THE CITY OF LOST ANGLES STRIKES AGAIN

This morning, when I went out and got the Sunday edition of the neighborhood advertiser formerly known as the Los Angeles Times (yes, we’re luddites - we still take the print edition, even if it is a shadow of its former self), I found a political mailer inside, it being a bit over two weeks before the California primary on June 7.

The mailer was for Marina Torres, Democratic candidate for City Attorney, and according to the endorsement she received last week from the Times Editorial Board, the person I should vote for in the election.

Ms. Torres is an Assistant US Attorney here. She touts that experience as reason to vote for her, having “aggressively taken on corruption, kept communities safe, and fought hard for our most vulnerable... gone adfter the most dangerous threats in Los Angeles - firearm traffickers, white nationalist fraudsters preying on senior citizens, and violent drug cartels.” She’s a graduate of Stanford Law, a former appointee of President Obama, and the daughter of immigrants who came from Mexico in pursuit of a better life.

Sounds pretty good, right?

Then she lists what she will do as my City Attorney. Number two on the list is “End homeless encampments by prioritizing immediate and emergency shelters, drug rehabilitation and mental health services, and prioritizing public safety in our neighborhoods.”

In other words, she’s another LA political climber who if I vote for her now, I’ll want to see her stuffed in one of Elon Musk’s rockets and fired into the Oort Cloud, like every other politician in the City of Lost Angles I have ever voted for, four years from now.

Why would I say that? I would say that because Promise Number Two is fucking bullshit. Read on:

In 1984, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development declared Los Angeles County “the homeless capital of America.” Back then, you almost had to go looking to find homeless people here in the City of Lost Angles. But the last completed headcount, which was conducted pre-pandemic in January 2020, found 66,433 unhoused people, an increase of nearly 50 percent in just five years. And I am sure that was an undercount.

Writing about homelessness in Los Angeles in 1988, urban planner Peter Marcuse said, “Homelessness has three related causes: the profit structure of housing, the distribution of income, and government policy.”

Ronald Reagan started the phenomenon while he was governor of California. Liberal mental health reformers were pushing to close the state mental hospitals - which really were as bad as shown in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” - and treat the mentally ill in their communities, at community Mental Health Centers. Sainted Ray Gun heard “close the state hospitals” and he was on board with the idea, enthusiastically. The hospitals began closing, and the budget for caring for them was reduced, and people started showing up on the streets; what didn’t happen was there were no community Mental Health Centers because nobody wanted “the crazies” in their neighborhoods. Today homelessness and mental illness track closely, with some 80 percent of homeless people are in need of mental health services. It’s one reason why many of us are afraid to approach a homeless person - there are unfortunately too many stories of well-meaning people getting a response they didn’t expect. (And I will say that there’s an argument to be made that the negative response might be an entirely rational response from that homeless person, from the experience they have survived.)

One he was in the White House, Reagan continued his policy. From 1981 to 1989, the HUD budget was slashed by almost 80 percent, turning public and subsidized housing into the housing of last resort, allocated not by eligibility but by lottery. Since the 1987 McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the federal government has delivered resources to unhoused people by issuing block grants to municipalities to distribute to nonprofit contractors—establishing “the homeless industrial complex,” a system of public-private partnerships.

Under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Republicans sought to prevent “the undeserving poor” from overrunning what programs there were; policymakers put disciplinary requirements in public benefits and all forms of welfare bloomed into workfare. Alleged “Democrat” Bill Clinton triaged his way into making it even worse with his “welfare reforms” that followed his declaration that “the era of big government is over.”

As a result, aid recipients must jump through the paternalistic hoops of monthly re-qualifications, mandatory drug testing, and more. Requirements for job training or sober living combined with arbitrary restrictions and lock-ins persist; coercion remains inseparable from the state provision of a social need, a cruel parody of the “liberal nanny state” conservatives love to deride. And most of the time, this system is operated by local political administrations that claim to be “liberal.”

Urban policies have exacerbated the problem. The withdrawal of federal funds over the past 40 years has locked urban governments into “urban renewal” in which they court private investment that raises property values in order to create a tax base to fund their programs; such private investment does raise property values, with the result that people at the lower end of the economic spectrum are driven out, many onto the streets. As the economy for the middle class withers, individuals pin their hopes for economic betterment on the appreciation of their homes and resist tax increases. Today, even public-sector workers’ pensions are pegged to real estate investment trusts.

