sociology

THIRTEEN

From Global to Local The Rise of Homelessness in

Los Angeles during the 1980s

Jennifer Wolch

Los Angeles became the homeless capital of the United States in the 1980s. In alarming numbers, Angelenos were cast away from traditional anchors of family, job, and community as waves of economic and social polarization resulted in spreading homelessness. In 1990-1991 an estimated 125,600 to 204,000 people were homeless in Los Angeles County at some point during the year, and between 38,420 and 68,670 people were homeless on any given night.1 Many thousands more were precariously housed, living in fear of eviction or foreclosure, doubled up with family or friends, or constantly on the move as livelihoods and life-sustaining relationships eroded and per­ sonal vulnerabilities came to outweigh strengths.

There are many pathways to homelessness in Los Angeles, and as many poignant and disturbing variations on those pathways as there are homeless people. Without detracting from the authority of those homeless voices, it is clear that Angelenos became homeless in record numbers because of powerful systemic forces that shaped their lives in profound ways. These forces, operating at spatial scales ranging from global to local, led to a re­ structuring of the regional economy, loss of critical welfare state supports, and a shrinking supply of low-cost housing. Combined, they created a swel­ ling population of economically marginalized and precariously housed people. Some of these people became homeless, outcasts from the city’s riches and entitlements.

In this chapter, I explore these systemic forces as they were played out in the specific locale of Los Angeles and how, in turn, local governments in the Los Angeles region responded (or failed to respond) to the growing presence of homeless people in their midst. My intent is to show that in Los Angeles, the rise of homelessness during the 1980s was a process involving global and local economic trends, macro and micro social forces, and a local

390

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 39*

politics of 1 ejection and apathy alleviated only rarely by a willingness to assist.

ECONOMIC MARGINALIZATION AND THE SPREAD OF POVERTY

Economic expansion characterized much of the post-World War II period in Los Angeles, transforming the Southland into the largest manufacturing region in the country, with one of the most important centers of interna­ tional financial and business services. The Los Angeles “job machine”

from broader structural changes in the economy, however. Pe­ riods of economic decline during the 1970s and 1980s, linked to world oil and banking crises and rising global competition, presaged the region’s shift from a manufacturing center characterized by a mix of traditional Fordist industries, craft production, and aerospace sectors2 to a post-Fordist service and manufacturing economy. For many workers, the result was pov­ erty, unemployment, and insecure working conditions. Some of the most severely marginalized became homeless.

Four restructuring trends underlay the transition to a post-Fordist econ­ omy: deindustrialization, reindustrialization, public sector contraction, and service sector expansion. During the 1980s, almost half the county’s ma­ jor manufacturing sectors lost employment through deindustrialization and loss of manufacturing to Mexico and offshore locations. Durable goods manufacturing sectors such as autos, rubber, glass, and steel were especially hard hit. Plants closed one after another, and large numbers of jobs were lost as factories scaled back production, canceled expansion plans, and restructured to meet mounting competition. In addition, there was rapid geographic decentralization of jobs to outlying counties of the region. Al­ though Los Angeles County continued to dominate with respect to abso­ lute numbers of jobs, its relative share dipped sharply, especially in manu­ facturing.

Some ma

was not immune

nufacturing sectors expanded, simultaneously leading to a re- invigoration and expansion of selected industries in the region.3 Reindus­ trializing sectors included high-technology (especially aerospace) and low- technology industries (including apparel, printing and publishing, textile mill products, chemicals and paper). Spurred by Reagan era foreign policy, which highlighted U.S.-Soviet antagonisms, and the associated buildup of the “warfare state,” the aerospace sector grew rapidly in Southern Califor­ nia.4 By 1985, the industry employed over a quarter of a million workers in Southern California, about three-fourths of them in Los Angeles County.5 Nondurable manufacturing was also reinvigorated during the 1980s. The largest of these sectors was apparel manufacturing; during t^le gar­ ment industry employment expanded 60 percent and added (net) 32,000

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s392

jobs, for a total of 125,000 jobs (or 12 percent of all manufacturing em­ ployment).6 Growth continued strongly throughout the 1980s,7 as the bur­ geoning flow of low-wage (often undocumented) immigrants fleeing politi­ cal turmoil and economic hardship in Latin America and Asia allowed the region to compete with production centers in developing countries.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, public sector employment contractions were severe. State and local government jobs, accounting for about 13 per­ cent of all Los Angeles County employment in 1976, dropped to under 11 percent by the mid-1980s. The federal share also shrank.8 Government jobs were lost in all but one year in this period. Federal budget reductions as well as California Propositions 13 and 4 were responsible for the public sector employment decline in the late 1980s. But changes in government service philosophy also were at play. The loss of public sector jobs contrib­ uted directly to growth in the private sector, as government agencies embarked on privatization schemes to reduce labor costs and weaken public sector employee unions. Regular employment positions were con­ verted into temporary, part-time, or contract labor in an effort to reduce costs and maintain flexibility in the face of deteriorating budget circum­ stances.9

Employment in services steadily expanded throughout the post-1945 pe­ riod. Between 1959 and 1980, the Los Angeles region added 750,000 ser­ vice sector jobs, nearly 40 percent of all job growth (compared to 21 per­ cent for manufacturing).10 By 1982-1983, the local economy had reached a crucial tipping point; service jobs outnumbered manufacturing jobs for the first time since the 1920s. The service sector’s contribution to the economy became even more pronounced as the waves of plant closures hit. Much service sector expansion was paradoxically tied to the region’s vibrant manufacturing base, but also to L.A.’s growing role as an international en­ trepot.11 In addition, Los Angeles became a critical node in the emergent global financial services network and began to attract foreign investment in real estate, particularly from Japan, Canada, and, to a lesser extent, South Korea and Hong Kong.12

The successive waves of economic restructuring (deindustrialization, re­ industrialization, public sector retrenchment, and service sector expan­ sion) left the regional economy in a vulnerable condition. By the early 1990s, California and Los Angeles were in the throes of a severe downturn, more precipitous than that experienced by the rest of the nation. Unem­ ployment rates soared, with record numbers of claims filed for jobless bene­ fits. Some key sectors were hit the hardest. The cold war ended and the national defense budget was downsized, leading to the loss of tens of thou­ sands of defense-related jobs in Southern California.13 Multiplier effects of this dramatic decline hurt other sectors of the economy. Key nondurable goods sectors that had helped sustain manufacturing growth over the pre-

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 393

vious decade began to lose employment. Apparel, which had long been the laigest job gainer among nondurables, became the largest job loser in 1990 (at least as far as reported employed was concerned).14 With both business and consumer spending down, other major sectors such as retail and ser­ vice employment also lagged. And, symbolizing the end of an era in Los Angeles, the local automobile manufacturing industry became extinct when the General Motors plant in Van Nuys closed in the summer of 1992.

Labor Market Polarization and Poverty

Prior to the mid-1970s, Los Angeles’s job base was skewed toward high- or medium-skilled labor.15 But the region experienced steady growth in low- skill jobs and rapid growth in high-skill positions during the 1970s and 1980s, stimulated largely by service sector growth and the spread of sweat­ shop-style manufacturing establishments. The new jobs created in the re­ gion tended to be concentrated in industries dominated by either low-skill or high-skill employment, producing a somewhat bipolar pattern.16 There were even more people working in low-wage (compared to low-skill) jobs, as wages failed to keep up with changes in skill requirements. The number of low-wage jobs overall grew at a much faster rate than the total popula­ tion; between 1969 and 1987, the number of low-wage jobs grew fourfold, while the population of the county grew only 26 percent.1'

Women, racial and ethnic minorities, and young workers were particu­ larly concentrated in low-skill, low-wage jobs, and their numbers grew rap­ idly during the decade. Women workers entered the Los Angeles labor force in record numbers during the 1970s and 1980s, many in low-skill jobs. For example, more than three-fourths of all those working as machine operators, assemblers, and inspectors in manufacturing industries were women; more than three-fourths of them were Latinas.18 The minority workforce was also confined primarily to low-wage jobs. In 1985, minorities made up almost two-thirds of all low-skill workers in Los Angeles,19 due to long-term patterns of discrimination, lack of resident alien documentation, low formal educational attainment and English-language skills, and the in­ ability of more highly qualified immigrants to obtain U.S. credentials. Last, young people increasingly predominated in the working-age population, but many, especially minority youngsters, were poorly equipped to compete for jobs.

