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Senator Gil Cedillo introducing legislation to address LA’s growing homelessness problem.


In recent decades, homelessness has become a critical problem for Los Angeles. Every night, 90,000 people will be homeless in LA County, with a quarter million spending some time homeless this year. In many eyes, LA has become America’s poverty capital.

A bright light shed on homelessness recently may change that. A series by LA Times’ Steve Lopez led to several glimpses at skid row by local television stations. Then, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa took well-publicized tours downtown, startled at what he saw and vowing to work for change. Now, State Senator Gil Cedillo (D-LA) has announced measures designed to tackle homelessness head on.

Cedillo’s measures

“What we have in Los Angeles is an open-air swap meet of narcotics abuse,” says Cedillo, who was endorsed for reelection at last month’s NEDC meeting. Cedillo plans to introduce measures with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez that would create stricter penalties for those peddling drugs near rehab centers, including measures that would establish specific areas of skid row as narcotics recovery zones.

“I am also looking at ways we can stem the abandonment, or “dumping,” of homeless people in downtown LA by prohibiting arresting agencies from transporting people in need of drug treatment, mental health, or homeless support services outside their jurisdictions.”

Daunting challenge

Still, solutions to LA’s homelessness problem will not come easy. A quarter of each night’s homeless are physically disabled, half chronic substance abusers, a fifth victims of domestic abuse, and an eighth chronically homeless, having lived on the streets for years. All compete for just 12,000 shelter beds county-wide.

Then, there’s the question of funding. New York spends more than $650 million on homeless services each year, ten times Los Angeles’ outlay, and New York is one unified city, not LA County’s patchwork quilt of communities. Do we turn our energy first to the homeless or to our crumbling schools; public safety or mass transit?

Cedillo’s proposals quickly drew fire for their law enforcement bent, with some homeless activists worrying that the crime crackdown will lead to efforts to “gentrify” skid row, moving the neediest conveniently out of sight, and others wondering about plans to deal with the housing, mental health outreach, and drug treatment programs.

“These proposals are a good start, but not every homeless person is a criminal,” says Joel John Roberts, of PATH (www.epath.org), a downtown nonprofit agency serving the homeless. “It’s more than crime. America’s antipoverty system is broken. We don’t have systems in place to catch people falling through the social safety net.”

Cedillo agrees. “By no means are these proposals an end-all solution that will solve the homeless issue,” he says. “Rather, they serve as an initial realistic approach that will begin to peel away the layers and address the problem. I am committed to moving forward as quickly as possible to build support for a broad-based effort to address this crisis.”

We do have a window of opportunity, says Roberts. “But if we just throw a few million dollars here and there, the problem won’t go away,” he says. “Much depends on decisions the City and County make in the next 3 to 6 months.”

A call to action

Adds NEDC president Bill Rumble, “I have a sense that we have arrived at a ‘special moment’ in LA’s political history, one characterized by an activist mayor driven by the desire to dramatically improve the lives of the less fortunate among us. If I’m right, we who are similarly inclined will want to pay close attention to Mayor Villaraigosa’s program and focus the attention of Northeast Democrats on it.” Perhaps the same can be said for Cedillo’s homelessness proposals and the larger vision that drives them.

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