It isn’t a case of the Democrats now going off soul searching, it case of total revamp from top to bottom after Trump’s win last Tuesday. The Amazing Democrats’ advice very early on to the Clinton Campaign (and some of those comments were posted on our social media platforms as far back as the late summer of 2015) went unheard unlike when we worked for the Obama/Biden campaign in 2012. It is time DNC to fire all your overpaid pollsters (who got it so wrong), consultants and the like. The DNC should of known in their hearts of hearts that after Bernie Sanders won twenty-two states with so little money against Hillary Clinton, their candidate of choice would be in serious trouble if the Republicans got a candidate who could storm the mainstream and social media which Trump did and of course got a bit of luck along the way with that first letter released by the FBI Director that certainly damaged Hillary in early voting and gave a huge boast for Trump with his base. Yes, a lot of questions will be asked as to how the FBI were allowed to influence an election so openly. But this was far from the only reason Hillary lost even if the DNC die hards believe it to be so. The DNC and Democrats have lost their way and have been now for a long time. Their obsession only seems to be with fundraising not the core principles of what the party was founded on, Trump was able to tap into that huge hole in the DNC. It was a party that once cared for the low income, the homeless, our veterans, the poor people of America and not the massive billions of dollars in fundraising which was totally wasted trying to take Trump down. Just think today how many homeless people that billion of dollars plus would do to help house the homeless crisis in our major cities which should have been a top issue for Hillary.
Hillary campaign interviewed myself and members of The Amazing Democrats, for the record we call ourselves The Amazing Democrats as we not die hard Democrats, we wouldn’t have followed Hillary in to the fires of hell if she was wrong and we wouldn’t be silent either even if it meant we were fired from the campaign, that’s the way worked in the Obama/Biden 2012 reelection campaign and we were amazed how we survived not to be fired (nearly maybe once or twice when we really overstepped our mark and criticized some of the President’s polices publicly). The interviewing process went back as far as January 2016 to join her campaign. We were subjected to rounds and rounds of interviews, back ground checks, etc. Months would go by and we heard nothing and then it would start all over again. It was by late August this Editor got interviewed for the sixth time, more back ground checks and then was offered four important positions in four different swing states and one of this offers came directly from the DNC. All this was paid employment and not volunteer work. That last weekend in August for me was were I suffered so much turmoil as I had to give them a decision by the following Monday. It meant dropping everything in my life and getting on a plane to Pennsylvania. What was most troubling in my mind was I could sense there was panic setting in for the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign. I didn’t sleep that weekend. I went back to the old formula that the Obama campaign thought me and even though I didn’t have access to data like we did when worked for Obama, never the less, I ran the data all weekend long. It is a long and laborious process that you can see today that both the pollsters and media don’t do, why? Maybe they just are too lazy to do it, who knows? You have to run every state’s county’s data county by county, you have then figure in the data available from both the candidates’ primary wins or loses, a lot of mathematics but in the end you get a somewhat overview, be it very rough. Also you have to take into account that I had been tracking the swing states every week since both primaries ended last year. Not good for Hillary and her team I could see, in fact the Wednesday before the election I was gloomy, I could predict Trump was going to win Ohio by three percent (he won by five percent so I was only out by two percent) and as you know, no Presidential candidate can take their place in The White House if they don’t win Ohio. With all this, it was the hardiest email I ever sent, declining the positions to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As we move into the Trump Presidency, it’s going to be a very dark lonely path for the Democrats. Yes, there is the mid-terms in 2018, but if the DNC works as it has for the last twenty years, they are a very slow climb back up on Capitol Hill as remember this Presidential election in 2016 had the lowest turn out of voters in years, which helped Trump but destroyed Hillary’s chances of winning, nearly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote and historically mid-term voting has a very low voter turn-out. Also if Trump makes any small success of his first term and as everything Trump touches turns to gold, whether you like his manner and process or not and as it very hard to unseat a sitting President, as we all know, Trump going for a second term, then the DNC and Democrats could be looking at the wildness for next eight years at least, that’s 2024, a very depressing thought I know, but maybe a fact unless the DNC make radically chances and that starts today, not six months before the 2018 mid-terms.
In the 2006 mid-terms under George W. Bush, the Republicans got wiped out in the House and the Senate. All the media said at that time that Republican Party need to reinvent itself and stop been the “party of no”. Did they? Of course not, in fact under Obama as President and because of their hatred of him, they became the “party of no, no, no” on every bill he sent to the House and Senate. Now look where they are ten years later. The power of Washington again with the Democrats hanging onto their coattails and the sad thing is, Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. If he gets two terms, who knows, with three more justices ready for retirement in the next few years, he might even hit the golden jackpot of nominating four Supreme Court justices, a very scary thought. The Democrats however can’t do as the Republicans did in 2006, which was nothing to change their image and beliefs but the Democrats aren’t so lucky. If the DNC go back to business as usual, it will be a very dark long road for the Democrats back to the shining lights of The White House. It is simply the base. The Republican base and the Democrat base is so so much different and as Trump said decades ago when he was a registered Democrat, pro-choice and donated a lot of money to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns: “If I was to run as President, I would run as a Republican as their voters as so dumb and easy to fool, I would lie and lie to them until I got numbers”. That’s all he had to do for this Presidential campaign and he is the winner today not Hillary Clinton.