Right now, the two leading candidates for Mayor of the City of Lost Angles (that’s a purposeful typo, by the way), are Congressperson Karen Bass, and billionaire developer Rick Caruso - who, like most billionaires, has an inflated ego that has resulted in a campaign consisting of listing problems and then saying “I alone can fix this!” because of his vast experience in becoming rich by playing the system here while creating all the goddamned shopping malls he has, that have destroyed most of the interesting neighborhoods that used to exist here. Caruso is the perfect example of the end result of those policies originally meant to make the city livable for most of its residents.

Of course, in California there is Proposition 13, passed in 1976 to “protect” home owners from the rapid increases in property taxes that came with the first big rise in property values. Under the plan drawn up by ultra-conservative Howard Jarvis, all property is only reassessed to higher value when it is sold. The result is 40-plus years later that the primary beneficiaries of this “tax reform” are corporations, which hold their properties for decades. In the period since passage of Proposition 13, homes get sold every few years. Seventy percent of property taxes in California are paid by private homeowners now, a reversal of the situation that existed before 1976.

And the reason Proposition 13 and all the problems it has created exists is because Jerry Brown got elected governor in 1974.

Back in 1975, faced with the onset of the steep rise in property values (I bought a 2,000 square foot home that year for $36,000 - which I thought at the time was overpriced - then sold it four years later when I left that life for the unheard-of price of $60,000, wiping out all debts accumulated to that point in my life; it actually amazed me at the time) Willie Brown, who had a two-thirds Democratic majority in the State Assembly and a similar margin to work with in the State Senate as a result of the previous year’s “Watergate election,” decided to do something about the problem. His plan was to protect homes, while keeping commercial property taxed at “market rates.” That idea would have actually solved the problem and made things work. Unfortunately, not every one of the Democrats in the Legislature was a strong liberal who would support the idea right off. He needed some help convincing about five of them to get on board. But when he went and asked Governor Small Is Beautiful to apply some persuasion, he couldn’t get a meeting. That was the year Jerry went on safari in Africa with Linda Ronstadt and convinced the country he was the “hip” governor of the “hippest” state. The next year, that two-thirds majority in the legislature disappeared, and the opportunity was lost. And now you know why I only ever voted for Jerry Brown once, in 1974, when I didn’t know what a worthless piece of shit Governor Moonbeam would be.

And now, the primary purchasers of private homes are hedge funds, which turn the properties into rentals, with rents set at the highest possible rates. One can see small signs nailed on telephone poles - “We buy homes for cash.” The phone number is for a local real estate agent working for a hedge fund.

For every five percent increase in LA rents, 2,000 people become homeless. Rising rent burdens make houselessness a monthly threat: 600,000 tenants in Los Angeles spend 90 percent of their income on rent.

It’s not just Los Angeles or Southern California, or even just California. Across the country, for every 100 extremely poor households only 37 rentals are affordable and available.

There is no city in America where a minimum-wage worker afford the rent on a median two- bedroom apartment. Hell, they can’t even afford a studio!

It wasn’t always that way. When I first came to Los Angeles in 1967, I could work part time at a minimum wage of $1.25/hour and afford a one bedroom apartment in an older complex in West Hollywood, which cost me $45 a month in rent. It was a neighborhood just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, three blocks east of Fairfax Avenue; most of the people who lived in the complex were employees in the nearby stores they could walk to for their “commute.”

Seven years ago, I happened to find myself in that West Hollywood neighborhood, which looked nothing like it did 50 years earlier. For one thing, the street was “parked up” because none of those old apartment buildings had off-street parking, and now there’s no “walking to work.” Driving past that old apartment complex I had lived in, I saw a “for rent” sign out front. Curious, I stopped and decided to check it out. The apartment was the one next to the one I had lived in; it was the same size, and the amenities were only slightly more modern than I remembered. The rent was $1,800 per month, with first, last and a $2,000 security deposit needed in order to move in. If a person worked full-time at minimum wage now, and if somehow they had the $5,600 ready cash to move in, the monthly rent would be more than their entire paycheck after taxes (the minimum wage in Los Angeles is now $10/hour). The apartment manager pointed out to me that the apartment was perfect for “two of you.” He was right - it would take two of me to pay all that, and that also explained all the cars on the street - a minimum of two for every apartment.

