By T.A. Hendrickson
In a 13-0 vote today, the Los Angeles City Council approved a motion to set a Homeless Housing Goal of creating at least 25,000 new housing units by 2025.
The motion is a key feature of “A Way Home,” a multi-part plan by CD-14 Councilmember Kevin de León to tackle homelessness in L.A. De León said that by setting a goal and a timetable for housing the homeless, the City Council has made “a significant decision that will begin to erase our city’s most indelible mark of shame.”
The motion had support from several neighborhood councils in the city, including in Eagle Rock, Highland Park and Cypress Park
However, some neighborhood groups, while supportive, also stressed a need to ensure that the housing units would be focused exclusively on people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The 25,000 units should not be “market rate apartments, luxury housing or any other housing not expressly aimed at preventing and eliminating homelessness,” wrote the Hermon neighborhood council. The Eagle Rock neighborhood council stressed that the units should be produced “according to the identified and projected needs” of the homeless population.
The Eagle Rock neighborhood council also wrote that the new housing units should be made available sooner than 2025, rather than take up to four years to construct needed housing.
Specifically, the motion for 25,000 new units by 2025 instructs city departments to report back in 30 days on the necessary policies and housing units of each type that need to be produced each year to reach the goal.
There are many possible type of homeless housing, such as permanent supportive housing, temporary housing, rapid relocation housing and transitional housing, including pallet shelter communities that are intended as a bridge from the streets to permanent housing.
The motion also instructs city departments to recommend ways to overhaul the financing and other rules on homeless- and affordable housing in order the meet the goal of 25,000 new units by 2025.
The motion does not include consequences for failure to achieve the goal. Rather, it lays down a marker by which voters can judge their elected representatives.
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T.A. Hendrickson, a native of Eagle Rock, is the editor of the Boulevard Sentinel and a former member of the Editorial Board of the New York Times.
The government should provide shelter beds and sanitation in a congregate setting to people currently living on the streets and sidewalks, but a permanent, independent apartment for everyone who can’t afford rent in one of the most expensive metro areas of the country is more than taxpayers should be expected to fund.
It goes further than that, de Leon had a similar plan where he promised for 1.2 billion dollars he would deliver 10,000 housing units, TO DATE WE HAVE 179 units. Can you imagine the corruption with 12 billion dollars? We truly went from the frying pan into the fire when we got de Leon to replace Jose Huizar. We got a (lemon) it’s time to give him back and get someone who will stay in CD 14 at least for a full term.
we need a resolution and elimination of people living on the streets. Any action we take should require that we eliminate all tent cities. Allowing people to create massive trash dumps needs to be stopped. Any remedy needs to be focused on the non-homeless experience as well as the homeless people it is designed to help.
@Joan Early: I like Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s “right to housing” approach, which obligates a) the government to provide housing–not sure if he’s distinguishing shelter beds from more permanent arrangements–and b) homeless people to accept the housing that is offered.
yeah, I feel this is going to attract more drug dealers and other shady individuals to roam around the area selling their drugs like what they do now in Eagle Rock by where the Eagle Rock Plaza is or where the Eagle Rock park is. We see these cars and trucks that stop by and sell drugs to some of these tent dwellers, we have also seen the passing of drugs from tent dweller people with bikes and non tent dwellers that live in these tents. So I feel that we are creating these housing and we will have more problems in our beautiful little city of Eagle Rock.. but I bet that in a few months it will be run down and we will have cars roaming around these areas from shady individuals and also walking around. I have seen these issues lately including by where I live. I have never seen these types of individuals in our neighborhood until now that we have a problem with tent dwellers coming from all areas of Los Angeles and all that junk they have accumulated in vacant properties and on the damn street. A lot of these individuals are not right mentally and they need a different type of housing. We see a lot of those individuals that have mental issues walking around our area either defecating in front of Tommys burgers, Petes Blue Chip Burgers and the clinic we have here in ER. I love Eagle Rock and I hate to see kids walking thru where the tent dwellers are just to go to the park or the mall. Lately it seems that every damn city is sending their homeless people to Eagle Rock. We are a small city people, keep what you have and help them, don’t just run them off to other cities so it an be their problem. Do you see any tent dwellers in Glendale? no you don’t! and I have seen business owners sending homeless people away and they end up in ER. that’s the reason I don’t go to the park anymore, these tent dwellers have taken over all that side where I used to walk with my walking group, now we are afraid to go by there. SHAME!!! We the residents of Eagle Rock were not asked if we wanted any homeless shelters to be made here. Same with other issues that ER is having right now. Like I said it seems to me that everything gets thrown into ER without the people of ER having a say.
