly a solution. And, of course, like any rule, the rule against dumping discharged patients in the worst inner-city areas has to be enforced by somebody. That would be the police, and it’s another wrinkle in the overall situation. Apparently, law enforcement agencies are also in the habit of routinely dropping off people released from custody in the Skid Row area. Well, where else are they going to take them? Rodeo Drive?
Who is responsible for what? The situation is complicated by larger questions of personal freedom and autonomy. What if a person of legal age is discharged from an institution and simply does not want to be delivered anyplace? What if she or he doesn’t feel like requiring anyone to show up and take responsibility? Shouldn’t an adult citizen have the right to just walk out the door? The whole situation is a mess from any point of view, and it’s one problem that really, really needs to be handled.
Reactions?
Source: “Hospital accused of dumping L.A. homeless woman to pay $125,000 fine,” LA Times, 03/18/11
Source: “Skid row dumping suit settled,” LA Times, 05/31/08
Source: “College Hospital to pay $1.6 million in homeless dumping settlement,” LA Times, 04/09/09
Image by miss pupik (Shira Gal), used under its Creative Commons license.
Homeless Dumping – the Wave of the Future?
It used to be that Southern California was the predictor. Whatever the folks in LA were doing, the rest of the country would be doing it pretty soon. Maybe that tendency still applies.
In the case of homeless dumping, let’s hope not. Some deny that there is such a thing. Others say well, yes, but what else are we supposed to do? This Los Angeles Times story could bring a strong man to tears or make an angel curse.
Staff writer Richard Winton tells us about a legal matter that has finally been settled after four years of wrangling. This goes back to early 2007, when a woman with lung disease, and connected to a portable oxygen tank, was discharged from Centinela Freeman Regional Medical Center in Inglewood, California. She was dropped off at a homeless shelter — not even an established, permanent shelter, but a temporary cold-weather shelter at the Armory in West Los Angeles.
A lawsuit was brought by the City Attorney’s office, and here’s the upshot:
The hospital’s owner will pay $125,000 in penalties and charitable contributions and will abide by rules forbidding such practices at medical facilities it owns… The hospital corporation did not acknowledge any wrongdoing but agreed to abide by best practices protocols for discharging homeless patients.
Let’s fantasize for a moment. What if that $125,000 had been spent on the homeless woman? For much less, the hospital could have hired private-duty nurses round the clock to take care of that patient’s every need, plus an advocate to work full-time at finding a safe lodging for her. For comparison purposes, it costs the criminal justice system $47,000 per year to incarcerate someone out there in Cali. That 125 grand could have bought that homeless woman more than two and a half years’ lodging in the Graybar Hotel. It could have even paid room rent for a couple of years in a real hotel, a nice one.
At first glance, that $125,000 figure sounds almost impressive. But it is illusory. It breaks down to $5,000 worth of civil penalties, a cash amount that in no way compensates the city for what it cost to prosecute the case. Not even close. This is not to imply that the charges should not have been brought, merely to point out that the heftiest portion of the bill is paid, as usual, by the taxpayers. As for the hospital owners, the bulk of the settlement will be payable in the form of $120,000 worth of “charitable contributions to a homeless recovery network that helps mentally ill patients.”
A person doesn’t like to be cynical, but this sounds kind of amorphous. A good lawyer could convert the sentence to “in kind” contributions, like some vaguely promised counseling program for certain types of patients, which may or may not ever materialize. A person doesn’t like to be distrustful, but this penalty appears to be largely symbolic. And it took four years to even get that much.
Centinela Freeman is not the only hospital that agreed to an out-of-court settlement recently. In a similar case, Kaiser Permanente (having sent a 63-year-old woman out into the world by taxicab, wearing a hospital gown) promised to donate half a million dollars or, possibly, something intangible that it claims is worth that much.
College Hospital must pay $1.6 million in penalties and charitable contributions to various agencies. It is said that in 2007 and 2008, this one hospital alone dumped more than 150 patients on skid row. Mentally ill patients. Hollywood Presbyterian’s homeless dumping case involved the donation of $1 million to nonprofit groups. It would be real interesting to know if anything close to a million ever finds it way to those organizations.