Which brings what fundamentally went south very early on in the Hillary Clinton campaign:
1. NEVER EVER underestimate your opponent.
2. If he/she gets down in the dirt, you go down there with them. Hillary taking the high road was her downfall as political correctness (PC) means nothing anymore in the world of social media as we saw with Trump, the King of Twitter and Obama/Biden in 2008 as the King of Facebook. PC has gone way too far in the US and the rest of the world and Trump, no matter what you think, turned PC on it’s head in this presidential election and as he said on 60 Minutes last night, “it was nasty, very nasty but I am the one sitting here today talking to you and not them”. In fact 2020 and 2024 will be so so much nastier. Rumors were that Trump using his own money, paid pockets of supporters all over America to flood the internet with lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton and the secret? They could never be traced back to him or his campaign. Why didn’t the Hillary Clinton campaign do the same with the rumors about Trump’s ties to the Mafia? Why was this never floated all over the internet? PC I guess but he won and Clinton lost. The new trend now with Presidential campaigns as Trump has lowered the bar, is to win 2020 or 2024 the candidates from both parties to win, will have to get down in the mud and get dirty. Sad? Of course but no cares about the loser, they only care about the winner.
3. Dump the negative ads. One billion dollars was such a waste of money by the Clinton campaign and Trump barely spent a faction of that. We kept telling the Obama/Biden campaign and the DNC in 2012, negative ads don’t work anymore and only turn all the voters off. Pity they didn’t listen.
The Amazing Democrats are not all about criticizing without offering the DNC suggestions for the road forward:
1. Fire all your overpaid pollsters, consultants, lobbyists, etc..
2. Allow the progressive members of the party to take over. (I do not mean the loony left), members who understand the issues of the day to day worries of the lower income Americans (who sadly are too many), the homeless crisis in our cities all over America, our veterans living on our streets.
3. Get back to what a community organizer really is. I used get so annoy with new volunteers who joined our team who tried to tell the person forcefully on the other side of the phone why they should vote for Obama or donate to Obama’s campaign and the DNC. A community organizer’s job is to listen and listen well and then send what they hear up the line and hope they are listening otherwise you get a result like Tuesday’s Presidential elections.
4. As the advice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, get off the negative ads obsession (turns all voters off).
5. And please with every email you sent, stop looking for donations all the time. It makes us feel you don’t care about anything but money and donations which we know to be true.
6. Find the soul of the Democrat Party again of FDR and John F. Kennedy.
7. And finally, listen. Never stop listening to those on the ground as we are the ones who can make the difference from the Democrats winning or losing an election.
Here is to the 2018 mid-terms, see you then and to 2020 Presidential election. Keep the faith and a sense of humor as The Amazing Democrats do and God Bless America,
LOS ANGELES — Flooded with homeless encampments from its freeway underpasses to the chic sidewalks of Venice Beach, municipal officials here declared a public emergency on Tuesday, making Los Angeles the first city in the nation to take such a drastic step in response to its mounting problem with street dwellers.
The move stems partly from compassion, and in no small part from the rising tide of complaints about the homeless and the public nuisance they create. National experts on homelessness say Los Angeles has had a severe and persistent problem with people living on the streets rather than in shelters — the official estimate is 26,000. The mayor and City Council have pledged a sizable and coordinated response, proposing Tuesday to spend at least $100 million in the next year on housing and other services. They plan, among other things, to increase the length of time shelters are open and provide more rent subsidies to street people and those in shelters.
“Every single day we come to work, we see folks lying on this grass, a symbol of our city’s intense crisis,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday. “This city has pushed this problem from neighborhood to neighborhood for too long, from bureaucracy to bureaucracy.”
In urban areas, including New York, Washington and San Francisco, rising housing costs and an uneven economic recovery have helped fuel a rise in homelessness. In some cities, officials have focused much of their efforts on enforcement policies to keep people from living in public spaces.
In places known for good weather like Honolulu and Tucson, or for liberal politics — like Madison, Wis. — frustration has prompted crackdowns on large encampments. Some cities, like Seattle, have tried setting aside designated areas for homeless encampments. But to date, no city has claimed to have the perfect solution.
