Well we certainly know what doesn’t work: spending more money on the problem. The shitlibs in LA demonstrate once again that outcome is not a linear function of government spending and that there is such a thing as diminishing returns and programs simply based on false premises. This is certainly the case for LA’s homeless services which despite increasing from $1 billion to $1.3 billion resulted in an 18% increase in chronic homelessness, a 14% in unsheltered homelessness and a 9% rise in the general rate of homelessness in LA county and a 10% rise within the city limits. Before this the budget had grown from a few million to $1 billion during the tenure of Eric Garcetti, who took over in 2013 and left office last year. A decade ago, there were an estimated 58,000 homeless individuals in LA County and about 29,700 within the city of LA; today it is over 75,000 individuals for the county and over 46,000 for the city. This 29% increase in the county homeless population and 56% increase in the city homeless population occurred despite exponentially higher spending that occurred from the beginning of Garcetti’s first term, which actually oversaw a sharp decline in homelessness between 2013 and 2015 before it gradually increased again between 2015 and 2023. The city is now spending a little over $28,000 per homeless person, which seems excessive for negative results until you realize that San Francisco is dropping about 55-125K per homeless person, depending on if you count on any given night (8,000) or during the entire year (20,000),for their $1.1 billion homeless services budget.
While there are several risk factors for homelessness the one they can immediately address is the rent hikes. A Los Angeles study found that just a 5% increase in rent is associated with 2,000 more residents becoming homeless while another found that just a $100 increase in rent is associated with a 9% increase in the homeless population. It is no enigma what the cause of rack rents (real estate speculation) and cure for rack rents (land value capture) are. Unfortunately, since LA, like every other city, is beholden to the propertied class who expect the highest return possible on their investment and would fight tooth and nail against any measure that would reclaim the location value capitalized in their property value perhaps they could at least set aside some city land as a community land trust to allow nonprofits to build tiny houses on. This would lift the transient homeless, the ones who were low-income workers whose income isn’t adequate to meet the rent burden or who were one paycheck away from eviction, out of the gutters. As for the 40% who are chronically homeless, some of these individuals need to be involuntarily hospitalized and placed under the 24/7 medical supervision. Civil commitment needs to be used a lot more frequently especially for the third that are chronically homeless and have severe mental disorders and drug addictions. As I’ve noted about Public Housing Failures , the current system prioritizes the chronically homeless who have severe mental illness and drug addictions, the people least likely to reintegrate back into society, over homeless who still hold down a job or jobs, even gig work, are not alcoholics or drug addicts and aren’t mentally ill i.e. the people most likely to get back on their feet and leave their temporary arrangements the quickest. It’s as if they are waiting for the latter group to become more like the former group before they’ll get housing.
Originally posted on Quora July 6, 2023