The challenge of ending homelessness on L.A.'s skid row

The tents of the homeless on a skid row street in downtown Los Angeles.

Columnist

April 21, 2021 5 AM PT

Well, I gotta say this:

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter’s order Tuesday requiring Los Angeles city and county officials to offer shelter to the entire population of skid row by mid-October is a brash, bold move — and possibly marks a turning point in the enduring, shameful saga of homelessness in downtown Los Angeles.

It was a kick in the pants to local elected officials that is sure to be cheered by many, especially those who want public spaces cleared of sprawling encampments, not just on skid row, but across our tent-draped metropolis.

So hear, hear, for a judge who is saying loud and clear that if politicians can’t do their jobs, he’ll pound his gavel, flap his robes, take to the streets himself and show them how it’s done.

But before anyone gets too carried away in celebration, I feel compelled to point out that Carter’s judicial activism and gavel-pounding bravado — while well-intentioned, I’m sure — presents more than a few big, vexing questions.

How exactly do you move a few thousand people off the streets in just a few months, including those with severe mental illness and/or addiction issues?

Where do you put them when the inconvenient reality for several years has been, hey, even if we could address the medical and mental health needs of these folks, we don’t have anywhere to put them?

Who pays for it all?

Tents lined up along 6th St. on Skid Row, downtown.

And if skid row gets swept clean, where do you think all the people who live there now but aren’t ready or willing to move into temporary quarters, are going to end up?

I’m not much of a gambler, but I’d bet you that a lot of them are going to simply relocate to another neighborhood somewhere in Los Angeles.

Carter’s ruling Tuesday, as part of a lawsuit he is overseeing about homelessness in Los Angeles, made some astute observations as he criticized local and state officials’ failures, often using their own words to make his case against them.

He quoted California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance:

“Let’s call it what it is, a disgrace, that the richest state in the richest nation — succeeding across so many sectors — is failing to properly house, heal, and humanely treat so many of its own people.”

Carter commented, as well, on the effect of homelessness on communities and quality of life.

“Los Angeles has lost its parks, beaches, schools, sidewalks, and highway systems due to the inaction of city and county officials who have left our homeless citizens with no other place to turn,” the judge said.

“All of the rhetoric, promises, plans, and budgeting cannot obscure the shameful reality of this crisis — that year after year, there are more homeless Angelenos, and year after year, more homeless Angelenos die on the streets.”

And I’d add that they don’t just die; they get seriously ill, they get assaulted, they get forced into prostitution or drug peddling, and they grow old quickly, as if the movie of their lives is on fast forward.

Carter, in his 110-page order, displays considerable understanding of how homelessness and skid row happened, and it wasn’t by accident. The judge cites decades of bad public policy decisions, housing discrimination, economic disparity, mental health service failures and institutional racism. And he dwells on the disproportionate numbers of Black people among those who have ended up on the streets.

Tents lined up on 4th St. on Skid Row, downtown.

And yet, for all the historical perspective, there seems to be no real logic behind Carter’s demands. For reasons I never quite understood, he was particularly worked up for months about encampments under freeways, and insisted that those people be prioritized for services. I don’t know about you, but I still see plenty of freeway encampments.

Now skid row is in his sights, but not in a way that seems to fit a thoughtful, overarching plan to address homelessness in the city.

In the same week Mayor Eric Garcetti promised to spend $1 billion on homelessness, the judge is demanding that the money be placed in an escrow account for monitoring.

He’s also demanding that every woman and unaccompanied child on skid row be housed within 90 days, with a 120-day deadline for families and an Oct. 18 deadline for every current skid row resident to be either in housing or a shelter. And once everyone has a place to stay, however temporary, local government will have more authority to clear the streets of any stragglers, a provision that is already being characterized as criminalization of homelessness.

I must admit that for years, I’ve been just as impatient and critical of local officials as Judge Carter. And there is something to be said for shaking a fist, demanding better and trying to speed up the process. But I also know from personal experience that you can’t impose magical deadlines on getting everyone off the street because things can get very complicated when addiction and mental illness come into play.

Even when a bed was available for my friend Nathaniel, a talented musician whose ambitions were crushed by mental illness, it took an entire year of repeated efforts by me and professional outreach workers to get him past his fears and apprehensions, and finally move indoors.

There are no shortcuts in such cases. Along with limited housing of all kinds, we don’t have nearly enough intensive, customized case management, and we have not yet come to grips with a corrosive meth epidemic — it’s cheap and plentiful, it’s a highly addictive killer, it’s hard to treat — that ratchets up the complexities.

Judge Carter didn’t explain how those things should be accomplished, and a temporary shelter can’t heal the permanent damage caused by a lifetime of things gone wrong.

It’s OK, though, for all of us to be reminded that the way things are is not OK.

And shame on us if we can’t do better.