Like other urban mayors, Mr. Garcetti has made promises to end chronic homelessness. Yet the homeless population here has grown about 12 percent since he took office in 2013. He, too, has been criticized for taking a heavy-handed approach to enforcement while doing too little to help people find and pay for housing. City budget officials estimate that Los Angeles already spends more than $100 million, mostly through law enforcement, to deal with issues that stem from people living on the streets.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has been grappling with a soaring homeless population since he took office nearly two years ago. The number of people occupying homeless shelters peaked around 60,000 last winter and remained stubbornly high — around 57,000 — this week.
Unlike the dispossessed in Los Angeles, the vast majority of the homeless in New York are sheltered. But the presence of the street homeless, highlighted on the front pages of tabloids, has put public pressure on Mr. de Blasio to address the 3,000 unsheltered homeless holding signs on sidewalks, sleeping atop subway grates and huddling in encampments.
Increasingly, young families are becoming the most potent symbol of homelessness, with mothers who work multiple jobs living in shelters in New York or in their cars in Los Angeles.
“This is the fallout of not having anywhere near the affordable housing that’s needed,” said Megan Hustings, the interim director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington-based advocacy group.
“It is repeated all over the country: We work to get them emergency food and shelter, but housing continues to be unaffordable, so you see people lingering in emergency services or going to the streets.”
In Los Angeles, rents have soared all over the city and housing vouchers usually cover only a fraction of the rent for a home near public transportation. Efforts to build new housing units have floundered, and the city’s spending on affordable housing has plummeted to $26 million, roughly a quarter of what it was a decade ago.
Neighborhoods that were once considered hubs of relatively inexpensive motels and single-room apartments — Venice Beach, the Downtown Arts District — have been transformed into well-to-do enclaves filled with cupcake emporiums and doggy day care centers.
A census of the homeless in Los Angeles County released in May found that the number of people bedding down in tents, cars and makeshift encampments had grown to 9,535, nearly double the number from two years earlier. More than half of the estimated 44,000 homeless in Los Angeles County live in the city limits, according to the census. And nearly 13,000 in Los Angeles County become homeless each month, according to a recent report from the Economic Roundtable.
The spending proposal will need to be approved by the City Council and allocated by its Homelessness and Poverty Committee. The $100 million figure was chosen in part for its symbolism, said Herb J. Wesson Jr., the City Council president, to show county, state and federal officials that the city was willing to make a significant contribution to an urgent problem. “Today, we step away from the insanity of doing the same thing and hoping for different results, and instead chart our way to ending homelessness,” he said.
But many longtime advocates for the homeless here said the City Council’s proposal was not likely to make a big dent in the number of people who are finding themselves on the streets. “Encampments used to be contained to Skid Row, where city officials would try to control or ignore them,” said Gary Blasi, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied homelessness in the region for years. “Plans have been made, and never made it off the paper they’re written on. It’s not clear what will be delivered. And do the math here — it doesn’t amount to much at all.”
In New York, Mr. Blasi said that hundreds of existing housing vouchers went unused because homeless people could not find landlords who would accept them.
While overall homelessness has declined nationally, urban areas with rising rents are facing the most acute problems.
“People who would have thought of themselves as homeowners 10 or 15 years ago are renting, and it’s a grim situation in a lot of places,” said Steve Berg, the vice president for programs and policy for the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “A lot of places don’t have a real grip of what the homeless population is in real time, and respond only crisis to crisis. But what we’ve learned about homelessness over many, many years is that you have to provide housing, and criminalizing the homeless doesn’t keep people off the streets at all.”
Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance that lets the police confiscate property and makes it easier for them to clear sidewalks of homeless encampments. Similar legislation has been passed in other cities.
In Honolulu, where the city has spent the last two days shutting down homeless encampments that have irritated residents and frightened tourists, a federal judge on Tuesday denied the American Civil Liberties Union’s request to stop seizing and destroying people’s property during the sweeps.
Mr. Garcetti proposed using $12.6 million this year from unexpected tax revenue for rental subsidies for short-term housing and other services, including $1 million to create centers where the homeless could store belongings and shower. The $100 million, if approved, would be for the 2016 budget.
Some advocates for the homeless here have said that the rising street population has created a public health crisis on Skid Row downtown, where about 5,000 people now live outdoors.
“It’s a humanitarian crisis and a moral shame,” said José Huizar, a council member who represents the area. “It has reached a critical breaking point, that the sea of despair that we witness on the streets of Los Angeles each and every day must end, and it begins with all of us here today.”
No one likes seeing sidewalk encampments. In our experience, no one likes living in them either — if they have any other real choice. In Los Angeles, there are enough shelter beds for less than one-third of homeless people, the lowest percentage of any large city in the country. That leaves nearly 18,000 people — an increase of 18% in the last two years — to fend for themselves on the streets. Every human being must at some point lay his burdens down. But in Los Angeles, this is soon to be a crime.
The City Council has passed and Mayor Eric Garcetti is expected to sign into law by July 6 two ordinances that would allow the Los Angeles Police Department to impound any and all possessions the homeless have that they cannot wear or carry on their backs. Violators face the loss of nearly everything they own, criminal prosecution, jail and fines they cannot pay with money they do not have.
