Yesterday, as I was running Balboa Bulleward down to take my children from school, I saw the crew of the city’s sanitation department and reshuffled the unhealthy residents from the footpath. When I was running back to the road for the next morning fall, the familiar tents were back where they were. During the sweep, many people could do just what could do in shopping vehicles and went to the nearby street, waited for cleaning, then once again installed tents at a main stretch of the Council District 12, where the explosion of the homeless continued.
According to Lahsa’s latest data, the homeless population of the district has increased by 84% in the last seven years and 45% since 2020 – the higher percentage than the council district where the skid is located, and 10 other council is higher than the districts.
Why has CD12 experience such increasing growth in homeless numbers? We are the place where we are due to an unbearable approach that depends only on distraction and is doing as much as possible.
There are many possible equipment that we can employ to address the homeless, but in this district, the current political leaders mainly rely on one: law against street camping. Municipal code 41.18 ban sitting, lying, storing personal property near gold, gold, or sensitive areas, including driveways or schools, and can come up to $ 2,500 penalty and six weeks to jail time. But after that six weeks (or less), those arrested often go back to the same pavement and streets.
According to a city controller report, half of all 41.18 arrests in Los Angeles, from 2021 to 2023, took place in 12, even the balloon continued to be homeless. In CD12, police officers and city employees spent more time than people of any other district and citing homeless people, most of whom will return to Balboa Bulleward and other roads in the entire district the next day.
While the crime has increased in the Northwest San Fernando Valley, mainly focusing on the catch-and-relief arrest of the homeless has not only proved to be a waste of precious police resources, but is also a waste of money.
Voters have been calling for more changes since the proposal HHH in 2016. Nevertheless, our calls have fallen on deaf ears. The Los Angeles City Council, after approving funding for a proposal HH-funded 63-Unit homeless housing project in Chatsworth, attempted the local council office in 2019 to cancel the funding that is declining.
HHH account now has about half of its $ 1.2 billion bonds and one of the 117 HH-funded projects is present here in CD12 [source]Keep another way, only 1% of the funds that have been made available to bring homeless people to the streets, have been used in CD12, despite this district, despite a small amount, the citywide jumps the highest percentage.
While 41.18 is to play the role of anti-vamping ordinance, it is away from the only device in the toolbox, as is clearly explained by track records in neighboring districts, with a higher number of homeless shelters than CD12. Meanwhile, any effort to plan and connect housing is much less than required.
We need to do more, no less, which means working with neighbors, belief-based groups, advocacy organizations, shelters, mental health care providers, addiction consultants, cheap housing development, grants and other sources of funding and other sources of funding and wide alliance of MLAs at city, state and federal levels, to pursue the collective mission of their empire and to repair our communists. In short, we need to use each tool in the toolbox, and not only the hammer of criminal punishment.
The current middleing approach, arresting and citing people during nominal numbers compared to other districts created the current circumstances in CD12, and whoever operates Balboa and Devonshire, may see that it is not working. The local council can make the district road down. We have run out of the road. It is clear that this is a time of change.
Serena is a candidate for the Obberstein Los Angeles City Council.