Take a drive through the streets of Los Angeles and you’ll quickly notice that poverty and opulence come within mere blocks of one another.
Take Downtown LA for example – it’s littered with vagrants, abandoned furniture and scattered debris, but among the fray stands multi-million-dollar condos and gleaming towers where many of LA’s most successful tastemakers conduct business.
As one of the wealthiest and most popular cities in America according to recent data, the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County in general paradoxically rank above nearly every other major city in regard to homelessness. It’s a chronic problem that has gradually worsened in recent years, culminating with swaths of displaced families taking refuge in tents, shelters, and subway stations. These pour souls include city natives, but a growing portion consists of transplants from the East Coast – where blistering winds and subzero temperatures wreak havoc during winter.
With no endgame in sight, Los Angeles’ homelessness epidemic will likely continue – and the current statistics reveal a harrowing reality. For California communities struggling with homelessness, the challenge has been to reconcile two demands: Moving encampments of people off sidewalks and into shelters, while dealing with neighborhood opposition that, to name one example, blocked Orange County’s attempt to build homeless camps.
There are few places where the crisis is as severe as it is in Los Angeles, where 25,000 people are living on the streets. Mayor Eric Garcetti recently announced an aggressive $20 million program to work around neighborhood opposition and potentially build temporary 100-bed shelters on city-owned land in all 15 city council districts. To help speed the opening of the 1,500 beds, the plan includes an emergency declaration that would in effect override existing zoning, building and fire code provisions. This measure comes under criticism for the rise in homelessness.
Los Angeles’ homeless problem has now spread past Skid Row to much of South Los Angeles. The amount of feces littering the streets led to a hepatitis outbreak in February that spread throughout the city’s homeless communities, infecting dozens of people. Los Angeles raised taxes last year in order to build housing for the homeless and has started a roving toilet program. Approximately a half-million people in the United States are homeless, with California accounting for 25 percent — the largest number of any state, according to a survey by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A Los Angeles Times editorial called the problem in the city a “national disgrace.”
The city leadership has taken one bold step after another: Restructuring the budget to free more than $100 million a year in homelessness funding, sponsoring one voter-approved initiative to raise more than $1 billion for housing and backing another regional proposal to raise the sales tax and generate an estimated $3.5 billion for support services over the next decade. And yet the tent cities continue to proliferate, in rich neighborhoods and poor, by the beach, the airport, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and within view of City Hall itself.
The Los Angeles Housing Homeless Services Authority (LAHHSA) reported last year that the number of homeless in the city spiked by 20 percent to 34,189 and increased by 23 percent in the county to 57,794. Since the release of last year’s count, city and county officials have passed numerous initiatives aimed at combating the issue, but few top officials if any are predicting the number of homeless has decreased, according to the most recent LAHHSA data. Bolstering a countywide movement to fight homelessness, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance providing homeowners with new opportunities to build or convert existing spaces into Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU), also known as “backyard homes” or “granny flats.”
The ordinance gives homeowners more flexibility in creating ADUs. The goal: To help increase the region’s seriously depleted housing stock though the development of safe and livable low-cost housing options.
“This ordinance enables County property owners to be part of the solution in the fight against homelessness,” said Board Chair Sheila Kuehl. “Building ‘granny flats’ can help alleviate our affordable housing crisis, while providing additional rental income for the families who build them. I strongly encourage homeowners to consider whether this opportunity can work for them. When it comes to reducing homelessness, we need all hands on deck and everyone in.”
“Addressing a shortage of more than 500,000 affordable units across Los Angeles County will require the expedient deployment of different types of housing, and ADUs are a great way for single family properties to be part of the solution,” he said. “It puts rent income into property owners’ pockets, without altering the character of their neighborhoods.” Supervisor Janice Hahn added: “We need to build more housing stock, period. If homeowners are willing and ready to build new units on their property, we should help them—not stand in their way.”