This growing pool of low-skill workers faced increasing competition for jobs, most of which were nonunionized, offered low wages, little job secu­ rity, and few benefits or opportunities for advancement, and were apt to be part-time and/or temporary. Many formerly well-paid but low-skill union workers were reduced to working for minimum wages in the retail and ser­ vice sectors. The overall outcome was a pronounced polarization of the

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s394

wage distribution. The proportion of employees who earned under $11,100 in 1986—the poverty threshold for a family of four—had grown to 17.5 percent of the area’s workforce, higher than the national average. The rate of low-wage job growth among male workers also grew faster in Los Angeles than the nation. In 1969, only 7 percent of male workers earned under $10,000; by 1987, the proportion had doubled to 14 percent. At the same time, the high-wage segment of the workforce (11.4 percent) was greater than in the nation as a whole, while those earning between $20,000 and $30,000 fell from 32 percent to 25 percent.20

Not surprisingly, poverty spread. In Los Angeles County in 1969, the proportion of full-time, year-round workers in poverty was 8 percent; by 1987, this rate had almost doubled to 14 percent, due to lack of full-time

jobs, poorly paying jobs, and lack of employment opportunities appropriate to worker skills and interests. The working-age population in poverty in­ cluded three main groups: almost one-third were part-time workers (mainly women and Latinos); 14 percent were in low-wage industries (mainly males and Latinos); and more than half had simply dropped out of the labor force (three-fourths of whom were women, and a disproportionate number of whom were African-American).21 Marginalized by the restructuring of the economy, more and more people looked toward the welfare state to keep them from winding up in the shelters or on sidewalks.

THE RISE OF A REGRESSIVE WELFARE STATE

The surge in poverty linked to economic marginalization was not remedied by the nation’s welfare state, despite the rhetoric of a “social safety net” and a “kinder, gentler nation.” Rather, mirroring a trend throughout ad­ vanced capitalist countries, public resources were shifted from social needs to investment capitalists in the hope of improving the U.S. position in the international economy. Funding reductions and regressive administrative changes were enacted in many welfare programs during the 1980s. This remaking of welfare occurred at federal, state, and local levels. In Los An­ geles, a particularly reactionary county government dealt with the swelling ranks of needy people by acting to restrict the level and availability of poor relief and other key social services. More and more people were impover­ ished, fueling the city’s homelessness crisis.

Federal and State Welfare Restructuring

California’s tax revolt movement of the late 1970s led to sharp reductions in locally generated funds. Then, in 1981, federal cutbacks in a wide range of social spending and intergovernmental transfer programs further re­ duced California’s fiscal resources and directly affected public assistance

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 595

lecipients. For instance, major changes in the Aid to Families with Depen­ dent Children (AFDC) program in 1981 altered eligibility rules and benefit rates and eliminated work and child care allowances, thus denying benefits to large numbers of recipients who also lost Medicaid and Food Stamp benefits.Federal assistance to state and local governments, mainly in hous­ ing, health, job training, human services, community development, and in­ come support, also dropped dramatically throughout the early 1980s. Vari­ ous federal social service and health programs were converted to block grants and their funding levels slashed, and funding for Food Stamps, child nutrition, and unemployment insurance benefits was cut deeply.

With the recession of 1981-1982, California’s fiscal woes deepened. De­ spite the recovery that followed, overall budget growth was slow, and wel­ fare recipients were favored targets for spending reductions. In the face of rising joblessness and skyrocketing demands on health and welfare services (the state’s welfare population grew three times faster than the general population), California’s basic response was to slash safety net expendi­ tures. Health services were privatized and scaled back and responsibility for funding shifted to the counties; by the mid-ig8os, California’s per capita spending on Medi-Cal patients was the lowest among the ten largest states in the nation,23 and by 1990, the state, once a leader in health services to the poor, was ranked forty-seventh out of the fifty states in terms of per capita spending on indigent patients.24 Mental health services were deeply cut, and by 1986 California was near the bottom (42d) in terms of its care of the mentally disabled.25

The Collapse of Welfare Services in Los Angeles County

Los Angeles County, the most populous in California, was severely hit by the tax revolt, federal social spending cutbacks, and the 1981-1982 sion. Demands on the local welfare system had reached unprecedented lev­ els. But the effects of 1981 federal welfare policies meant that aid grew more restrictive. Thirty-eight thousand welfare recipients were dropped from AFDC rolls, another 48,000 were targeted for benefit reduction, and a fur­ ther 7,800 were made ineligible for food stamps.26 Ultimately, about 12,000 AFDC families lost their Medi-Cal benefits after they were cut off from wel­ fare and AFDC caseloads dropped sharply.27

However, this was only a brief respite from the explosion of welfare caseloads that was to characterize the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the welfare population grew at an annual average rate of 13 percent.28 The pres­ sure on county government to respond to increased needs mounted as the decade progressed. The conservative majority on the five-member Board of Supervisors was unwilling to institute new taxes, and favored programs popular with their constituents (such as law enforcement and parks). Such

reces-

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s396

emphases led to drastic reductions in social spending. Three strategies were particularly prominent as the county retrenched: cutbacks, closures, and coercion.

One of the simplest ways that the county managed to cut welfare costs to defer cost-of-living increases to General Relief (GR) recipients. (GR

is a locally funded relief program for those people ineligible for federal or state income support programs.) Between 1981 and 1993, the GR benefit rate rose only $65, to $293. Such penurious policy was justified by the Su­ pervisors’ claim that the county’s generosity was attracting welfare hustlers. According to Supervisor Deane Dana, California had become a “welfare utopia,” and Los Angeles County was the “Santa Claus” for welfare recipi­ ents.29 Welfare “savings” were also achieved through staff reductions. The Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) in 1980-1981 eliminated 20 percent of its total workforce, and hundreds more staff were laid off sub­ sequently. Reductions caused larger caseloads, longer waits for appoint­ ments, processing delays, and higher rates of welfare fraud.30

In the area of health care, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1980 ordered millions in health service cuts, leading to the loss of 1,200 workers, clinic closures, and the reduction of outpatient services to approxi­ mately 43,000 clients. Affected services included well-baby clinics, dental services, tuberculosis clinics, and prenatal care.31 As more state cuts were handed down, the shortfall of funds for the medically indigent increased, prompting further rounds of county health budget reductions and the in­ stitution of fees-for-service at county hospitals and clinics.32

Mental health services were also slashed. Most state reductions in mental health funding were promptly passed through to local programs, especially community-based clinics and county hospital psychiatric units increasingly burdened by homeless mentally disabled clients. The situation deteriorated to such an extent that in 1987 the chiefs of psychiatry at four county hos­ pitals signed a “Declaration of Conscience,” warning that “a desperate level of overcrowding exists night after night in each of our emergency units.”33 Waiting times for an outpatient clinic appointment were anywhere from three to seven weeks. Yet the 1988 county budget included a cut in mental health services of nearly $16 million, making the Department of Mental Health the hardest-hit department in the county.34

In 1981, the county closed nine outpatient health clinics in order to save over $11 million. These clinics were primarily located in the low-income, heavily minority communities of the county’s traditional south central in­ dustrial belt (Norwalk, Compton, El Segundo, Bell Gardens, Wilmington, and Santa Fe Springs). One year later, the county reopened six of the nine clinics, but another thirty-two clinics closed their doors to sick people when they were converted from primary outpatient immunization service centers. South Central communities were most se-

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THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 397

verely affected, along with other neighborhoods in the central districts of the county (fig. 13.1). Only nine basic health centers and four comprehen­ sive health centers remained open for ambulatory patients; and levels of service at the comprehensive centers were reduced. Some hospital-based clinics were also eliminated. These closures were especially painful for South Central residents, since three area hospitals noted for providing to poor African-Americans had already closed by 1984.35

Later in the decade, it was mental health’s turn for closures. One-third of the county’s outpatient mental health clinics (seven in all) were targeted for closure in the wake of state budget cuts, and six more were forced to scale back services, affecting a total of twenty thousand clients.36 Later, an­ other clinic in Bell Gardens was added to the list of closures, and five of the twenty that remained open were slated for service reductions.37 In the final analysis, between 1989 and 1991, eight clinics were actually closed, eight more were “consolidated” (i.e., they added services displaced from closed or contracting clinics), and three reduced their levels of service pro­ vision. The closed clinics were located in low-income communities in east and west San Fernando Valley, San Pedro, Wilmington, Arcadia, Carson, and central Los Angeles. The southern portion of the county was again hardest hit by this geography of closures.

In addition to health-related shutdowns, a significant number of the fifty welfare offices of the DPSS were eliminated. Between 1981 and 1983, three AFDC offices and nine GR offices were closed.38 During the subsequent seven years, two AFDC offices and two GR offices were opened; but four other AFDC offices and five GR offices were closed during this same pe­ riod.39 Four food stamp outlets and five Medi-Cal offices were also elimi­ nated (although one new Medi-Cal office commenced operations). In total, fourteen GR offices closed during the decade. Virtually all were located in the county’s poorest areas: Long Beach, deeply affected by deindustrializa­ tion and rising poverty; South Central, characterized by African-American and Latino populations and declining manufacturing industries; and the inner San Gabriel Valley, a poor, heavily Latino area (fig. 13.2).