Our soon-to-be-former mayor’s adventures in real estate demonstrate the problem. In 2000, Eric Gardetti bought an Echo Park post-and-beam three bedroom house for $345,000, a few years after the gentrification of the neighborhood began. In 2015, he listed the house for sale at $1.65 million; it sold in two weeks. I remember Echo Park from as recently as the mid 1990s as an affordable neighborhood for the LA working class (and for white hipsters like my friends). As richer, whiter residents felt more secure, residents of color suffered police harassment, citations, and incarceration (Ms. Torres isn’t the only local political wannabe who promises to “Be a strong partner with law enforcement, ensuring we work toward better-wuality policing, lowering crime, and prioritizing public safety in our neighborhoods.”) Last year, average home prices in Echo Park crested $1 million; monthly rent for a one-bedroom home tops $2,350.

I moved into the “Encino flats,” seven years ago - it was the first time I have lived in an “expensive” neighborhood ever in all the years I have lived in LA; but I moved here because it was what I could find that we could afford, since all the “cheap” neighborhoods were now as expensive as this one. I now have an “Encino address,” but the “Encino” most people think of when they hear the word are the homes in the hills “south of the boulevard,” that being Ventura Boulevard. Encino Park, where I live, is in the “unfashionable flats” north of the boulevard. It was GI Bill Housing after World War II. These were “starter” houses - one-bedroom homes of 800 square feet or two-bedroom homes around 1,000 square feet. According to the next-door neighbor I met after moving in, who was one of the last two “original owners” on the street, the homes had sold for $4,500 when he bought his in 1949. If you want a good “mind’s eye” description, it was a “Leave It To Beaver” neighborhood.

Except now, the 800 square foot house directly across the street from me sold three times in the two years after I moved here, with the last of those owners doing some major renovation before he “flipped” it for $850,000, taking a $200,000 profit. (The good news there is that the couple who bought it - who both work in “Duh Biz’niss” - are the best neighbors I’ve ever had) The original owner next door died in 2018. His daughter had the house renovated. It was gutted, and increased from 1,000 square feet to about 1,800 square feet (the houses originally had big back yards - for the kids to play in - plenty of room for expansion). In 2019, she sold it to a doctor for $1.1 million. Four months after he bought it, he sold it in a day for $1.3 million. The house on our other side has sold four times since we moved - the last two times I didn’t know it was for sale til I noticed different people coming and going. Over the past three years, six other houses on the block were similarly renovated; as of now, there are three houses on the block - ours included - that are still unchanged. We’re the “poor people” here, but the CPA who paid the $1.3 million for the house next door was impressed when he learned he lived next door to a “successful author.”

I have to say I like it here. If four cars drive down the street over the course of the day, it’s “heavy traffic.” You can hear the birds outside. It’s so boringly safe that I have to take special note to remind myself to lock the front door, something I never had to think about in all the other neighborhoods I lived in, including the “successful screenwriter’s house” on Mount Washington.

The only two times I have seen the LAPD in the neighborhood was the two times last year when they were parked in front of my house, brought here by complaints from my partner’s older sister about the quality of care she was receiving (for the record, the officers found all well; the sister finally stopped after getting a warning about the potential liability of making “false police reports”). It’s not the “interesting neighborhood” I have always before sought out, but nowadays there’s a lot of good to be said for ‘boring.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, in 2019 - the year before the pandemic - one in six LAPD arrests was of a homeless person. In that report, the department admitted that homeless people were the victims one in every three times police “used force.”

The current allocation of state resources reveals clearance and containment is now a matter of intent, not austerity: The state of California runs a $31 billion surplus, and the city’s policing budget claims 54 percent of statre-provided discretionary funds. A city audit conducted in 2015 found $87 million of the $100 million earmarked to deal with homelessness went to policing. The cost of the new “safe sleep sites” runs $2,663 per person per month—more than the median one-bedroom rent.

I recently read a good local article on how Echo Park was cleared last year of the homeless encampment that had developed there during the pandermic. This story illustrates what exactly Ms. Torres means when she listed “End homeless encampments by prioritizing immediate and emergency shelters, drug rehabilitation and mental health services, and prioritizing public safety in our neighborhoods” as what she would do for me as my City Attorney.