Of course, they all promise to adopt better discharge rules. Hospitals can volunteer to sign on with a voluntary code of ethics. Or they can be required to, as part of the settlement agreement, if they are accused of unscrupulousness. Things have reached the point where hospitals must be told not to dump patients on skid row. Wouldn’t that be a thing you would want to kind of take for granted? Winton says,
The protocols, signed in recent years by several Southern California hospitals, give specific requirements for how patients are to be released from hospitals and how they should be evaluated after their release. It also outlines a process for getting those who need additional care placed into medical or social service programs.
As for homeless dumping spreading to the rest of the country, it looks like it already has. Last November, for instance, we noted an incident in Indiana where a bureaucrat shocked the parents of a disabled child whose benefits had run out, by suggesting that they drop off the patient at a homeless shelter.
Los Angeles had a couple of City Attorneys, Rocky Delgadillo and Carmen Trutanich, who took this shabby treatment of people experiencing homelessness very seriously. California has a state law designed to prevent unfair business practices, which allows a corporation to be sued for unscrupulous behavior. Imagine that! In general, granting human status under the law to corporations is a lousy idea. But if they can be sued for a lack of scruples, there’s an example of how it might not be such a bad thing.
What the hell is going on with the human beings, here on Planet Earth? More to the point, what is going in the USA? As Southern California sets the fashion for the nation, America sets things in motion for the rest of the world. We think we’re so great, we want every other country to imitate us in every possible way, adopt all our systems and assumptions, and model itself after the United States of America. And this is the example we are setting for the world.
Reactions?
Source: “Hospital accused of dumping L.A. homeless woman to pay $125,000 fine,” LA Times, 03/18/11
Image by Joe Shlabotnik, used under its Creative Commons license.
The Very Sane “Housing First” Approach
Joseph Krauss is one of the journalists who have written about the Housing First concept as practiced in a particular place. In Washington, D.C., the nonprofit organization Open Arms Housing administers a building with 16 single-occupancy apartments, three of them wheelchair-accessible. Each efficiency apartment has a full kitchen and bathroom. On each floor there is also a community room with phones, TV, computer, and space for residents to gather.
Krauss interviewed a resident who remarked on a little-noticed aspect of the housing process, namely, how it can take many months simply to mentally adjust to the fact that one is no longer homeless. Moving from the street into a safe, secure environment is of course a huge positive step, but it is also a culture shock. It can be just as disorienting as the original change from housed to homeless was, and a person needs to become acclimated. The women of OAH are doing well, and some are even employed.
Open Arms Housing was established in 1997 to serve the most vulnerable women, who are least likely to benefit from other programs because of their serious problems. Apparently, it took 12 years to get to the point of being able to actually house people, which began in the fall of 2009. To monitor and assist the residents, there are staff members; live-in volunteers; and volunteers and interns who come and go. OAH is interested in developing methods that can be replicated anywhere. Its “Philosophy” section on the website states,
Our model rests on the premise that stable, safe housing is necessary to promote the physical and emotional well-being of all people. We operate under a Housing First approach which holds that all individuals are entitled to safe and decent housing and that access to this housing is not contingent upon participation in services. Those services can come later, but HOUSING IS FIRST.
Krauss also discusses says the 100,000 Homes Campaign, saying,
Under traditional federal housing programs, applicants had to spend years on waiting lists and were barred from housing by drug or other convictions, a process that offered little hope for the most vulnerable. The Housing First approach, by contrast, sees permanent housing and supporting services as prerequisites for curing the other ills that plague the homeless.
The strategy of “housing first” is to identify those who are at most risk of dying on the streets, namely, addicts, the mentally ill, and those with chronic physical ailments, and move them into permanent supportive housing. In any given community, there will be people who disagree, and the protests are generally based on moral grounds. The dissenting voices usually say something like, “Why should we first take care of addicts, alcoholics, and burn-out cases, when there is so much need among deserving young families, young adults, and others who actually have some potential?”