These ordinances command seizure of not only tents, tarps, bedding and sleeping bags but also “clothing, documents and medication.” The inclusion of these items demonstrates extraordinary callousness and hostility toward the poor and disabled.
“Documents” would include the military discharge papers of some of the 4,000 homeless veterans on our streets, as well as identification papers of every description. “Medication” includes drugs that, if stopped abruptly, could cause grave medical harm. Although there has been talk of amendments to eliminate these items from the list of what police can take and to drop the criminal penalty for violations, Council President Herb Wesson indicated that the ordinances could go into effect before that happens.
Every human being must at some point lay his burdens down. But in Los Angeles, this is soon to be a crime.–
Under the ordinances — one covering streets and sidewalks, the other parks — if the police cite a homeless person for having possessions on public property, the person must move them within 24 hours. But they cannot move their possessions to any public property within the 486 square miles of the city. Where else can they take them? The city says it will provide storage (a 60-gallon garbage can), and argues that therefore the possessions are not really lost. But those facilities are located only in skid row, and not easily reachable for some.
What makes the local government’s inaction especially galling is that Los Angeles has done less than most major cities to end homelessness through the only proven technique: “housing first.” Under that model, advocates place homeless individuals into apartments, not temporary shelter, and provide them with customized services. In more than 85% of cases across the country, even the most disabled stay housed and off the streets.
Not only does housing first move homeless people and their possessions off the streets, scores of studies across the nation and here in Los Angeles show that this strategy — and not criminalization — is the most cost-effective approach. The cost to taxpayers of people living on the streets and randomly ricocheting through expensive emergency rooms and jail cells ranges from $35,000 to $150,000 per person per year. The cost of housing these same individuals would range from $12,000 to $25,000 per year, even in pricey Los Angeles.
Cities across California are implementing housing solutions and seeing homeless numbers decrease and cost savings increase. San Jose just reported a 14% decrease in homelessness and significant cost savings. Fresno reported a decrease of 50% in homeless people on its streets since 2013. In fact, every community in Southern California other than Los Angeles that reports homeless figures reported a decrease from 2013 to 2015.
Los Angeles’ decision to invest in force and intimidation is guaranteed to fail. And it won’t be cheap. As Chief Administrative Officer Miguel Santana reported to the City Council in April, about $87 million of the $100 million per year the city spends on homelessness already goes to law enforcement. Do the math: That leaves just $13 million to actually help homeless individuals, or less than one penny per day for each person in L.A. And much of that small sum goes to outreach efforts rather than housing and treatment.
The mayor and 14 members of the City Council (Councilman Gil Cedillo is the exception) seem to think they are on the right path. If you disagree, we’re sure they would love to hear from you.
Gary Blasi, professor of law emeritus at UCLA, has been an advocate and researcher on homeless issues in Los Angeles since 1983. He helps lead a partnership with the Veterans Administration to end veteran homelessness in Los Angeles. Phillip Mangano, the executive director of United States Interagency Council on Homelessness in the Bush administration, is president and chief executive of the American Round Table to Abolish Homelessness.
We all know that San Francisco is booming, but it’s still stunning to see the numbers. According to the Census Bureau, in just 20 years, from 1995 to 2015, the city added 100,000 people for a total population of almost 850,000. For comparison’s sake, Washington, D.C. — another boomtown — added 78,000 peopleover the same period. More dramatic is the growth of the labor force, which increased 25% over the last five years.
For the overall economy, this is good. Population growth fuels jobs and opportunity. But not everyone benefits equally. The working-class residents of San Francisco are straining under the weight of explosive housing costs. Taking into account luxury rentals as well as older developments and rent-controlled units, the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University found that, in 2013, the median rent in San Francisco was $1,491, the highest in the nation.
Limit your view to newer, market-rate units, and the numbers are even more discouraging: According to the real estate start-up Zumper, median rent for a studio is $2,650, while a one-bedroom goes for $3,500. For landlords, these high costs make renovations attractive, leading to more and more evictions. A 2013 report from the city’s budget analyst found a 38% increase in all evictions and a 170% increase in Ellis Act evictions — a state law allowing landlords to force out rent-controlled tenants so long as they sell or demolish the building, convert the units into condominiums, or let the property sit vacant for at least five years.
The bulk of these evictions have been in the Mission District, a historically Latino area of the city. Desperate to stem this displacement, area leaders, including Supervisor David Campos, have tried to limit luxury condominiums — the most visible sign of the change — with a 45-day moratorium on construction.
There are really only two ways of dealing with [housing costs]. You can try to make San Francisco less desirable, or you can accommodate demand, which has to mean more building.–
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted 7 to 4 in favor of the moratorium. But the measured needed 9 votes to pass, so it failed.