I’ll quote the story:

“After the sweep, Otzoy spent a few nights in a hotel room paid for by Street Watch LA, then returned to living outdoors. A couple of months later, he ended up at the Dragon Gate Inn, a Project Roomkey site in Chinatown, overseen, as all interim housing sites are, by a nonprofit contractor. According to a spokesperson from (City Councilman for the district) O’Farrell’s office, the varieties of housing on offer from the city respond to individual unhoused people’s readiness to live indoors; the district praises the “safe, secure, managed environments” of its interim housing. A communications specialist from LAHSA told me that residents move between options according to their needs. However, as LAHSA admits, there are nowhere near enough spots indoors for everyone who lives outside; many languish on wait lists. Spending time in one site does not guarantee access to another, and the lack of permanent housing available means that for most unhoused people, the last step never arrives. The city now maintains 33,592 permanent housing apartments, but its efforts to expand that number have been beset by inflating costs and lengthy delays. “A balanced rehousing system has five permanent housing exits for each shelter bed,” LAHSA recognized in a 2021 assessment. “The Los Angeles system is closer to 1 to 1.”

“At Otzoy’s Roomkey site, he wasn’t allowed to bring his plumbing tools into his room, so he traveled by bus between job sites, a storage space, and the hotel. The curfew was 7 p.m. A few times, he was late, and security turned him away; his punishment for not following the rules was a night on the street. Participating in a protest made him late again. Another missed bus. Finally, administrators told him not to bother coming back at all.

“Otzoy would be the first to tell you: Constant surveillance and strict, infantilizing rules make the city’s interim housing a lot like prison. Residents are not allowed to have guests, pets, or more than 60 gallons—one trash bag’s worth—of personal belongings. They’re searched on entry to facilities; even a fork can be considered contraband. “You’re already fragmented,” one park resident who’d returned to living outdoors told me. “You need something to hold you together, not tear you apart—separate you and your family, you and your pet.”

“At Project Roomkey, residents are barred from traveling between floors or seeing friends in the same hotel—an isolation that, according to a recent UCLA report on deaths among unhoused people, contributed to the number of overdoses there. Unhoused people have taken to calling Project Roomkey “Project No Key.” Residents do not get keys to their rooms and must be escorted inside by program staff, who can enter at any time. In congregate shelters, residents are often locked out during the day. In interim housing, a category that includes congregate shelters, residents are locked in at night. At one Roomkey site, said Annie Powers, an organizer with Street Watch LA and the LA Tenants Union, people could leave only between noon and 4 p.m. “That’s ‘yard time,’” Powers said—just what you’d encounter in prison.

“When they enter interim housing, unhoused people sign a contract as a “participant” and must testify that “no tenancy is created.” Tenants get evicted. Participants get “exited.” This language is more than Orwellian doublespeak. Rather, it points to the production of a new legal environment, “a system of rightlessness,” said Ananya Roy, director of the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA. Residents of interim housing, she told me, face “a constant stripping of rights in the way that in the prison you’re stripped of your rights.”

I can assure you that is an accurate description of the situation, and has been since at least 2003, when a friend of ours was finally forced out of her living situation in fear of her life, and ended up in the North Hollywood “shelter.” I was personally shocked by the situation when I came there to see her. It was so bad that I immediately got her other friends together and we organized her out of the place and found her a place to live and a job within a week. Yes, that was our first World White Privilege in operation; I am certain no one else in that godawful place had any access to similar help.

The story ends:

“City officials describe their intervention in Echo Park Lake as a mission to house people. Police were needed at the park, Mayor Garcetti said, so protesters didn’t “prevent the housing operation that was happening.” “None of our work,” Councilman O’Farrell said, “has been violent or police-led.” O’Farrell’s office stressed its service efforts and offers of interim housing, and emphasized the “inhumane” conditions at the park; in an interview, a spokesperson disputed any use of the word “sweep.” But in a 101-page “After Action Report,” the LAPD notes that the park’s clearance was delayed by three months to accommodate an outbreak of Covid-19 among officers: The eviction was timed to their availability rather than to the housing status of park residents.”

This is not just going on in Los Angeles, or Southern California, or the Bay Area. Friends of mine in Austin tell me this is now the way things following the arrival of “tech development” there. Another friend in Chicago read the article when I e-mailed it to him, and said that the only difference he could see was the names of the places.

This is how fucked up America is. And the “progressives” like Ms. Torres aren’t going to make things better. I predict if she gets into office - which she likely will, being the lead Democrat on the ballot for the position - that four years from now the difference will be that the situation is worse.

I wish I was wrong.

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