To save the chronic, apparently hopeless cases first is a counter-intuitive solution for anyone whose subconscious attitudes were formed from the battlefield model for medical triage. In a combat situation, the most seriously injured soldiers will probably die no matter what, so they are left to their fate. The person for whom immediate care can make a difference will get the attention, rather than the grievously wounded. Precious limited resources are used for the curably injured. (In fact, a clever assailant takes advantage of this by deliberately designing weapons that will injure rather than kill, to tie up as much of the enemy’s transportation and manpower resources as possible.)
But, fortunately for all of us, this battlefield model does not apply in the area of homelessness. The Housing First model, if it works out the way it should, ought to free up even more resources for those with a chance to be “saved,” as defined by the usable opportunity to become productive citizens. Life does not often present us with such a clear-cut instance of how doing the right thing can also be the economically efficient thing.
The reason for this is obvious, once the potential costs of emergency medical care and law enforcement are factored in. Arresting people who are experiencing homelessness is a no-win situation for society. They can’t pay fines, so they go to jail, to be housed, clothed, guarded and fed at a net loss to the public wallet. A comment on this article, from a citizen named Paul Seldon, notes,
The cost of leaving someone to survive on the street is enormous: $40,000 to $50,000 a year… The cost of moving them into supportive housing may be close to the same during the first year, but decreases every year after.
Another objection brought up by community members to the “housing first” model is the fear that it will be implemented in the wrong way, namely, by de-funding other programs, as Krauss says happened our nation’s capital:
When Washington’s then-mayor Adrian Fenty embraced the Housing First approach in 2008 he also closed a major shelter downtown that had provided 400 beds, pushing dozens of homeless people into an adjacent park.
In other words, it’s a big mistake to pull resources from emergency shelters, food programs, and other services, right away. It’s necessary to wait until the city’s budget begins to reflect the savings from housing the chronically homeless.
In an earlier post, we quoted an official who noted that although the chronically homeless constitute only one-fourth of the total, a disproportionate amount of public funds are spent on hospital emergency treatment, emergency shelters, and the dealings of this group with the legal system. Supportive housing, including treatment and counseling, has been found to result in a 40% saving.
We also looked at the At Home/Chez Soi program in Canada, where the savings are apparently much greater. The numbers mentioned there were $100,000 per year to keep a chronically homeless person on the street, versus $18,000 per year to provide supportive housing. One of the longest-running “housing first” initiatives in the U.S. is the Lamp Community in Los Angeles, where the motto is “No strings. No barriers. No intermediate steps.” The Lamp Community was founded by a former nun in 1985, and has been caring for the addicted and the mentally ill ever since.
By the way, House the Homeless was the first organization to call for Housing First, even to the point of putting it into our name when we formed in 1989.
Reactions?
Source: “New approach brings US homeless in from the cold,” NewsYahoo.com, 02/06/11
Source: “Our Services,” OpenArmsHousing.org
Source: “Our History and Mission,” OpenArmsHousing.org
Source: “The Model,” 100Khomes.org
Image by quinet (Thomas Quine), used under its Creative Commons license.
Rubber Tramps — Houseless, Not Homeless
Historically Venice, California, has been the place where new societal mutations showed up early, and the place uniquely prepared and equipped to deal with them. Whether this is still true remains to be seen.
Last month, Peggy Lee Kennedy wrote in the Free Venice Beachhead of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in November, in which the City of Los Angeles is charged with violating the Americans With Disabilities Act, as well as several Constitutional amendments. Kennedy says,
The plaintiffs in this civil rights lawsuit are part of the Venice community. Most are people who have lived in Venice for many years and used to be housed here. They get all their services here, they have been involved in the St. Joseph surveys, they are on housing lists, and they have given their personal information for getting in the ‘Streets to Homes’ program — if it ever happens.
They are vehicle dwellers, and many consider themselves fully entitled stakeholders in Venice. Some of them say things like, “I’m houseless, not homeless.” But many of the residents definitely consider these gypsies as undesirable riff-raff, who take up valuable parking space and cause unhealthful conditions for everybody.
Because of its attractive beach location and freewheeling culture, Venice has always contained a large number of people experiencing homelessness. For decades, a subset of that population has been a particular burr under the saddle of the housed residents. The irritants are the people who live in vehicles, mostly RVs, but also cars, vans, and campers. “Rubber Tramps of Venice” describes some of the colorful vehicles that were around in the early 80s, and a film that was made 10 years ago featuring the long-term Venice vehicle dwellers considered homeless by the housed residents.