This was the right outcome. For as much as it may calm fears — one backer said it was about “saving the Mission District, saving San Francisco and saving the heart and soul of our city” — a moratorium doesn’t solve the problem at hand.
Let’s go back to the city’s population growth. Since 1995, San Francisco has grown by 100,000 people, and almost half that growth has been since 2010. Nonetheless, according to a recent report from Paragon Real Estate, the city has seen just 7,500 new housing units since 2010, and just 33,000 since 2000.
What happens when demand outstrips supply? Prices go up, of course. And that’s what we’ve seen in the city. Contrary to what some advocates seem to believe, San Francisco can’t escape this axiom.
It’s the same in D.C., where there are more people and tough building limits. The result is explosive gentrification.
At just 45 days, it’s hard to say that the San Francisco moratorium would have mattered, one way or the other. Still, that approach — placing new limits — is counterproductive.
There are really only two ways of dealing with high housing costs and subsequent evictions. You can try to make San Francisco less desirable, or you can accommodate demand, which has to mean more building, and greater density in high-income and desirable neighborhoods.
Not that letting the market do its work is a panacea. The sad fact is that high demand housing markets aren’t too keen on affordable units.
To make headway, cities will have to use the fruits of new buildings and new residents — more tax revenue — to preserve a place for low-income residents.
With more revenue, the government can move on new or stalled public housing plans, purchase vacant units for affordable housing and strengthen the city safety net. And it can enhance those efforts with new mandates, like affordable set-asides in luxury buildings. In short, it can throw the kitchen sink at the housing problem.
Some may argue that this solution is a form of trickle-down economics: Let the rich get their condos, and eventually the poor will get shelter, too. But it isn’t. It’s about local government using the market as a tool to help low-income people preserve a place in their cities. New York City’s populist Mayor Bill de Blasio understands that concept, which is why he has committed to a program of new construction.
Many European countries apply a sales tax — called a value-added tax — to almost every transaction. On its face, this is regressive: Because working people spend most of their income on goods, they’re hit hardest. But so long as these countries divert revenue to assist the needy, they can achieve progressive goals.
Likewise, when it comes to housing policy, government can harness means that may not seem progressive for ends that benefit everyone.
America remains, despite the damage inflicted by the Great Recession and its aftermath, a very rich country. But many Americans are economically insecure, with little protection from life’s risks. They frequently experience financial hardship; many don’t expect to be able to retire, and if they do retire have little to live on besides Social Security.
Many readers will, I hope, find nothing surprising in what I just said. But all too many affluent Americans — and, in particular, members of our political elite — seem to have no sense of how the other half lives. Which is why a new study on the financial well-being of U.S. households conducted by the Federal Reserve, should be required reading inside the Beltway.
Before I get to that study, a few words about the callous obliviousness so prevalent in our political life.
I am not, or not only, talking about right-wing contempt for the poor, although the dominance of compassionless conservatism is a sight to behold. According to the Pew Research Center, more than three-quarters of conservatives believe that the poor “have it easy” thanks to government benefits; only 1 in 7 believe that the poor “have hard lives.” And this attitude translates into policy. What we learn from the refusal of Republican-controlled states to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government would foot the bill, is that punishing the poor has become a goal in itself, one worth pursuing even if it hurts rather than helps state budgets.
But leave self-declared conservatives and their contempt for the poor on one side. What’s really striking is the disconnect between centrist conventional wisdom and the reality of life — and death — for much of the nation.
Take, as a prime example, positioning on Social Security. For decades, a declared willingness to cut Social Security benefits, especially by raising the retirement age, has been almost a required position — a badge of seriousness — for politicians and pundits who want to sound wise and responsible. After all, people are living longer, so shouldn’t they work longer, too? And isn’t Social Security an old-fashioned system, out of touch with modern economic realities?
Meanwhile, the reality is that living longer in our ever-more-unequal society is very much a class thing: life expectancy at age 65 has risen a lot among the affluent, but hardly at all in the bottom half of the wage distribution, that is, among those who need Social Security most. And while the retirement system F.D.R. introduced may look old-fashioned to affluent professionals, it is quite literally a lifeline for many of our fellow citizens. A majority of Americans over 65 get more than half their income from Social Security, and more than a quarter are almost completely reliant on those monthly checks.
These realities may finally be penetrating political debate, to some extent. We seem to be hearing less these days about cutting Social Security, and we’re even seeing some attention paid to proposals for benefit increases given the erosion of private pensions. But my sense is that Washington still has no clue about the realities of life for those not yet elderly. Which is where that Federal Reserve study comes in.
This is the study’s second year, and the current edition actually portrays a nation in recovery: in 2014, unlike 2013, a substantial plurality of respondents said that they were better off than they had been five years ago. Yet it’s startling how little room for error there is in many American lives.
