Last week, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority announced that the number of homeless people counted in Los Angeles County slightly declined this year compared to last year.
Overall, there were an estimated 75,312 homeless people in Los Angeles County this year compared to 75,518 last year. If that sounds underwhelming, that’s because it is.
The one bright spot is the decline in the number of homeless people living on the streets, without shelter. LAHSA reports the number of unsheltered homeless people in Los Angeles County dropped about 5% compared to last year to 52,365.
This good news was partly offset by the increased number of people living in shelters increased 12% to 22,947.
“For more meaningful progress, we must strengthen tenant protections and programs to keep people housed,” declared Lindsey P. Horvath, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the LAHSA Commission. “We must also create the permanent, supportive, affordable housing that so many vulnerable Angelenos desperately need. We know what to do and we have no time to waste.”
Of course, much of that is not only extremely expensive but wrong.
“Tenant protections” are just another way of saying mandates and restrictions on private property in Los Angeles County. That’s precisely the opposite of what the county needs. Rather than rent control and tighter conditions on when a property owner can evict a tenant, Los Angeles County needs to make it much easier for housing to be built. The key to that is fewer mandates, not more.
As for more programs, there’s a lot of money being thrown around Los Angeles’ homelessness industrial complex. LAHSA’s own website boasts that it “coordinates and manages over $800 million annually.” What’s needed are clear metrics for success and aligning efforts with those metrics.
This editorial board has long heard from elected officials across the political spectrum that LAHSA doesn’t work very well and is in need of an overhaul. It’s true we have a crisis on the streets of Los Angeles County, but that doesn’t mean we should give a blank check to politicians who have yet to deliver meaningful results.