As welfare rolls expanded, calls for a more coercive approach to welfare became more insistent. Then-County Supervisor Pete Schabarum proposed forced military conscription of employable GR recipients. Eventually a workfare program for GR recipients was introduced in 1983. But the plan backfired; more recipients than expected applied to participate, overload­ ing the program. Then, opponents attacked the program, claiming that it misused federal dollars and illegally denied benefits to qualified recipi­ ents. (These complaints were later substantiated.) In another bureaucratic scheme, many workfare clients were terminated for “lack of cooperation” with the program. Later, the county was ordered by the courts to reinstate these recipients and pay their relief checks.

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The County of Los Angeles also developed a variety of strategies of “bu­ reaucratic disentitlement” to discourage clients from using programs and services to which they were entitled.40 The most spectacularly inventive ex­ amples of bureaucratic disentitlement were found in the GR program.11 As one local advocate put it, “General Relief is supposed to be a bridge to help people across a crisis, but the county wants to throw the people off the bridge.”42 The GR application process itself was (and is) so convoluted that even trained welfare advocates had trouble with its finer points. The indi­ vidual forms, separate steps in the application process, and local and state offices that applicants needed to visit for one verification or another were so numerous that many prospective applicants were discouraged. The men­ tally disabled were especially burdened by the GR process; one such client, plainly eligible for benefits, spent one hundred hours negotiating the sys­ tem with the aid of a trained advocate, only to be repeatedly denied GR assistance.43

Many GR regulations were clearly and deliberately manipulated to achieve caseload containment according to the dictates of county budget contin­ gencies. Once added to the GR rolls, recipients were required to submit a nonthly income statement plus a rent receipt showing that they had paid or housing but had not exceeded the housing allowance determined by

the GR program. If employable, recipients were also required to submit a number of “job search” forms signed by prospective employers to show that they had been seeking work, and they were required to work for the county nine days each month. Those not employable were required to pro­ vide proof of this status by submitting periodic medical and psychiatric examination results. Should any of these requirements not be satisfactorily met, or should a GR client infringe any other DPSS rule (e.g., by appearing late for an appointment with caseworkers), a “60-day penalty” could be im­ posed, effectively cutting off GR benefits for a two-month period. Approxi­ mately 6,000 (10 percent) of the GR program’s almost 60,000 clients were slapped with 60-day penalties each month in 1991.44

THE COLLAPSE OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

As the number of economically marginal households grew and welfare sup­ ports were diminished, the demand for low-cost housing units expanded dramatically. However, not only did the overall housing stock in Los Angeles grow slowly between 1970 and 1989 (at less than half the national rate during the same period), but the supply of low-cost housing effectively shrank. The private sector was not geared to respond to low-cost housing needs; public housing construction funds had dried up; and the rate of nonprofit affordable housing production was miniscule. Thus the creation of housing to meet new demands rested on traditional forms of new con-

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 401

struction, for example, infill apartment and condominium development and far-distant fringe development of single-family homes. But even these modes of housing supply faced growing constraints, especially from slow- growth movements spearheaded by home owner associations. Inevitably, the result of surging demand and constrained supply was a deepening im­ balance in the housing market.

As the middle class shrank and fewer households could afford to buy their own homes, home ownership rates fell markedly during the 1980s. This pushed more households into competition for rental units.'45 As a con­ sequence of this tight market, median prices and rents surged. Regional vacancy rates were chronically low. Regional home prices, equal to the na­ tion in 1974, were 55 percent above the national norm by 1985.46 The up­ swing in prices continued unabated, almost to the decade’s end, with home values (in constant 1980 dollars) rising over 50 percent county wide and over 70 percent in many of the area’s smaller municipalities. Rental costs also climbed relentlessly. Between 1980 and 1990, Los Angeles County rents (in constant 1980 dollars) rose over 50 percent.47 Rent surges were even higher in some smaller communities (up to 64 percent). By 1990, the median rent in Los Angeles County was $570 a month.48

As pressure on the housing stock mounted, its physical quality declined and levels of crowding grew, especially in the congested rental sector and especially for the poor. Between 1970 and 1980, there was a 14 percent increase in the number of Los Angeles County units lacking some or all plumbing. This was indicative not only of substandard housing but also of a growing number of illegal conversions.49 Even more startling was the evi­ dence of crowding. Average household size, which had been declining na­ tionally for the previous thirty years, did an about-face in Los Angeles where between 1980 and 1984 alone, average household size increased by 20 percent.50 And the proportion of overcrowded units in Los Angeles County grew by almost 90 percent between 1980 and 1990; *n some °f the county’s cities, such as Alhambra, Glendale, South Gate, and West Covina, crowding rates shot up from 150 to over 200 percent, and the proportion of crowded housing reached between 50 and 60 percent in Bell Gardens, Cudahy, Maywood, and Huntington Park. The highest rates of crowding were among recent immigrant households and in central city areas.

The Loss of Low-Cost Rental Housing

There were several key factors fueling the loss of affordable housing in Los Angeles. A principal one was price inflation. Units filtered upward in terms of real costs without cheaper units being added to replace them. Between 1974 and 1985, the number of Los Angeles County housing units renting for $300 or less fell by 42 percent. In contrast, the number of units renting

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s402

for $750 or more rose by 320 percent.51 Low-end units constituted 35 per­ cent of the total rental stock in 1974, but by 1985, their share had shrunk to 16 percent. Higher rent units ($50o/month and up) grew from 14 per­ cent to 45 percent of the stock.

In addition, the loss of low-cost rental housing was exacerbated by pat­ terns of demolition and new construction of multifamily housing. In almost half the county’s largest cities, there was either a net loss of dwelling units or growth rates of under 5 percent over the 1980s. ’2 About 4,000 units, mostly rental, were demolished each year in the City of Los Angeles during the decade, and about 1,000 units per year were being converted from residential to commercial uses.53 After 1987, demolitions of multifamily housing in the City of Los Angeles rose, while new construction permit rates went down. By 1988, the number of demolitions was 75 percent higher than it had been in any previous year during the 1980s. Demolished units were among the most affordable; 80 percent were low-cost rental units, with an average rent of §350 a month. In contrast, rents of newly built units averaged $900.54 Moreover, the geography of additions and deletions was very uneven. The areas with the highest rates of demolition during 1980- 1986 were the west side, San Pedro, and the central city (especially the Central American immigrant district of Westlake). These areas also had high loss ratios (the number of apartments demolished per unit added). The net effect of these combined trends was that there was virtual stagna­ tion in the growth of the rental housing stock throughout the City of Los Angeles, with the exception of the distant northern suburbs of the San Fernando Valley (fig. 13.3).

A variety of local regulations and local political pressures restricted the ability of the housing market to produce additional low-cost units. Building codes routinely rendered “shadow housing” (i.e., units recycled from one housing size/tenure category to another)55 illegal. For example, building codes allowed the new construction of so-called mingle units (with two master bedrooms) that became popular because of the declining ability of young households to afford home purchase. These units were explicitly de­ signed for two households, but it was illegal to add a kitchen to an existing unit to make it livable for two households.56 Rent control or stabilization ordinances operative in several cities (including Santa Monica, West Holly­ wood, and Los Angeles) served to protect existing tenants from the ravages of rent inflation, but for a brief period may have fueled the rate of condo­ minium conversions (until this practice became restricted by law). And lo­ cal political movements typically led by home owners associations waged campaigns to downzone neighborhoods and block the development of infill and affordable multifamily housing construction.

Last, the flow of federal housing construction funds essentially stopped during the 1980s. Projects already in the pipeline were built, but there was

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 403

Figure 13.3. Net change in multifamily units in the City of Los Angeles, 1980 through 1986.

virtually no net addition to the public housing stock during the decade. In Los Angeles, only twenty-one projects were completed, with about 8,000 units housing 31,000 people.57 Federal funds instead came in the form of rent subsidies (Section 8 certificates and vouchers), which did not nor­ mally create new units. A small number of projects (mostly for senior and

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s404

handicapped housing) were funded with other public sector sources, but community opposition to these projects was typically intense. With the right to block unwanted projects guaranteed to local communities by the California constitution (Article 34), oppositional forces were usually suc­ cessful.

The Affordability Nightmare

These housing market dynamics, along with spreading economic margin- ality, resulted in an affordability crisis of unprecedented severity and mag­ nitude. By 1985, nine out of ten poor households were paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing, and even moderate-income house­ holds were facing heavy additional housing cost burdens. Affordability problems hit all racial and ethnic groups, but they were most devastating to the poor and to people of color.