And something that even startled me: 47 percent said that they would not have the resources to meet an unexpected expense of $400 — $400! They would have to sell something or borrow to meet that need, if they could meet it at all.
Of course, it could be much worse. Social Security is there, and we should be very glad that it is. Meanwhile, unemployment insurance and food stamps did a lot to cushion unlucky families from the worst during the Great Recession. And Obamacare, imperfect as it is, has immensely reduced insecurity, especially in states whose governments haven’t tried to sabotage the program.
But while things could be worse, they could also be better. There is no such thing as perfect security, but American families could easily have much more security than they have. All it would take is for politicians and pundits to stop talking blithely about the need to cut “entitlements” and start looking at the way their less-fortunate fellow citizens actually live.
As we honor the dead on this Memorial Day, it’s worth remembering as well the living veterans of military service who have no homes except sidewalk encampments or the occasional shelter bed, whose lives are so wracked by mental illness, addictions or physical disabilities that they are essentially dying in the streets.
At an event in Los Angeles last year, Michelle Obama challenged mayors across the country to house homeless veterans by the end of 2015, and Mayor Eric Garcetti was one of many who pledged to do so. The problem is that the population of homeless veterans in L.A. has increased since then. Although the number fluctuates daily as some fall into and out of housing and others become newly homeless, Garcetti’s office now says the city needs to house 3,154 homeless veterans by the end of the year.
We could say it was foolish of the mayor to assign himself the goal of housing an unknown number of people by a specific date. But he reasoned that a deadline would create a sense of urgency. In fact, the city did wrangle Veterans Affairs vouchers for supportive housing sooner than usual this year. It also helps that the VA is under its own deadline — not just to fulfill the Obama administration’s goal but to comply with a legal settlement by securing more housing for veterans on its West L.A. campus and in communities across the county.
So what must Garcetti and VA officials do? First, find veterans who are homeless. Some do show up at the VA or on service providers’ doorsteps, but most are on the streets. The city and the VA, to their credit, are increasing the number of outreach workers to coax veterans into the system.
And it is a system. Housing homeless veterans — or anyone who is homeless — is not as simple as handing over a set of keys. (Although some advocates say it should be.) It’s a lengthy process. And it should be shorter.
It can take 100 days, sometimes longer, for a [homeless] veteran to go from first contact with a [service] provider to walking across the threshold of an apartment.-
It can take 100 days, sometimes longer, for a veteran to go from first contact with a provider to walking across the threshold of an apartment. He or she must be confirmed to be a veteran — with an honorable or general discharge — to receive a Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) voucher. That process, which can take weeks, should be streamlined. A veteran waiting through all that is still homeless.
The good news, according to city officials, is that about 1,000 VASH vouchers and another 500 federal housing vouchers are available this year. That should be enough to cover most if not all of the chronically homeless — those who have been homeless at least a year and have a disabling problem. VASH vouchers are accompanied by case management and services provided by the VA or its nonprofit partners. Some landlords, however, are reluctant to accept a homeless person who might turn out to be an unstable tenant. And although the vouchers cover up to 110% of what the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers a fair market rent for the area, the booming rental market and scarcity of affordable housing in Los Angeles make it even harder to find a willing landlord.
City and VA officials can work on allaying landlords’ fears by making sure that they know how to contact tenants’ case managers if there are problems. The city could also help fund more housing “navigators” — specialists who find available rental units for veterans and work with landlords. City officials are also looking into fundraising for security deposits on apartments. Housing vouchers don’t cover them.
Most of the city’s homeless veterans are not chronically homeless, and so are not eligible for vouchers. But these veterans are eligible for the Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program, which helps newly homeless veterans get back on their feet, rent apartments and find jobs. This year, the VA gave $30 million to L.A. nonprofits under this program — twice as much as it last awarded, in 2013.
Of course, it’s unclear whether all of these resources are enough to end veteran homelessness this year — or the next, for that matter. But the mayor has infused this issue with a sense of urgency and put a homelessness expert on his staff who convenes monthly meetings of all the agencies involved. That’s a start. Now, he needs to work on infusing the city with more affordable housing.
Editor’s note: When we see this week that LA’s homeless figures have increased by thousands of human beings living on our streets and then today we learn that actor Johnny Depp brings his two dogs into Australia by his private jet when he a guest of that country (be it on a artist work visa). Now the Australia agencies cannot allow him to fly these dogs back by a commercial flight so they will have to be flown back on Mr. Depp’s private jet within the next forty-eight hours (that’s the time frame the Australia government have kindly given Mr. Depp for breaking their laws or they will put his dogs down). The cost of flying these two dogs back to California in a private jet from Australia works out at a cost of $60,000 approx. There are 50,000 homeless human beings on our streets in LA. $1,000 each to one of these homeless people from Mr. Depp would go along way to help them get back on their feet for a deposit for a apartment, etc. and Mr. Depp would still have $10,000 left over. I for one, are sick of these over bloated paid people in our movie industry who behave in such a shameful spoiled way. With all the paid Public Relations people on Mr. Depp’s staff not one apology for his arrogant behavior has being offered to the Australian government. Shame on you Mr. Depp and count your lucky stars the Australian government haven’t revoked your artist work visa.