In 2005, public outrage was inflamed by the actions of William Sadowski, who lived in his car in Venice. As described by two staff writers for the LA Times, Hector Becerra and Jennifer Oldham, Sadowski hijacked a patrol car belonging to a member of the airport police force. Trying to regain control of his vehicle, the officer was dragged and battered, and ended up dead. This did not enhance the reputation of the locals who lived in wheeled homes.
The Rose Avenue Neighborhood Watch added the phrase Vigilante Strike Force to its name, and residents took an angry and active part in tagging vehicles for towing. One resident claimed to have identified 250 RVs being lived in illegally. There was an uproar when one local organization accused another of distributing flyers all over Greater Los Angeles, supposedly inviting other rubber tramps to relocate to the streets of Venice. This turned out to be untrue, but it further eroded whatever little tolerance the homeowners and renters might have retained.
One resident got so upset she couldn’t even make logical sense, and wrote to a newsletter that A.) A lot of the vehicles people lived in were not even roadworthy, but were incapable of being driven away, and B.) If the police wanted to serve a warrant, vehicle dwellers could just escape by driving away. Various schemes for parking permits were the subject of many meetings and millions of words of debate, and indeed, many local residents defended the right of people to live in vehicles, noting that many such unfortunates are women, children, and veterans.
The Los Angeles police formed what Kennedy calls the Homeless Removal Task Force, especially to run the rubber tramps out of town. Apparently, they wear black SWAT outfits (a bold fashion statement at any beach) and dedicate themselves to making life miserable for RV owners in every way, from petty verbal harassment to towing.
But many of the vehicle dwellers are officially disabled, and thus exempt from the parking restrictions that were purposely created to banish homes on wheels. The police should know this, but they go ahead and do it anyway. Kennedy says that a jeering, cheering crowd has actually shown up in the past to applaud when some disabled person was arrested and his vehicle was towed away.
In another issue of the Free Venice Beachhead, Rune Girschfeld, self-described as a “mobile-homed Venice resident,” recounted her experience with a sweep, one of the aggressive enforcement tactics adopted by the police and practiced in the middle of the night on people they perceive as needing to be hassled, handcuffed, and cleaned from the streets like garbage. She said,
Sleeping citizens are ordered out of their vehicles. They are put off-balance with rapid-fire questions. They are lied to and told they must answer questions; that the police ‘know’ they are hiding something; that they can forcefully open doors if not opened voluntarily and that they can take away their children…
Girschfeld goes on to say,
Personally, I work full-time and still cannot afford to decriminalize myself. I do not understand where the idea came from that someone who is living in a vehicle is ‘taking advantage,’ as though they had chosen to live in third-world America…
America is full of people experiencing economic homelessness. We’re talking about working full-time, and still being unable to rent the cheapest housing. And this is just tenancy that they can’t afford. It’s not even anywhere near the crazy dream of owning a place. The more you think about it, the more obvious it becomes: When an American working a 40-hour week cannot afford basic housing, something is really broken in the entire system. Suggestion: Consider the Universal Living Wage, which is designed to end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum-wage workers, and prevent economic homelessness for all minimum-wage workers in America.
Reactions?
Source: “Lawsuit filed to protect civil rights of RV Residents,” FreeVeniceBeachhead, 12/10
Source: “LAX Police Officer Killed as Stolen Patrol Car Drags Him,” LA Times, 04/30/05
Source: “Rosendahl’s ‘Carrot and Stick’ means a knock on the door at 5 am,” Free Venice BeachHead, 10/10
Image by Colin Bowern, used under its Creative Commons license.
Formerly Homeless Actor Michael Pitt
Okay, granted, with movie star biographies you can never really be certain of the facts. Some of those Hollywood people will just say anything, you know? Still, there is no reason to doubt Michael Pitt’s biography, including a phase in which he was a person experiencing homelessness.