Affordability problems affected both owners and renters, but almost 80 percent of all poor households were renters, and their situation was the worst. Poor renters faced a sheer lack of availability of affordable housing. By 1980, there were already twice as many very low-income renter house­ holds as there were units that they could afford. Very important, half of these units were already occupied by non poor households.58 And between 1974 and 1989, poor renter households increased by 43,000 while the num­ ber of units they could afford fell by 62,000.59 During the 1980s, vacancy rates rose to about 4 percent,60 but available units were predominantly in the upper tiers of the rental market, where rates of construction had been relatively rapid and absorption rates lagged. In areas of affordable housing, vacancy rates were probably below 1 percent. In the subsidized housing sector, the waiting list for Section 8 subsidies was closed in 1986, having grown too long. It was reopened in 1989; interested parties could call an advertised telephone number to request that their name be added to the list. Four days and 180,000 phone calls later, the list was again closed.61 Among those households lucky enough to obtain a subsidy, only about half were able to find an acceptable unit (i.e., meeting program criteria) within the two months allocated to conclude a rental contract.62

Faced with increasing housing market competition as the numbers of home owners dwindled, the proportion of renters paying between 30 and 50 percent of their income for housing grew rapidly. The rates of increase were steepest among the population living below the poverty level. In 1970, 55 percent of households living in poverty were forced to spend more than half their income for housing, but by 1989, three-fourths were spending at this level (more than 20 percentage points higher than for the United States as a whole).63 Another way to comprehend the housing dilemma fac­ ing poor renters is to compare their incomes with the locale-specific “Fair

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 405

Market Rents” (FMRs) used by the Department of Housing and Urban De­ velopment to approximate typical regional rent levels for standard apart-

and determine the level of subsidy provided under the Section 8 program. Fifty-two percent of all renter households could not afford the FMR for a one-bedroom unit, and 59 percent could not afford a two-bed-

unit at FMR, using a rent/income ratio of 30 percent as the measure of affordability.6"1 Households in poverty simply could not afford FMRs in Los Angeles. The annual income needed to rent FMR units of various sizes

328 percent of the poverty line for a one-person household, 293 per- of the poverty line for a two-person household, and 226 percent of

the poverty line for a four-person household. Given low vacancy rates and excessive rent burdens, crowding became a

sheer necessity as a way to share rent burdens among larger numbers of people. Already in 1970, 37 percent of poor renter households (with in­ comes at or below poverty level) had been living in crowded conditions; by 1980, this rate was up to 47 percent. Low-income renter households (with incomes up to twice the poverty level) also experienced crowding, the rate climbing from 35 percent to 40 percent from 1970 to 1980. By comparison, other households experienced only a 4 percent increase in crowding (from 12 to 16 percent).65 Extreme crowding (1.51 or more persons per room) became common. The number of poor renter households living in such conditions rose 48 percent between 1970 and 1980, to 29 percent of the total; the rate for low-income renters rose 41 percent, to 23 percent of the total. Only 9 percent of other households lived in extremely crowded con­ ditions.66

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Not surprisingly, substandard and unconventional housing units became increasingly common throughout the region. A 1987 Los Angeles Times vey estimated that 42,000 garages were illegally occupied in the county, housing approximately 200,000 people. Some of these units were relatively high quality, with full utilities, plumbing, and so on. Many more were sub­ standard in every conceivable way, lacking heat, electricity, and plumbing. The rents for such units were as high as $400 a month; most of the occu­ pants were recent immigrants from Latin America.67 Other sorts of “dwell­ ings” were pressed into service, although no estimates exist as to their num­ bers. These included vehicles (cars, trucks, vans, campers, and trailers), tool sheds and chicken coops, and abandoned buildings. Moreover, individual units were illegally partitioned to house more people, and “hotbedding,” that is, sleeping in rotation in the same bed, became commonplace. In suburban areas, small motel complexes were taken over by permanent resi­ dents, and even large tourist motels were transformed into long-term hous­ ing units.68 Makeshift shelters were routinely constructed under freeway overpasses; the “City of Lost Souls,” a twenty-resident encampment built

freeway embankment, managed to survive for five years.69 Shacks

sur-

on a

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s406

were constructed along the Los Angeles River’s concrete flood-control channel.70 A market in large cardboard boxes flourished; public storage lockers were pressed into service as shelter. Trees in central Los Angeles were “improved” with platform beds, cushions, and blankets.

FROM HOMED TO HOMELESS

The upheavals in jobs, housing, and welfare state shook loose a new class of homeless Angelenos. The precise number of homeless persons is notori­ ously difficult to estimate, but there is little doubt that the numbers grew steadily over the decade of the 1980s. Moreover, the geography of the home­ less population shifted, consistent with increasingly polycentric and frag­ mented patterns of urbanization in the region. No longer confined to Skid Row, homeless people became commonplace throughout the urban area, but especially in heavily deindustrialized zones and inner-ring suburbs.

The Numbers Game

During the “S-Night” count by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, designed to include homeless people in the nation’s census, enumerators were dis­ patched to survey in shelters and on the streets. In many places, they were met by hostile and uncooperative people who had been advised not to par­ ticipate since the count would inevitably underestimate the numbers of homeless and be used as an excuse to cut federal funding for homeless pro­ grams. S-Night in downtown Los Angeles turned into a boisterous street party. The 80-degree-plus temperatures of the afternoon had cooled only slightly by nightfall, and few believed that the shelters would be full that night. Despite the heat, many fires were being lit in street-corner cans, and hundreds of people roamed the sidewalks, participating in the free-food gatherings sponsored by the Homeless Outreach Project and other Skid Row agencies. As the count began, one homeless person commented, “Those enumerators don’t stand a chance.”

Just over a year later, the census figures were published: there were 7,706 homeless people in the City of Los Angeles and 11,790 in the entire county. These counts were promptly discredited. The Los Angeles Shelter Partner­ ship argued that the census had significantly undercounted the shelter population (by at least 30 percent); that in any event, shelters only accom­ modated about one-third of the total nightly demand; and that street-based counts were notoriously unreliable. Independent researchers noted that enumerators overlooked more than two-thirds of the “decoy” homeless that had been placed on the streets as part of their enumeration evaluation effort.71

It seems inevitable that accurate enumeration of the homeless popula-

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 407

lion will continue to be an elusive goal.72 For most of the 1980s, the most commonly accepted guesstimate” of the numbers of the homeless in Los Angeles was 35,000. This figure is based largely ment

on the 1984 U.S. Depart- of Housing and Urban Development survey of homelessness, which

reported a most reliable” range of 31,300 to 33,800 homeless persons at any point in time during the winter of 1983-1984. But other later estimates revealed an enormous fluctuation. A 1984 police count put the number of unsheltered people in the City of Los Angeles at 900.73 The Los Angeles Shelter Partnership, in contrast, estimated that, based on analyses of AFDC and General Relief homeless caseloads, the city’s nightly homeless popula­ tion was between 19,000 and 31,600; the county’s, between 36,800 and 59,100 during the year of the census count. These figures did not include homeless and runaway youth, estimated to number between 3,000 and

: i5»°°°-

Local Geographies of the Homeless

In Los Angeles, homeless people historically congregated in the Skid Row district, cheek by jowl with the downtown’s glittering “trophy” office towers housing centers of international finance, trade, and business services. Al­ though many of its single room occupancy (SRO) hotels have been demol­ ished in recent decades, the Skid Row district remains relatively intact, com­ pared to other cities in which skid row areas were eradicated through urban renewal. Thus not surprisingly, Skid Row today houses the largest single concentration of homeless people in the Los Angeles region. However, over the 1980s, homeless people became widely distributed across the urban area, as Angelenos living in various parts of the polycentric city found them­ selves on the streets. Their residence in oudying neighborhoods prior to the onset of homelessness led them to stay within the broad confines of this home “turf” or locale, where they had social ties and more knowledge of community resources. Residence in a neighborhood other than Skid Row was also facilitated by a City of Los Angeles zoning ordinance that permitted by-right homeless shelters of thirty beds or fewer in a variety of commercial, industrial, and high-density residential zones, and by the in­ creasingly restricted opportunities for new shelter and service development in Skid Row itself. Last, the homeless population was no longer composed of older white alcoholic males who historically gravitated toward Skid Row. Rather, the growing diversity of the homeless population, especially the emergence of homeless women and children as a fast-growing component, reinforced spatial decentralization trends.

Systematic surveys of the Los Angeles homeless population have been restricted to Skid Row, while other efforts that threw a wider net, such as the S-night count of the 1990 census, are widely discredited. However, 1991

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s408

GR program data on the number of homeless applicants for GR, by re­ gional DPSS GR office, and information on the number of homeless fami­ lies applying for special homeless assistance funds at DPSS AFDC offices reveal the increasingly decentralized and complex local geographies of Los Angeles County’s homeless population. Local wisdom suggests that ap­ proximately half the total is located in Skid Row; that is, there are between 10,000 and 15,000 on the streets, in hotels and shelters, or living in other transient circumstances (in cars, on rooftops, etc.). However, it is clear that this is an exaggeration; there are large numbers of homeless people out­ side of downtown, especially the South Central, South Bay, and west side areas.