In the early 1980s, as today, Los Angeles County residents who qualified for no other form of public assistance were given a few hundred dollars in monthly last-resort payments known as general relief. It was a lifeline to people down on their luck, hoping to cobble together a few dollars to put a roof over their heads, at least for a portion of the month. The amount in 1982 was $221.
More than 30 years later, that’s still what the county pays, despite the obvious many-fold increases over the decades in the cost of housing and other basic needs. Two general relief recipients pooling their money still can’t afford a month in a typical L.A. apartment.
And leaders wonder why Los Angeles can’t make headway against homelessness.
The orientation of county government toward its moral duty to help the most destitute of people has been grudging, to say the least. The Legislature has often been its ally, for example passing a law to permanently hold the county’s obligation to 65% of the 1994 poverty line, taking the payment from a paltry $346 back down to $221 — miserly even then.
Certain that general relief recipients were using their monthly payments to fund princely lives on the streets, county supervisors embarked on one costly mission after another to ferret out fraud and whittle the general relief rolls. People who tried to make their payments go further by becoming roommates were disqualified, for example.
The county, as has so often been the case, got caught up in the minutiae of rules and regulations while losing sight of the program’s goal, which is — or ought to be — to aid those most in need and give them a way to live without panhandling or engaging in some other troubling behavior.
A year ago, the county agreed to settle a lawsuit by correcting some of its most egregious practices. Recipients can now pool their money, for example. But Los Angeles — the county with the costliest housing — still pays the lowest general relief amount in the state.
In the budget process now underway, the Board of Supervisors is signaling a new willingness to question old rules in order to spend money more effectively and provide better service to foster children, the mentally ill and others in need. It’s high time to boost payments to general relief recipients as well. They are part of the web of need that, unaddressed, puts more people on the streets and makes the streets meaner, more hopeless places to live.
The homeless population jumped 12% in the last two years in both the city and county of Los Angeles, driven by soaring rents, low wages and stubbornly high unemployment, according to a report released Monday.
In one of the most striking findings, the number of tents, makeshift encampments and vehicles occupied by homeless people soared 85%, to 9,535, according to biennial figures from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
“It’s everywhere now; the encampments are in residential neighborhoods, they’re outside of schools,” said L.A. City Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents Venice.
“It’s jarring. … It shows we’ve got a hell of a lot of work ahead.
The rise was fueled by gentrification downtown and in Venice, where cheap hotel rooms, motels and single-room apartments — once the last refuge of the poor — are being eliminated.
Growing tensions in these rapidly changing neighborhoods were heightened by the fatal police shootings of two unarmed homeless men in just over two months. The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the March 1 death of Charly Keunang on skid row and the killing last week in Venice of Brendon K. Glenn.
Mark Ryavec, president of the Venice Stakeholders Assn., called on Bonin, Mayor Eric Garcetti and other elected officials to “accept that fixing this situation is their responsibility, not just the LAPD’s.”
Countywide, more than 44,000 homeless people were tallied in January, up from more than 39,000 in 2013, the report said. Well over half — nearly 26,000 — were in the city of Los Angeles.
In another closely watched category, homelessness among veterans dropped 6% countywide, to about 4,400, but the report did not break out a comparable number for the city.
Garcetti and federal officials have pledged to house every homeless veteran by the end of the year, and in January the mayor said he was more than halfway to his goal.
Homeless advocates blamed public officials for the disappointing results.
“The city and county have done such a terribly poor job of creating affordable housing, basically they’ve ignored the issue,” said Steve Clare, executive director of the Venice Community Housing.
“We need shovels in the ground,” said skid row activist General Jeff Page.
Homeless authority commission members called for more state and local money, and said neighborhoods throughout the county must accept housing for homeless residents.
“There need to be enormous new dedicated resources,” said Peter Lynn, the authority’s executive director.
The rise comes at a time of renewed local focus on the problem.
After decades of squabbling and inaction, the city and county resolved old differences over homeless service tactics and began pursuing nationally recognized solutions. Those include rapidly re-housing newly homeless people and creating so-called permanent supportive housing, with mental health and addiction counseling, for the chronically homeless.
After a scathing report from City Administrative Officer Miguel A. Santana that the city spends $100 million a year on homelessness, City Council members formed a new committee in April to develop a fresh approach to ending it.
But the campaign has so far proved no match for the region’s high cost of housing and lack of new money for low-income housing or rent subsidies for the destitute, the report suggested. Despite the economic recovery after the Great Recession, the county’s unemployment rate of 7.5% still tops the national rate of 5.6%, the report said.