I agree. I believe the only “right to housing” is the right to better yourself through your own efforts. You can ask for assistance from any number of groups that are there to help. But I don’t think it’s mine, or your responsibility to provide for them by mandate through taxes. If it’s in your heart to do so, fine. But it should not be my responsibility to provide for someone who I had no responsibility for them getting into whatever situation they find themselves in. And I deeply resent other states sending their problems here. According to a recent study at Venice Beach, only 30 out of 270 tenters, we’re from California. All the rest were out of state.
We are gonna have a say, RECALL de Leon is a start. I received a list of questions for the ERNC meeting about the Tiny homes, let me scare a few, 1) The question was how will the people running the Tiny homes prevent it new tenants from using drugs? Response; WE CANNOT PROHIBIT THEM FROM USING DRUGS. 2) The second question was; HOW DO YOU PLAN TO PREVENT THE NEW TENANTS FROM TRYING TO SELL DRUGS TO OUR CHILDREN? The answer was, THEY DIDN”T OFFER AN ANSWER!!!! 3) The third question was what preventions will be put into place to prevent fires, especially on the hillside? The answer was, THEY DIDN’T OFFER/HAVE AN ANSWER. These are part of the reasons for the recall, we as a community deserve better, and the poor homeless and drug addicted deserve better. Thank you.
I would like to know to what company or companies such development housing will be contracted? The cost and materials used? Will these be prefabricated containers stacked on one another? What are the fire hazards seen in the materials. How will such housing affect our NELA infrastructure (police schools, etc?) and tax structures? As of 2017 there were only 7 patrol cars in a 39 per square mile radius in NELA – per the LAPD at a Town Hall Meeting. Will more patrolling be necessary if these units become permanent housing to those who need it? Who manages and sustains such housing (ie., repairs, painting, et al; what department in the City? Will a full environmental impact report be completed before this is permitted? How does this impact zoning changes in our area? I am sympathetic to ANYONE who requires housing, but it seems none of this has been spelled out to NELA residents.
Where to start?!
Homeless- we (yes, I said we) make it so easy for people to live on the street. The people we put in office, the ballot measures we vote on, & the hand outs we provide to the transients on the street. I use the word transient because 90-95% choose to make the street their home to further their vices. They are not homeless.
Everyone needs to read the ballot measures, do their homework on political canditates, & most importantly, VOTE.
In recent years, drugs have been decriminalized to the point that possesion & sales of serious drugs (Heroin, methamphetamine,PCP) are misdemeanors that are either given a citation/ticket or a day or two in jail then released w/out bail. Criminals arrested for theft are no longer prosecuted if the theft is under $1,000 (Compliments of DA Gascon & Proposition 47-also compliments of DA Gascon who authored the proposition and falsly labeled it as the THE SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS AND SCHOOLS ACT when he was the DA of San Francisco). How safe are our neighborhoods now when the people our police arrest are immediately released back into the community. No consequences to the people doing bad things. More thefts, more assualts, more drug use causing more crime and overdoses. THANK YOU GasCon!!!
Police stop and enforce what they can…and then you have some in the community that want to defund the police including the Public Safety Director Claire Savage of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council. Wait for the bus line to come through the middle of Colorado and the gridlock it will bring.
Regrettably, I only see our great little city of Eagle Rock continue to decline.
@Eagle R. Citz: I agree with everything you’ve said and I’m a Democrat, like you, but a pissed-off one who believes in law enforcement and meaningful penalties for crimes that victimize people who “work hard and play by the rules” (remember Bill Clinton saying that?) and degrade our quality of life.