Considering homeless families applying for AFDC assistance, the largest proportions of this population applied in offices located in the South Bay, central, and southwestern areas of the county; offices near downtown served lower proportions of these families. However, the sizes of DPSS dis­ trict office service areas vary widely, as does population density. Thus, on 1 per capita basis, the highest rates of homeless family applicants were in South Central and southwest of downtown (fig. 13.4). A striking finding is that rates were also very high in the Pomona Valley, the easternmost district service area of the county. Many communities in the San Gabriel Valley to the west of Pomona offer little in the way of shelter and emergency services and refer homeless families to shelters in the Pomona area. Thus the high concentration of such families applying at the Pomona DPSS office may reflect a process in which families in the greater San Gabriel Valley become homeless, are referred to shelters in the Pomona area, and social workers in those shelters refer the families to the local DPSS office for AFDC assis­ tance.

The distribution of homeless single people applying for GR was also de­ centralized, but there were clear differences from the distribution of appli­ cants for AFDC homeless family assistance. The largest proportion of the county’s GR homeless applicant pool was in the greater South Bay area, followed by the west side and downtown. The dominance of the South Bay primarily results from district office closures that greatly enlarged this ser­ vice area. On a per capita basis, the South Bay receded in importance, while the territory extending from downtown to the west side had the highest homeless GR applicant rates (fig. 13.5; it should be noted that the western­ most portion of district area 10, served by the Rancho Park office, is com­ prised of Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains, and so the map over­ emphasizes its importance). DPSS district offices at the Civic Center, which serves Skid Row; Metro Special, just south of downtown, serving South Cen­ tral; and Rancho Park, serving West Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Culver City, and Venice, are the primary sites where single homeless people applied for

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THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 411

homeless relief. The Pomona area, so dominant in terms of homeless fami­ lies, had much lower per capita homeless GR applicant rates.

Homeless people applying for assistance in different parts of Los Angeles County differed from each other in terms of basic demographic and socio­ economic characteristics. A 1987 survey of homeless GR applicants in six major subareas of the county (the Civic Center, which encompasses Skid Row; the inner city; South Central; Long Beach; the west side; and the San Fernando/San Gabriel Valley) suggests these basic variations by place. Al­ though they are in line with the overall regional distribution of homeless GR applicants, the survey’s sample sizes are small, thus allowing only a few comparisons. Homeless GR applicants from the Civic Center catchment area, which serves Skid Row, were predominantly single African-American males, over half of which were under thirty-five years old. In contrast, al­ though most homeless applicants in the west side and South Central dis­ tricts were also males, both districts had higher shares of women. In Long Beach and the west side, homeless respondents were more likely to be white; and in the valley, Latino. The west side had by far the highest proportion under twenty-five years old (75 percent), the valley the lowest Respondents from the valley were most apt to be married; west side applicants had the highest rate of college attendance, the Civic Center the highest share never graduating from high school, and Long Beach the highest rate of high school graduates. These demographic differences reflect the general popu­ lations of the county’s subareas and their poor populations, suggesting that homeless people often stay within their traditional geographic zones in the urban region.

THE LOCAL RESPONSE TO HOMELESSNESS

Most cities in Los Angeles County strenuously avoided confronting the homelessness crisis. Most had neither developed a specific policy statement on homelessness nor taken specific actions regarding the issue as they tered the 1990s. And while the largest and most diverse jurisdictions (such as the county and the cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach) had of the most extensive sets of policies and programs directed toward the homeless, the likelihood of response bore little relation to city size. Several smaller localities had also articulated complex responses to homelessness and had targeted relatively substantial resources to shelter and service pro­ vision. But some of the region’s larger cities had done nothing to respond to the homelessness crisis, either because they were determined to ignore the problem or because they feared attracting homeless people from other localities. As one local official put it, “Our city would like to do something

en-

some

412 THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s

to help the homeless . . . but frankly we don’t want to end up being a mag­ net for homeless people.”'3

Civic Silences

The vast majority of cities maintained an official silence on the issue of homelessness. They had no policy toward homeless people, homelessness prevention, or homeless programs. Only four jurisdictions in the county had issued a specific policy statement on homelessness: the county and the cities of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Monica.

The county’s 1985 policy called for more lobbying of state and federal governments, greater local coordination and resource creation through public/private partnerships, a variety of specific instructions to county de­ partments to increase access of homeless people to existing resources, and a commission to oversee county efforts on behalf of the homeless.76 Later, the county established a homeless coordination unit, took on administra­ tion of the federally funded Cold/Wet Weather program, and created the Los Angeles Coordinating Council on the Homeless (in 1991). However, the policy did not recommend additional county expenditures.

The City of Los Angeles adopted a formal policy statement with recom­ mendations in 1987/' By that time, the city had committed over $1.2 mil­ lion to homeless-related services, including funding 695 shelter beds and providing food, clothing, and emergency referral services to over 18,000 individuals.78 Filled with exhortations to “urge,” “encourage,” or “support” services to be provided by other levels of government, the policy outlined a fifteen-point “Homeless Action Plan.” This plan advocated the continua­ tion of ongoing activities, directed consideration of “regional service cen­ ters for the homeless,” supported the expansion of job training for the homeless, urged federal, state, and county governments to develop “com­ prehensive” homeless policies, and suggested that the county increase its commitment to improving General Relief. (The city later sued the county in an attempt to compel such an improvement in GR.) Some concrete pro­ posals emerged, including the establishment of a homeless coordinating unit, a homeless services steering committee, an emergency shelter contin­ gency plan, a mobile ombudsman program, and a “move-in” loan program. Many of these actions were taken.

In the following year, Long Beach followed suit and adopted a formal policy statement on homelessness. This statement consisted of a very gen­ eral resolution by the city council recognizing the extent and origins of the homelessness crisis and adopting “a policy on homelessness that has as its goal adequate housing, food, and medical services for every resident of the City.” To demonstrate its commitment, Long Beach called on the county to fulfill its welfare responsibilities to the homeless and indigent,

J !•

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 4*3

supported state and federal lobbying efforts of the county, and directed city administrators to apply for nonlocal grant funds, establish an advisory committee, and fund a homeless coordinator. The latter two units place by 1991.

Santa Monica’s policy statement emerged much later, in the context of an emotional debate over the presence of homeless encampments in the city. 9 The policy called for a delicately balanced set of proposals combining greatly enlarged service provision and affordable housing opportunities with rigorous pursuit of public safety measures, for example, prosecution of illegal activities (such as drug dealing), adoption of an anticamping or­ dinance to prevent people from sleeping in city parks and beaches, and a ban on outdoor meal programs.

Although none of the other cities in the county had a formal policy statement, as required by state law, many made mention of homelessness in the Housing Elements of their General Plans. Typically, these statements were brief and general. For instance, Arcadia’s Housing Element claims that “most of the ‘homelessness’ in Arcadia is generally temporary displace­ ment—job layoffs, eviction or family disputes,” the implication being that the city has no real homeless people; their policy is to refer “displaced” persons to agencies located in other nearby cities. In other cities, the Hous­ ing Element detailed the support provided to a nonprofit organization to pick up and deliver homeless people to a shelter in a nearby city.

In two cases, though, General Plan statements were more extensive. Pasadena’s draft Housing Element, for example, provided an extensive dis­ cussion of homelessness, proposed a new zoning ordinance for shelters and SRO hotels, and promoted a range of new and existing city activities to provide shelter and services to the homeless. West Hollywood’s General Plan had not only a Housing Element but a Human Services Element as well. As a result, the city created a nonprofit organization to operate a shel­ ter and adopted a strong anticamping ordinance that they began enforcing when city shelter facilities were opened. Much less elaborate but nonethe­ less surprising were the cases of Huntington Park and La Verne, both small cities with Housing Elements with proactive policies toward the homeless. The

were in

r

:

Housing Element in the small, low-income, largely Latino city of Huntington Park provided a detailed discussion of the extent of homeless-

there and adopted policies to facilitate transitional housing and SRO hotel development. La Verne, a middle-income Anglo city of 30,000 in the eastern San Gabriel Valley, had been able to find few homeless people but nonetheless had adopted a Housing Element that called for an annual city grant to a nonprofit shelter provider, zoning changes to allow shelters, counseling centers and other services for the homeless to operate in the city with a conditional use permit, and the development of an informa­ tion/ referral brochure for homeless people.

new

ness

( i 1

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414 THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s

Exclusion through Zoning and Policing

Most cities (about three-fourths) had no specific provisions for shelters, ser­ vice facilities (such as soup kitchens or drop-in centers), or single room occupancy housing developments. In these instances, such developments were simply prohibited, or else a prospective service provider or devel­ oper would have to run the conditional use permit (CUP) gauntlet. Of the jurisdictions with existing or new draft zoning ordinances, ten had SRO ordinances, eight had shelter ordinances, and four had policies directed toward other types of homeless service and housing facilities (includ­ ing transitional housing). These included the county and its largest cities (Long Beach and Los Angeles) and a scattering of other cities ranging in size and complexity. In most instances, the zoning ordinances were altered to include shelters, SROs, or other service facilities as specifically allowed uses, typically with a CUP; some involved performance standards to be met through the conditional use permitting process, to minimize the im­ pact of public opposition. Interestingly, several cities had recently adopted ir were considering transitional housing ordinances, to allow such hous­ ing to locate by-right in multifamily residential areas; others, like Hunt­ ington Park, were interested in developing SRO units in their downtown centers.