The tally is based on a street count conducted by 5,500 volunteers over three days in January, shelter censuses and demographic extrapolation and analysis. The number is required to receive federal funding to tackle homelessness, and is used to estimate program needs and assign resources.
Los Angeles has the nation’s largest concentration of homeless veterans. The Obama administration this year roughly doubled funding to the county, offering $105 million in homeless grants and services, according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, but the increase came largely after the January count.
Advocates say that in some cases, veterans and longtime homeless people are shoving aside those newly homeless because of the affordable housing crisis.
“What’s happened is existing resources have been re-targeted to the chronically homeless, but the pot hasn’t been significantly expanded,” Clare said.
The city’s affordable housing fund, which in 2008 totaled $108 million, plunged to $26 million in 2014.
In his proposed budget, Garcetti called for $5 million in general fund money and $5 million in yet-to-be negotiated taxes on Airbnb short-term rentals to replenish the coffers. As part of his back-to-basics agenda, the mayor proposed spending $31 million annually on sidewalk and other improvements beginning in the next budget year.
The region has wrestled for decades with how to create housing for homeless people. Under a “containment policy,” the city concentrated services and shelters, most of which are run by religious groups, on skid row.
Unlike in New York, there is no legal right to shelter, and securing the money and political backing to build supportive housing throughout the county has been a struggle.
Christine Margiotta, vice president of community impact at United Way of Greater Los Angeles, said “it’s critical we don’t lose sight of that and become disheartened. We just need to redouble our efforts … and have a strong eye toward prevention in the future.”
Alice Callaghan, a longtime advocate for the homeless on skid row, criticized city leaders for failing to stem the loss of housing.
“All we get from City Hall is breezy poetry — ‘I will house everybody by next year.’ That’s absurd. There’s no housing to put people in,” Callaghan said. “It’s very depressing. I don’t think people understand how bad it is.”
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton took an unexpected detour from her fundraising-only schedule in San Francisco Wednesday to visit a Chinatown teahouse, where she spent an hour with Mayor Ed Lee discussing urban issues including housing and homelessness.
“It was delightful — she was so happy,” Lee said after what he described as a lively, wide-ranging talk with the former secretary of state at the Red Blossom Tea Co., a family-owned business on Grant Avenue. The mayor said Clinton’s staff contacted him about a meeting, and he invited her to tea in the historic district.
“She was asking me about … all the challenges of being a vibrant city,” and the initiatives at work to address housing and homelessness, said Lee, who has endorsed Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. “I got a chance to talk to her about tech companies, trying to work on getting people jobs,” Mid-Market development issues and the recent minimum-wage increase, he said. “She was fascinated about our approach to fund Muni for free for low-income users,” and wanted an in-depth explanation of housing challenges in the city.
The mayor said Clinton told him that when it comes to tackling problems such as the economy, homelessness, immigration and housing, urban centers like San Francisco are “where things are happening … and this is what really excites me.”
But it wasn’t all business: Clinton was also delighted, Lee said, to get a tutorial from proprietor Alice Luong on Chinese teas.
Clinton also met in San Francisco with Democratic state Senate Pro Tem Kevin de León, who posted a picture of the meeting and tweeted, “Great to meet with @HillaryClinton to discuss her vision for comprehensive immigration reform.”
The meetings came on a day during which Clinton’s San Francisco schedule of private fundraising events — not open to the press or public — earned scathing rebukes from the GOP, which claimed they provided ample evidence she is “out of touch” with the voters she says she wants to represent.
“Apparently, Hillary Clinton’s idea of being a ‘champion of everyday Americans’ is attending exclusive fundraisers with wealthy donors and highly staged campaign events,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Ninio Fetalvo. “Californians want her to address the questions surrounding her looming e-mail scandal and the controversial foreign donations to her family’s foundation.”
Lee said the two discussed a pair of serious San Francisco problems — chronic homelessness and high rents. Lee cited the bundling of federal and city funds for a long-term program designed to house homeless veterans. The city has already used combined funding to renovate buildings like the Stanford Hotel, and found housing for more than 500 such veterans since 2013.
The mayor’s one-on-one with Clinton came after her “Conversation with Hillary” fundraiser in the San Francisco home of billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer and his wife, Kat, and just prior to her $2,700-per-person fundraiser hosted by longtime friends Susie Tompkins Buell and her husband, Mark Buell.
On Thursday, Clinton will head to a trio of fundraisers in Hollywood, then will return to the Bay Area on Friday for a fundraiser at the Portola Valley home of eBay CEO John Donahoe and his wife, Eileen, a former ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council.
The Bay Area events are part of what the Clinton campaign calls the “Hillstarters” program. It asks supporters to raise $27,000 for the campaign — 10 contributions of $2,700 each, which is the maximum contribution to the Clinton campaign. The program is designed to involve more people and build Clinton’s donor base.
The Amazing Democrats 