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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 11:29 pm
Time: 11:29 pm
Results for skid row (california)
1 results foundAuthor: Blasi, Gary Title: Policing Our Way Out of Homelessness? The First Year of the Safer Cities Initiative on Skid Row Summary: One year ago, on September 24, 2006, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced the public launch of a “Safer Cities Initiative” on Skid Row in Los Angeles. This report summarizes the results of that initiative, as determined through a months-long research project carried out by two faculty members and twelve advanced law students1 who comprised the Fact Investigation Clinic at the UCLA School of Law. This report is part of a larger project examining the problem of chronic homelessness in Los Angeles’ Skid Row and the role of City and County policy in both contributing to and responding to that problem. Our investigation has included review of about 15,000 pages of public records and the analysis of multiple computer databases provided under the California Public Records Act by the Los Angeles Police Department, the Office of the City Attorney, and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. We also conducted more than 200 interviews of people with special knowledge of one or more aspects of the problem. A future report will examine the role of County policy, particularly in the operation of the General Relief program, in relation to chronic homelessness on Skid Row. We also expect to continue the research and investigation reflected in this report and to integrate other information and data as they are received in a future comprehensive report. To that extent, this report should be regarded as preliminary and interim in nature. In summary form, this is what we found thus far: Homelessness in the City of Los Angeles • Although Los Angeles has the largest homeless population of any city in the United States, this is primarily because Los Angeles is large and has so many extremely poor people. The ratio of homeless people to extremely poor people is similar, for example, to that in San Francisco or San Jose. • What does distinguish Los Angeles from many other cities is how few of its homeless are sheltered (21%) compared to 57% in San Francisco and more than 90% in Philadelphia, Denver, or New York City. • Although the great majority of Los Angeles’ homeless population lives outside Skid Row, the 0.85 square miles of Skid Row has by far the densest population of homeless people. • Homeless individuals in Skid Row are predominantly people with severe and chronic mental disabilities, addiction disease, and most commonly both mental disability and addiction (cooccurring disorders). Shelter and Short Term Housing in Los Angeles and in Skid Row • Across the City, there are about 13 persons with mental disabilities for every shelter space targeting this population, and 21.5 homeless addicts for every potential shelter bed. For the many people with co-occurring disorders, the ratio is likely far higher. • Whether shelter or transitional housing spaces are actually available depends very much on the funding and program restrictions of the shelter program operations, including restrictions related to disability, religious participation, and gender. Most shelters have restrictions that effectively exclude broad segments of the homeless population. • About half of the shelter and housing program beds for homeless individuals in the County of Los Angeles are located in Skid Row, a current result of past City planning decisions and current NIMBY (“Not in My Back Yard”) resistance to homeless services outside Skid Row. • Contrary to some reports, based on an independent analysis of nightly call sheets by LAPD officers, the median number of actually available shelter beds in Skid Row has been four (4) beds, at a time when the LAPD was counting about 1,000 homeless people living on the sidewalks each night. This extremely low vacancy rate is confirmed by other studies. • Emergency (night-only) shelters return homeless people to the streets during the day. There is, however, broad agreement that the only real path off the streets for the mentally disabled and chronically homeless requires 24-hour housing with support services. Details: Los Angeles: UCLA School of Law, 2007. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 23, 2013 at: http://www.lafla.org/pdf/policinghomelessness.pdf Year: 2007 Country: United States URL: http://www.lafla.org/pdf/policinghomelessness.pdf Shelf Number: 107710 Keywords: HomelessnessPolicing Homeless PersonsSkid Row (California) |