In addition to zoning codes making the siting of homeless facilities dif­ ficult, many cities had municipal codes restricting access to public parks during the night, banning loitering and soliciting, and prohibiting trespass­ ing on private property. Laws prohibiting panhandling were also common. But a court decision struck down the state’s Penal Code section that had outlawed panhandling, on the grounds that it violated rights to freedom of speech. In any event, these codes predated the homelessness crisis and were rarely used proactively to control local homeless presence or social behavior. Probably the dominant response of cities was complaint-driven enforcement policy. Most cities had no complaints, and so little need for enforcement. On rare occasions, they prosecuted homeless people, usually for loitering, trespassing, or some other minor offense, when their behavior generated a complaint from a resident or local business. More often than not, formal citations were not issued; rather, homeless people would simply be asked to “move along,” or would be referred to shelters or services by city police or county sheriffs.

Some cities, however, experienced mounting pressure to actively control the location and behavior of homeless people. To circumvent their inabil­ ity to prosecute people for panhandling, some cities reported using laws against creating a public nuisance or trespassing to deal with panhandlers. One city, West Hollywood, distributed flyers informing residents that they

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 415

entitled to make a citizen’s arrest of panhandlers, on a variety of legal grounds; the catch was that the individual making the arrest was responsi­ ble for detaining the panhandler until law enforcement officials could ar­ rive and take the panhandler into custody—an unappealing prospect. Con-

about people sleeping in public places or erecting encampments were also voiced by spouses. California’s general vagrancy law was ruled unconstitutional in the early 1980s, leading some cities concerned with the issue to adopt ordi­ nances that prohibited camping or erecting permanent structures in public places, especially parks. By far the most common rationale for such ordi­ nances was that encampments created health, safety, zoning, and fire code infractions. Actual removals were carried out by a variety of public sector jurisdictions. For example, the City of Los Angeles shut down “Justiceville,” a 6o-person, organized encampment located on a former playground in Skid Row,80 removed a group of homeless living on the steps of City Hall,81 and bulldozed a camp of 125 people living behind the Union Rescue Mis-

• ft 9sion. In addition to such sporadic removals, a small number of cities routinely

conducted law enforcement “sweeps” to remove homeless people from pub­ lic sidewalks and other spaces. For example, the City of Los Angeles in 1987 began routine sweeps of Skid Row streets to eliminate encampments for health and safety reasons. These sweeps were by far the most highly publi­ cized and bitterly contested destructions of homeless encampments in the county. Eventually, the city adjusted its policy of street sweeps, publishing guidelines and posting police and sanitation sweep schedules involving three sweeps per week in Skid Row.83 Later, these practices were stepped up; all fifty blocks of Skid Row became off-limits to allow for street clean­ ing Monday through Friday.84 In addition, the police attempted to confine homeless individuals to those sidewalks in front of the district’s six large missions, in the process ousting people from doorways, breaking up side­ walk gatherings, and waking up people sleeping on side streets and taking them to mission area sidewalks.

Less publicized sweeps also occurred in Long Beach, West Hollywood, and Santa Monica. Long Beach adopted an antiencampment policy based on health and safety rationales and conducted sweeps regularly. Like Los Angeles, Long Beach posted sweep days and hours and before each sweep, sent social service personnel to provide verbal notification of sweeps and referrals to shelter and service resources. In West Hollywood and Santa Monica, relatively lenient municipal ordinances and law enforce-

practices themselves became targets for community backlash against the homeless and resulted in antiencampment policies and associated sweeps.

were

cerns local jurisdictions, which adopted a variety of re-some

ment

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s416

Paucity of Funding for Homeless Prograins

Los Angeles County received the majority of nonlocal funds for home­ less programs and spent the largest number of locally generated dollars as well. A study of funding for homeless programs in the county reported that in 1988, the county received $10 million from the federal govern­ ment and $14 million from the state of California.83 Federal funds origi­ nated with the McKinney Act; state funds were allocated through a vari­ ety of departmental programs, the largest of which was from the Mental Health Department, followed by the Emergency Shelter Program, AFDC Homeless Assistance Program, and smaller programs targeted to home­ less youth, the homeless mentally disabled, and victims of domestic vio­ lence. In addition, the county administered Community Development and Community Services block grant funds, much of which it distributed to cities to use for various purposes, including homeless programs. Not sur­ prisingly, given its statutory responsibilities for population welfare, the county provided the largest amount of nonlocal funding for shelter and services for homeless people. Hamilton, Rabinovitz and Alschuler, Inc. estimated in 1988 that the county allocated $80.9 million, the largest amounts being channeled through the General Relief Program and other Department of Public and Social Services programs ($65.7 million), fol­ lowed by health services ($12.2 million). The following year, the county spent an additional $730,000 administering the AFDC Homeless Assis­ tance Program. Apart from these statutory, unavoidable responsibilities, however, the county spent little of its own General Fund revenues on the homeless and fought legal actions attempting to compel them to increase entitlement benefits for GR recipients to reduce their risk of homeless­ ness.

More than half of all municipalities failed to spend any local or nonlo­ cal funds on programs targeted to homeless people. Of those cities that did spend funds to provide shelter or services, about one-third spent local funds, one-third spent state and federal funds, and the remainder com­ bined local and nonlocal funding. Virtually all funds were allocated to ser­ vice-providing nonprofit organizations. Of the fewer than forty cities re­ porting some expenditures in the homeless area, only a dozen indicated spending more than $50,000 (table 13.1). Not surprisingly, given its enor­ mous population and widespread homelessness, the largest municipal spender was the City of Los Angeles. By the late 1980s, the City of Los Angeles had been allocating over $1 million in General Fund monies each year to homeless programs. But the city eliminated most of its local fund­ ing for the homeless in the early 1990s as additional nonlocal revenues be­ came available and its fiscal problems intensified. By 1991, almost $4 million was being spent on homeless programs, virtually all from nonlocal sources.

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 4J7

However, the city s separately financed Community Redevelopment Agency, mandated by state law to spend 20 percent of revenues on low-income hous- ing, appropriated $1.5 million to purchase 102 mobile homes for transi­ tional occupancy by homeless families in 1987;86 spent $39 million on homeless-targeted capital and service programs in Skid Row between 1977 and 1986;8/ and in fiscal year 1990-1991, budgeted $8.56 million on Skid Row for shelters, transitional housing, hotel rehabilitation, and service pro­ vision.88

Overall, expenditure levels were unrelated to city size. To illustrate, West Hollywood, with only about 36,000 residents in 1990, spent about $400,000 on homeless programs, and Santa Monica, with a population of 86,000, spent about $1.3 million, whereas the much larger cities of Long Beach (pop. 429,000) and Pomona (pop. 132,000) spent only $288,000 and $27,000, respectively. Moreover, Torrance, the county’s fourth-largest city with a population of 133,000, targeted no funds whatsoever specifically to services for homeless people.

How can we summarize this picture of local response? First, the majority of cities did not respond in any significant way to the homelessness crisis. Not surprisingly, some of these cities were affluent, home-owner enclaves (such as Palos Verdes Estates) that reported having no homeless people living within their jurisdiction and therefore felt little inclination to take action. Other cities minimized the extent of their homeless populations, sometimes claiming that homeless people were just “passing through” on their way to shelters and services in downtown Los Angeles or the South Bay. Homeless people requesting assistance or encountered by law enforce­ ment officers were typically sent to local nonprofit agencies or (more com­ monly) to services located in nearby jurisdictions. Second, those cities that did respond to the crisis varied dramatically with respect to population size and urban complexity. The cities with the largest-scale homeless coordinat­ ing staff and service and shelter grant programs and/or policies (either stand-alone or General Plan Housing Elements) were Los Angeles, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Pomona, and West Hollywood—cities of vastly different scale and scope, ranging from 36,000 residents to over 3 million.