At age 16, he took off for the big city, at first renting a room from his acting teacher. In an interview conducted by Max Michaels for Movement Magazine, Pitt said,
Then the apartment thing fell through, and I was on the street for a while. Like um, just kind of panhandling and stuff, ya know?… I was sleeping behind the NYU recreational building, ya know? With a bunch of other kids who had no place to go.
When he started getting work, he shared a one-bedroom apartment with seven roommates, where…
[…] those of us who had mattresses, you had to pack them up in a stack because the whole floor was covered… I sort of just did that for two years.
When Pitt appeared in his first off-Broadway play, there were warrants out for his arrest because of the unpaid fines for things like not having a place to sleep. (Sometimes, it’s just plain illegal to be homeless.) When he was approached by a professional agent who wanted to represent him, the actor thought he was busted.
Pitt is also a musician and his band is called Pagoda. To write a 2005 New York Times profile, Julia Chaplin hung out with the actor/singer/guitarist before a show and learned that his aunt rides a Harley, and that the band’s bassist was, until meeting Pitt, homeless and living in a Portland squat.
In the film Delirious, Pitt plays (very realistically, of course) a character named Toby who describes himself not as homeless, but “moving around right now.” Toby is (just like Pitt in real life) an aspiring actor, who lands the role of a homeless serial killer who only wipes out the deserving. It seems to be some kind of satire on vampire movies. There’s a touching love scene, with a girl who says, “You’ve taught me so much about being homeless…” Pop culture is a strange and wondrous thing.
Hell always has more than one level. Just like most things in life, homelessness has degrees. The life of a technically homeless kid trying to get into show business often includes couch-surfing into some interesting situations that she or he can later write screenplays about. If you’re young and halfway attractive, there will usually be someone willing to put you up for a while. Plus, you’re in New York or Los Angeles, an adventure in itself. The life of a teenager with Academy and Grammy dreams is not quite the same as the life of a homeless, brain-injured combat veteran.
But still, even for the young, brave, and fit, living on the streets can be rough. Sure, there are hope and the vision of a future. There is also enormous risk. After all, what tiny percentage of young actors actually “make it”? You could end up being a hobo for the rest of your life. Or die young. Kids on the street, with immune systems weakened by malnutrition, are vulnerable to catching anything that goes around. They can’t help getting involved in criminal activity, even if it’s such a bum rap as sitting on a sidewalk at the wrong hour. They are vulnerable to rape and worse.
And face it, most kids who live on the streets, in garages, sheds, cars, or abandoned houses are not going to become movie stars. The average kid who is experiencing homelessness needs a suitable environment in which to at least get a high school diploma. Next, he or she needs a job that pays a living wage. Not just any wage. Economic homelessness is when the pay is so low, a person can’t afford a place to live even if they work full-time. More people are in that in-between situation than you might guess. We’re talking about the Universal Living Wage, as described in Looking Up at the Bottom Line. The benefit of the ULW is that it will end homelessness for over 1,000,000 minimum-wage workers, and prevent economic homelessness for all 10.1 million minimum wage workers. Check it out.
Reactions?
Source: “HIP-GNOSIS – interview with actor michael pitt,” MovementMagazine.com, 2002
Source: “Michael Pitt: Indie Nirvana,” NYTimes, 07/17/05
Image by istolethetv, used under its Creative Commons license.
More Stuff About Stuff
During this materialistic holiday season, there is more to say about belongings. Coats, for instance. Viking Moving and Storage in New York has a long-standing tradition that helps people experiencing homelessness. It sponsors an annual Coat Drive, and this is one of the interesting facts the company shares with the public:
90% of homeless adults need a new, warm coat each winter because they have no place to keep one over the summer months.
Where do all the old coats go? Are they all so worn and soiled that they can’t be refurbished? Doesn’t anybody sort them out and dry-clean the salvageable ones and save them till next year? What a waste, if they are all just thrown away.
And what about the “Element S(urvival)” coat that converts into a sleeping bag? Whether this remains a handcrafted item made by the inhabitants of homeless shelters, or somehow goes into mass production, the intention is to distribute these coats as widely as possible to people experiencing homelessness. What happens at the end of winter? Will they all just be thrown away? Do we want all that Tyvek insulation in the landfill? Are these coats recyclable? Or will there be a place for each person to store the coat until next winter?
