Source: LA Times

The Homeless Need Solutions

Compassion isn't missing, but programs are

October 26, 2002

VOICES / A FORUM FOR COMMUNITY ISSUES

By Joel John Roberts

Joel John Roberts is executive director of People Assisting the Homeless, a regional nonprofit agency.

October 26 2002 -- The new -- and some say punitive --
homeless ordinances in Santa Monica almost certainly reflect what
much of Southern California feels. But it is not so much "compassion
fatigue" as a desire to see better solutions.

The Santa Monica City Council banned programs that served meals
to the homeless living in public parks and outlawed sleeping in
doorways of downtown businesses.

Clearly, the law is a response to aggressive panhandling at freeway
offramps and in busy shopping districts. People are reacting to
trash tossed about, sidewalks smelling of urine and having to step
around homeless people on the ground. Businesses are worried about
the loss of tourism and customers. The Los Angeles City Council
has already instructed the city attorney to draft comparable ordinances.

There is no less compassion now than years ago. People are still
willing to respond, and generously give, to the hurting and needy
-- look at the outpouring after Sept. 11, 2001, for the families
of victims and people who lost their jobs. However, people are tired
of the lack of solutions to the growing blight of so many people
living on the streets, subsisting on handouts. Food programs that
are not linked to services to help get people off the streets and
into drug or alcohol treatment, mental health assistance, housing
and even jobs do not solve anything.

Good solutions mean investing significant resources, but the social
payoff would be substantial. Here are four pragmatic proposals that,
if implemented, would dramatically alter the landscape:

* Clean streets, not mean streets. Provide a shelter bed linked
with support services for every person on the streets. If we want
to ban people from sleeping on sidewalks and streets, we first need
to provide them with a safe and secure place to go. We are not criminalizing
homelessness if we provide shelter linked with services. Feeding
programs would not be needed if people were guaranteed a bed and
meals.

* Integrate existing homeless services. Services scattered across
the county force people to travel discouraging distances by bus
and on foot to find help. Services such as health care, mental health
and substance abuse assistance, job programs, education and even
haircuts should be under one roof. This would help not just clients
but the community by reducing street people's presence while increasing
the likelihood that they would find a permanent way off the streets.
My homeless organization takes this approach. We have 19 government
and private service agencies housed in one mall location, just off
the 101 Freeway near Vermont Avenue. We hope others will follow
the same approach.

* Prevent homelessness through better discharge planning. Los Angeles
County releases a stream of people onto the streets every day. Foster
youth who turn 18 are forced to leave their homes, adults are released
from jail, patients are discharged from mental health and substance
abuse facilities with no place to go. They end up on the streets.
These people need help finding permanent places to live.

* Build more affordable housing. The working poor and already homeless
are all but locked out of the costly local apartment market. Proposition
46, a housing bond on the Nov. 5 ballot, would provide a big boost.
So will the city of Los Angeles' new housing trust fund, which is
about to issue a plan for spending the $100 million that the city
has promised.

By concentrating on effective ways to keep people off the streets
to begin with, cities would not need ordinances that seem to criminalize
homelessness.