Rather than ecological features, three commonalities appear to have conditioned the extent and nature of the most responsive cities: traditions of progressive politics and service delivery; level of professional and tech­ nical staff expertise; and history of public concern about the homeless. Cit­ ies such as Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and Pasadena became domi­ nated by progressive forces in the 1980s, emphasizing redistributive service provision. Los Angeles had a long tradition of federal antipoverty programs and nonprofit service delivery (especially in Skid Row) and at least a nomi­ nal commitment to serving the poor. Long Beach, much more conservative,

,

I;

:

: ' I ■

c I :

Cities with Specific Spending on Homelessness Programs, 1991

table 13.1

From General Nonlocal

Fund, CRA Funds ($1,000) ($1,000)

Homelessness Spending Pei•

Capita

Calculated as Percent of Toted Expenditures

Total ($1,000)City

$0.34 $0.10 $0.53 $0.94 $0.32 $0.53 $0.16 $0.28 $1.74 $0.36 $0.13 $3.49 $0.04 $0.67 $0.92 $1.11 $0.58 $2.43 $1.06 $1.05 $0.20 $0.23 $1.06 $3.22

$14.96 $0.12

$11.07 $0.64

$1.17

0.0111Avalon Bellflower* Burbank Cerritos Covina Cudahy Downey El Monte Glendale Inglewood La Verne .ancaster awndale

vOng Beach Los Angeles Manhattan Beach Norwalk Palmdale Pasadena Pico Rivera Pomona Redondo Beach San Fernando Santa Fe Springs Santa Monica** West Covina West Hollywood Whittier

0.043 63 0.025050 0.165050 0.061414 0.2912 12 0.031515 0.083030 0.1373 313240 0.0440 40 0.024 4 0.8550 340290 0.021 1 0.0448 240 288

3,220 0.053,220 40 0.1440

55 0.1555 0.5368 99 167 0.0454 85 139 0.2712 50 62

27 27 0.03 14 0.0214 24 24 0.16

50 50 0.14 1,300 0.751,300

12 0.0312 400 1.09400

50 50 0.13

2,635 0.08%Total 4,089 6,724

Robin Law and Jennifer Wolch, “Homelessness and the Cities: Local Government Policiessource: and Practices in Southern California,” Working Paper no. 44, Los Angeles Homelessness Project, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1993. notes: The figure for Avalon refers to an Emergency Fund for city residents. The following cities spent an unspecified amount on homeless programs, or an amount which served a wider target population: Artesia, Bellflower, Burbank, Claremont, Gardena, La Mirada, Lakewood, San Dimas, Redondo Beach, Compton, Culver City, Monterey Park, Santa Clarita, La Mirada, Beverly Hills, Torrance. ♦Also an unspecified amount on programs serving a wider population in need. ♦♦Also an unspecified amount of nonlocal funds.

11

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 419

nonetheless was a port city and thus home to the typical panoply of res­ and soup kitchens. These cities also appear to have had

ployees with substantive technical expertise in housing, planning, social services, and

cue missions em-

community development, familiarity with the range of politi­ cal issues surrounding homelessness, and knowledge about funding pro­ grams and working with nonprofit organizations. Last, in each of these cities, public controversy served to mobilize local government action. This prompted local politicians to embark on homeless programming and plan- ning.

Among these proactive places, Santa Monica and West Hollywood stand out as the most responsive. Simply in terms of per capita spending on home­ less programs, these two cities allocated between $13 and $15—eight to nine times the city of Long Beach, and perhaps as much as four times the city of Los Angeles.89 Both cities boasted an ideologically based commit­ ment to generous community service delivery. During the late 1980s, they found themselves forced to cope with rapidly increasing demands for home­ less services. This was partly because of their service policies, but also be­ cause of their location (near the beach), social climate (high tolerance for diversity), and, crucially, the practices of other cities who failed to respond to the homelessness crisis, except to “dump” their homeless people onto those jurisdictions offering support facilities and resources. Both Santa Monica and West Hollywood tried to respond to growing demands, but despite their reputations as progressive cities, local officials faced a vitriolic public backlash against the homeless that prompted increasingly stringent social control measures.

1=

CONCLUSION

During the 1980s, Los Angeles was enmeshed in the powerful dynamic of economic restructuring driven by complex changes at both global and local scales. The shift to post-Fordism meant the elimination of thousands of jobs from traditional manufacturing industries. Additional jobs were lost as the public sector retrenched, and defense downsizing led to massive loss of aerospace jobs in the region. Those manufacturing industries that survived tended to reorganize production (e.g., by using flexible production tech­ niques) in order to enable quick adjustments in workforce and production processes as market conditions required. A simultaneous reindustrialization witnessed a spectacular growth in service-related and high-technology in­ dustries plus low-technology industries such as garment manufacturing. The latter were often low-skill and low-waged, the former high-skill and well-paid. This development contributed to an increasing bimodality in the region’s income distribution.

; 1 =

i

j

THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s420

Economic restructuring left both foreign- and native-born workers (es­ pecially African-Americans) facing stiffer competition for the low-skill jobs that remained. Some people were unable to compete and dropped out of the labor force; others were obliged to work in insecure jobs at extremely low wages, often on a part-time basis. Unfavorable labor market conditions led many workers to accept exploitative working conditions and wages, in­ cluding the absence of job-related benefits such as pensions and health care coverage. The number of working people in poverty grew dramatically.

If poverty, unemployment, and unstable working conditions associated with post-Fordist Los Angeles were crucial preconditions for mounting homelessness, so too were efforts at federal, state, and local levels to re­ make and partially dismantle the welfare state that had historically pro­ tected people from the ravages of the labor market. Over the 1980s, the poor and homeless faced ever-dwindling federal and state health and wel­ fare supports and increasingly hostile and penurious local welfare systems. As a consequence of changes in federal welfare programs that were imple­ mented in the late 1970s, as well as the reforms of 1981, states and localities were faced with a federal government intent on shrinking its financial com­ mitment to the poor and shifting its responsibility for poor relief to lower tiers of government. Some states and local governments worked hard to fill the funding gaps created by federal retrenchment; others simply passed reductions on to clients. Certain jurisdictions, notably Los Angeles County, went beyond federal cutbacks to impose their own even more stringent conditions on local welfare programs. Faced with growing unemployment and poverty and shrinking federal and state resources, the County of Los Angeles sought to deflect mushrooming welfare costs by imposing a harsh regime of relief administration and by curtailing those programs over which they had autonomy (such as General Relief). Inevitably, the situation of welfare-dependent populations deteriorated rapidly.

Given spreading economic marginalization and welfare state disman­ tling, it is hardly surprising that decent housing was increasingly beyond the reach of more and more households. To make matters worse, the stock of affordable housing diminished over the course of the 1980s. Housing and rental costs surged ahead of the nation at an alarming rate. The rate of housing production could not match the rates of immigration and new household formation in the region. But other important factors conspired to cause a significant deterioration in the position of low-income renters. Demolitions of affordable housing accelerated, the lost units being replaced by upmarket rentals; local regulations and price inflation inhibited the con­ version of units through the shadow market. Housing simply became be­ yond the means of large segments of the urban population. Available af­ fordable units were often overcrowded and of declining quality. Vacancy rates were negligible at the low end of the housing market. The working

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THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 421

poor and those on welfare were obliged to compete for the diminishing number of affordable units. People were forced to invent unconventional methods of putting a roof over their heads, including everything from verted garages to cardboard boxes.

With notable exceptions, local government officials remained specta­ tors at the unfolding homelessness crisis. Their (in) actions ranged from su­ ing one another over perceived dereliction of duties to simply transporting homeless people to neighboring cities. Only a small handful of dues tried to tackle the problem, with inadequate resources and amid mounting pres­ sure to back away from their commitments to the homeless. Most cities spent little or nothing on the homeless and did little in the way of adjusting their plans and policies to encourage the delivery of homeless services or to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. In a seem­ ingly endless shell game, localities strove to avoid taking responsibility and shifted burdens of providing support for homeless people to other jurisdic­ tions in the region.

Thus have hundreds of thousands of people been impoverished by the complex interaction of global, national, and local economic forces; become marginally housed in crowded, unaffordable dwellings; and found the so­ cial welfare safety net swept out from beneath them without much local assistance in sight. They now teeter on the edge of homelessness with little except chance to hold them back. For those that lose this high-stakes game of chance, a new mendicancy awaits on street corners throughout Los An­ geles, where homeless people cluster to beg coins from passersby.

con-

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NOTES

Materials in this chapter are drawn in part from Jennifer Wolch and Michael Dear, Malign Neglect: Homelessness in an American City (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993). I would like to thank Robin Law, Woobae Lee, and Jong-Gyu Lee for their valuable assistance with portions of the analysis presented here.

Shelter Partnership, The Number of Homeless People in Los Angeles City and County, July 1990 to June 1991 (Los Angeles: Shelter Partnership, May 1992).

2. Edward Soja, Rebecca Morales, and Goetz Wolff, “Urban Restructuring: An Analysis of Social and Spatial Change in Los Angeles,” Economic Geography 59 (1983): 195-210; Allen Scott and Doreen Mattingly, “The Aircraft and Parts Indus­ try in Southern California: Continuity and Change from the Inter-War \fears to the 199os,w Economic Geogmphy 65 (i989): 48-71-

3. Edward Soja, “Taking Los Angeles Apart: Some Fragments of a Critical Human Geography,” Environment and Planning Society and Space 4 (1986): 255—272.