Slight digression on the subject of clothing: In Austin, Texas, the Thermal Underwear Drive is still in progress. Please consider donating to it, or an equivalent program in your area.
A solid citizen who needs four pieces of luggage for a weekend vacation will get all upset about a person experiencing homelessness, whose total possessions fit into a jumbo-sized trash bag. Whether stuff is worth having is not for somebody else to judge. People should be able to have the stuff they need, or think they need. (Within certain limits. No dead animals, for instance. But housed people are not supposed to have those either.)
What happens when you suddenly (or slowly and painfully) become a family experiencing homelessness? What happens to all your special things? The knickknacks that relatives gave you, the beautiful objects from friends and lovers, family photo albums, the kids’ school projects. With any luck, you can talk a friend or relative into keeping a few boxes in their garage, where your stuff may or may not be stolen or watersoaked, or eaten by rats.
If a family loses its housing in warm weather, the cold will eventually come again. You really need to keep the kids’ winter clothes. Surely some day you will have a kitchen again, and need your pots and pans. If you’re lucky enough to have a computer or a decent stereo system, trying to hang onto those should not be an unreasonable desire. Of course, many people facing homelessness sell everything. If they don’t, critical people think they should. Even if it means settling for 10 cents on the dollar, for things that will be an expensive hassle to replace.
To maintain any kind of hygiene, social acceptability, and personal pride, there is a certain irreducible amount of possessions a person needs. To maintain any kind of civilized existence, you just plain need stuff, and a place to keep it, either short-term, long-term, or both. Families need stuff, single people need stuff, and even if you can’t use it right now, someday you might once more have a living space to use it in. How can you let that stuff go? You can’t carry it around. Sometimes, if there is any money at all coming in, you can rent storage. Do you buy storage or food? There are a million Sophie’s Choices to make, a million stories out there. The homeless are not an amorphous mass.
There used to be lockers in bus stations and train stations, but no more. Another casualty of the drug war, no doubt. Horrified by the idea that somebody might keep a stash in a locker, the people in charge would naturally want to remove any opportunity for anyone to leave anything, no matter how innocent, in a locker. Between that and the 9/11 paranoia, lockers are disappearing from the public scene, if they haven’t already.
A few days ago we talked about former basketball star Ray Williams, who now has a job and an apartment after a long spell of homelessness. One of his misfortunes was that a storage facility auctioned off his furniture and other belongings — though it apparently gave him a nine-month grace period to pay back rent, which is unprecedented generosity.
Back in July, it was reported that, aside from the found wreck that Williams slept in, he actually owned a roadworthy Chevy Tahoe. Unfortunately, his working vehicle was being held by a repair shop that needed its $550 bill paid. In October, when Williams was about to leave Florida for Mt. Vernon, Tim Povtak published a followup story. By the time this story appeared, the repair shop bill had escalated to $2,900. That’s how it is to be destitute. Even when you don’t buy anything, stuff costs you money. Even when you don’t have access to your stuff, it costs money to hold onto it.
This comes (with permission to share) from Sam Crespi of Women Who Dare, a note about when she lived in Los Angeles:
There was a young man who’d worked for the Peace Corps. He rented an abandoned gas station downtown, across the street from the homeless theater… I can’t quite remember what he called it, but I think it was Planet Earth. He realized that there were homeless men who could pick up jobs unloading trucks in the neighborhood, and that what kept them from doing it was they’d likely lose their belongings, which they’d to try to hide somewhere, usually unsuccessfully.
So he found a bunch of school type lockers on the cheap and installed them around the station and that solved that problem. Someone gave him some furniture (chairs and some sofas, small tables), someone else game boards (chess, checkers, etc). We brought an old oil drum so they could have a fire at night. Sometimes we brought hot food. A small boy from Salvador with his mother, both of whom were living in a cardboard box, came by sometimes. By then there was a TV, and I started renting films for him.
What I remember is how much it meant for these people to be respected — talked with as they were more than someone without a face. They felt nourished by that theater, by the games, the conversation. It gave them a chance for a short time to leave behind all the rest.
