Los Angeles Homeless Issue: Follow-up to HHH Audit Blog Post

I wrote a post about the audit of Proposition HHH in Los Angeles. I figured I'd start doing some additional reading about the topic.

Yahoo via the New York Times wrote:

Homelessness has been an intractable problem in the largest California cities for decades, but it has surged in some areas in recent years. San Jose, the nation’s 10th-largest city, counted 6,200 homeless people this year, a 42% increase since the last count two years ago. In Oakland, the figure climbed 47%. And it rose 17% in San Francisco, and 12% in Los Angeles, where the county counted so many homeless people — 59,000 — that they could fill Dodger Stadium. For the first time in 20 years of surveys, the issue was noted as a major concern for Californians, according to a poll released last month by the Public Policy Institute of California.

. . . Meanwhile, in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, homeless people living in an encampment in Chatsworth have had rocks thrown at them from cars, have had insults yelled at them and have been pepper-sprayed, according to Paul Read, 43, who assists the homeless there.

One thing I've started to notice more in the Los Angeles area (this includes places like Hollywood and Pasadena) is the following:

1. Classical music is being blasted from speakers at various stores. The LA Times even wrote an article about 7-Eleven franchises doing so. Of course, the LA Times was being a bit unfair. I can tell you that 7-Eleven is not the only chain that uses classical music.

2. Some store entrances are perhaps 3 feet deep from the sidewalk. It makes for a perfect place for a sleeping bag and staying out of the way of pedestrians. I've started to notice that once stores close, if they don't have a metal gate that is used for protection against robbery, they're starting to put up yellow warning tape in front of the entrances to discourage the homeless from sleeping in the recess.

The quote about Chatsworth might seem like a strange quote to put up, but here's an article about Chatsworth from the Daily News:

Hundreds of people crammed a community meeting to lash out against a proposed Chatsworth housing proposal Tuesday night, forcing the event’s organizers to find a larger room for the discussion.

Once the meeting was convened on the plan to build supportive housing for the homeless in the northwest San Fernando Valley, the crowd heard L.A. City Councilman John Lee reiterate that the project is not yet a done deal — despite his vote of approval for city funding that could make it happen.

[Christina Martinez, project manager at Affirmed Housing Group] added that the funding the developer has recently received under Proposition HHH was tied to the Chatsworth location and couldn’t be transferred for another site.

Arguments against included:

1. The building would be too high. That's just a NIMBY type of argument.
2. It was next to an elementary school. Would this really be an issue? Perhaps.

Arguments for:

1. There are already homeless living on the streets of Chatsworth. As for this argument, the article mentions that those who want to move into this supportive housing unit would need to go through extensive background checks. How many people currently living on the streets would meet those background check requirements?

I did a check of this Chatsworth project based on the HHH audit report. The construction date is set for February 2021 and is expected to conclude in August 2022. Based on the community reaction, who wants to bet that the construction date is going to shift out? This project isn't even suppose to start for another 15 months or so and a community meeting regarding the shelter was packed.

If the project is well run by Los Angeles, when the building becomes occupied, no one is going to notice that there are homeless there. If the project is not well run, that location will probably be a spot where you find a ton of drug needles on the sidewalk.

This LA Times article isn't about the homeless, but it does address one reason why people end up homeless -- the lack of housing:

The illegally converted church in South Los Angeles had no gas, water or electricity when Amelda Glaspie moved in. She and about 40 other tenants shared two kitchens, where roaches crawled among the dirty dishes and rotten food left in half a dozen refrigerators. Every day, Glaspie said, residents carted water from a nearby building in buckets to flush the toilets. Paying $800 a month, she and her husband lived in a cramped bedroom until late June 2018, when LAPD officers ordered everyone to evacuate.

But there is one reason why Los Angeles has a lack of housing. Yahoo wrote this about what is driving the cost structure up for Proposition HHH units and why the audit determined that less units were going to be built than promised:

At an average cost of $531,373 per unit – with many apartments costing more than $600,000 each – building costs of many of the homeless units will exceed the median sale price of a market-rate condominium. In the city of Los Angeles, the median price for a condo is $546,000, and a single-family home in Los Angeles County has a median price of $627,690, the study states.

If this is the average cost to build units for the homeless, what must it cost to build condos/homes now in Los Angeles. Yes, the median price for a condo is $546,000 and a single-family home is $627,690. But those are current selling prices for homes that might have been built years ago. What is the price to build a new condo/home now? It has to be similar in cost as the units being built for the homeless.