Reactions?
Source: “About Us – Newsroom,” A1FirstClass.com, 01/10
Source: “The Nomadic Life of Former Knicks Captain Ray Williams,” Fanhouse.com, 10/11/10
Image by moriza (Mo Riza), used under its Creative Commons license.
Outsider Hero Bruce Springsteen Champions the Homeless
The names of certain celebrities are inevitably linked with the causes they embrace, and one of the most prominent examples of that is Bruce Springsteen. He has always been a compassionate friend of the underdog, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, and anyone who sees the possibility of making a living wage as a mirage in the desert. He has especially supported people experiencing homelessness.
There was his work in Philadelphia, back in 1985, with the Committee for Fairness and Dignity for the Homeless; the 1987 All-Star Benefit for Homeless Children at Madison Square Garden in New York; the 2005 concert in Los Angeles to benefit PATH (People Assisting The Homeless) — well, you get the picture. He has made generous donations to food banks, and helped homeless groups not only in the United States but other countries as well.
There are the songs, like “Brothers Under the Bridge” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” and many others with similar themes. Springsteen’s 2007 album Give US Your Poor carried on with the tradition of raising awareness about homelessness, and included the work of homeless musicians.
Biographer Dave Marsh, speaking of one particular period of intense work on homeless issues, wrote,
Springsteen processed the information he received as an artist, not a politician. In all his meetings, he felt that he received at least as much from the community group as he gave to them.
Many people share the feeling expressed by Richard R. Troxell, who says,
The travails of homelessness are easier experienced through the songs of Bruce Springsteen… To so many working stiffs, and especially to those of us who have hit rock bottom, he is simply, ‘The Boss.’ His words always seem to hurt us and at the same time free us.
We all have at least one “I almost met” story, and Richard has one about almost meeting Springsteen. It was a wild time in Austin, early 1996, when the city’s ordinance against “camping” went into effect, and there was citizen unrest. Richard and other advocates for the homeless and the working poor were making speeches and organizing the Coalition to Repeal the Ban. At a homeless campsite, writer Molly Ivins and musician Steve Fromholz caroused all night in defiance of the ban. From a local monastery, Brother Michael hit the street to declare,
This ordinance would have put Jesus in jail.
Here is Richard’s account, from Looking Up at the Bottom Line:
Bruce Springsteen was in town that night. He was performing at the Austin Music Hall… He had sent word that he wanted to meet me. When I heard this, I felt a validation for our efforts even beyond our own belief of our right actions. But all night I struggled with small rolling skirmishes between the guys and the police. Heckling words of antagonism were used like swords all night, and they needed to be calmed. I spent the night stamping out flaming ducks. I never made it to meet The Boss, but the fact that he had dedicated the T-shirt and concession sales to House the Homeless satisfied me that night.
More than once I have thought of that as a missed opportunity, and more than once I’ve wished that I had a chance to meet him and share with him our plans, even today, to turn this thing around.
A person who doesn’t live inside must live outside. If living outdoors is defined as “camping,” and camping is against the law, then living itself is illegal for these people. Imagine being officially declared as having no right to live. It’s no wonder that the ignorant yahoos feel entitled to assault and kill people experiencing homelessness. It’s like the authorities have declared open season on them.
And now Austin is gearing up for another confrontation between the homeless and the housed. Its Sit/Lie ordinance is seriously flawed, and, in fairness to human dignity, probably should not exist at all. Many medical conditions that people might be suffering from are not taken into account. House the Homeless did a survey to illustrate the problem. A staggering 94 % of the respondents said that when they needed to sit down, they were unable to find a bench, and some of these folks have long-standing, debilitating physical illnesses or disabilities.
The law is so loosely written that people waiting for buses could technically be ticketed for violations. By strange coincidence, the ordinance particularly applies in the part of town where a number of agencies and services that help the people experiencing homelessness are located, and the whole thing is a big mess. So, watch for further developments on that front.
Reactions?
Source: “Bruce Springsteen: two hearts : the definitive biography, 1972-2003,” Google Books
Source: “Looking Up at the Bottom Line,” Amazon.com
Image by Tim Van Schmidt, used with permission.
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