4. Allen Scott and D. Gauthier, “The US. Missile and Space Industry,” Research and Exploration 7 (1991): 472-489.

5. Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso Press, 1989)» 2°4*

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422 THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s

6. Ibid., 207. 7. Los Angeles Economic Roundtable, Overview of the Los Angeles Economy and

Regional Industrial Trends, Los Angeles Economic Roundtable, Los Angeles, 22 Feb­ ruary 1991.

8. Robin Law, “Urban Restructuring and Low Skill Employment: The Chang­ ing Location of Work and Home in Los Angeles County” (Ph.D. dissertation, Uni­ versity of Southern California, 1991).

9. Jennifer Wolch, The Shadow State: Government and Voluntary Sector in Transi­ tion (New York: Foundation Center, 1990).

10. Ivan Light, “Los Angeles,” in The Metropolis Era: Mega-cities, ed. M. Dogan and J. D. Kasarda (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1988), 59.

11. Ibid.; and Saskia Sassen-Koob, The Mobility of Labor and Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

12. Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1990); and Ivan Light and Edna Bonacich, Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles, 1965-1982 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of Cali­ fornia Press, 1988).

13. Economic Roundtable, Economic Adjustment Strategy for Defense Reductions, Economic Roundtable, Los Angeles, 17 March 1992; Robin Law, Jennifer Wolch, and Lois Takahashi, “Defense-less Territory: Workers, Communities, and the De­ cline of Military Production in Los Angeles,” Environment and Planning C: Govern­ ment and Policy (1993).

14. Los Angeles Economic Roundtable, Trends in Manufacturing, Los Angeles Economic Roundtable, Los Angeles, 22 February 1991, ii.

15. Law, “Urban Restructuring.” 16. Los Angeles Economic Roundtable, Update on Skill Shifts in Major Sectors

(1980-198']), Los Angeles Economic Roundtable, Los Angeles, 1989. 17. Research Group on the Los Angeles Economy, The Widening Divide: Income

Inequality and Poverty in Los Angeles (Los Angeles: University of California Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, 1989), 38.

18. Ibid.; and Patricia Fernandez-Kelley, “Economic Restructuring in the United States: The Case of Hispanic Women in the Garment and Electronics Industries in Southern California,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American So­ ciological Association, 18 August 1987.

19. Law, “Urban Restructuring.” 20. Research Group on the Los Angeles Economy, The Widening Divide, 35-36. 21. Ibid. 22. Jennifer Wolch and Andrea Akita, “The Federal Response to Homelessness

and Its Implications for American Cities,” Urban Geography 9 (1989): 62-85. 23. “California’s Medical Crisis” (editorial), Los Angeles Times, 9 February 1987,

sec. 2, p. 4. 24. C. Duane Dauner, President of the California Association of Hospitals and

Health Systems, as quoted in Joel Sappell, “Hospitals Accuse State of Neglect in Medi-Cal Suit,” Los Angeles Times, 20 August 1990, sec. A, p. 3.

25. L. May, “State Put Near Bottom in Care of Mentally 111,” Los Angeles Times, 19 March 1986, sec. 1, p. 1.

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THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 4*3

26. Jean Merl, “38,000 in County May Lose U.S. Welfare,” Los Angeles Times, 14 October 1981, sec. 2, p. 8.

27. Myrna Oliver, “Medi-Cal Drug Cuts Reinstated,” Los Angeles Times, 4 Decem­ ber 1982, sec. 2, p. 1.

28. Woodbae Lee, “Local Outcomes of Welfare State Restructuring: Los An­ geles in the 1980s,” Working Paper no. 36, Los Angeles Homelessness Project, Uni­ versity of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1991.

29. Ted Vollmer, “Supervisors Vote Opposition as Dana Breaks Ranks,” Los An­ geles Times, 17 October 1984, sec. 2, p. 1.

30. Richard Simon, “256 Welfare Employees to Be Laid Off,” Los Angeles Times, 16 August 1983, sec. 2, p. 1.

31. Jean Merl, “Patients, Staff Get Bad News on Squeeze,” Los Angeles Times, 17 July 1981, sec. 2, p. i;Jean Merl, “2 State Lawmakers Join in Protest Against Health Care Cuts,” Los Angeles Times, 22 July 1981; and A. Scott, “County’s Poor Seen De­ laying Visits to Doctor,” Los Angeles Times, 19 December 1982, sec. 2, p. 1.

32. H. Nelson, “Fee Emphasis Deters Poor’s Health Care, Panel Hears,” Los An­ geles Times, 23 October 1984, sec. 1, p. 3.

33. Claire Spiegel and Victor Merina, “Fund Reductions Imperil Mental Health System, Officials Say,” Los Angeles Times, 1 August 1988, sec. 2, p. 3.

34. Victor Merina, “County Budget of $9 Billion Leans Heavily on ‘Iffy’ Funds, Los Angeles Times, 15 July 1988, sec. 2, p. 1.

35. Jude Shiver, Jr., “Hospital Closings Called Evidence of Health Care Crisis for Blacks, Poor,” Los Angeles Times, 20 May 1984, sec. 2, p. 1.

36. Spiegel and Merina, “Fund Reductions.” 37. Victor Merina, “Mental Health Clinics’ Doors to Remain Open,” Los Angeles

Times, 28 February 1989, sec. 2, p. 1. 38. County of Los Angeles, Department of Public Social Services, Statistical Re­

port, 1980-1983; Simon, “256 Welfare Employees to Be Laid Off. Coun ty of Los Angeles, Department of Public Social Services, Statistical Re­

port, 1980-1990. Michael Lipsky, “Bureaucratic Disentidement in Social Welfare Programs,”

Social Service Review 58 (1984): 3-27. 41. Gary Blasi, “Litigation Strategies for Addressing Bureaucratic Disentitle-

” New York University Review of Law and Social Change 16 (1987-1988): 591-

Gary Blasi, former Legal Aid Foundation attorney, quoted in Ronald B. Tay- lor, “Supervisors Seek to End Legal Fight over Homeless Care,” Los Angeles Times, 21 April 1991, sec B, p. 3. .

43. Joel Handler, “The Transformation of Aid to Families with Dependent Chil­ dren: The Family Support Act in Historical Perspective,” New York University Review of Law and Social Change 16 (1987-1988): 529"533-

44. Penelope McMillan and Richard Simon, “Safety Net Stretched to $34t a Month," Los Angeles Times, 21 June 1991, sec. B, p. 3.

45. William C. Baer, “Housing in an Internationalizing Region: Housing Stock Dynamics in Southern California and the Dilemmas of Fairshare,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 4 (1986): 337"35°-

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40.

ment, 603.

i 42.

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THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s424

46. Ibid. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population and Housing (Washington,47-

D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980, 1990). 48. Ibid. 49. Baer, “Housing in an Internationalizing Region.” 50. Ibid. 51. Research Group on the Los Angeles Economy, The Widening Divide, 183. 52. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population and Housing. 53. Los Angeles Blue Ribbon Committee for Affordable Housing, Housing Los

Angeles: Affordable Housing for the Future (Los Angeles: Office of the Mayor, 1988). 54. Ibid. 55. William C. Baer, “Low Cost Housing as a Resource for the Homeless: Ana­

lyzing the Components of Inventory Change for Southern California,” Working Paper no. 19, Los Angeles Homelessness Project, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1989.

56. Baer, “Housing in an Internationalizing Region.” 57. Research Group on the Los Angeles Economy, The Widening Divide. 58. Jeffrey Heilman, “Los Angeles’ Low-Income Rental Housing: The Demo­

graphics and Unit Characteristics of the 1980 Stock,” Working Paper no. 20, Los Vngeles Homelessness Project, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1989.

59. Mark Sheft and Paul Leonard, A Place to Call Home (Washington, D.C.: Cell­ ar on Budget and Policy Priorities, 1992), 8.

60. Jill Stewart, “LA Rentals: A Crisis that is Growing,” Los Angeles Times, 27 November 1988,1, 1.

61. Jill Stewart, “Housing Seekers Swamp Phone Lines,” Los Angeles Times, 13 December 1989, A, 3.

62. Steve Renahan, Director of Section 8 Housing, Housing Authority of Los Angeles, personal communication, 1991.

63. Sheft and Leonard, A Place to Call Home. 64. Cushing Dolbeare, Out of Reach: Why Everyday People Can't Find Affordable

Housing (Washington, D.C.: Low Income Housing Information Service, 1990). 65. Research Group on the Los Angeles Economy, The Widening Divide. 66. Ibid. 67. Stephanie Chavez and James Quinn, “Garages: Immigrants In, Cars Out,”

Los Angeles Times, 24 May 1987, A, 1. 68. L. Mascaro, “Beyond the Margin,” Los Angeles Times, 6 July 1991, E, 1. 69. Phil Sneiderman, “Last Rites: City of Lost Souls Can’t Escape Judgement

Day,” Los Angeles Times, 9 February 1991, B, 3. 70. Louis Sahagun, “LA River Offers Refuge for Homeless Immigrants,” Los

Angeles Times, 13 August 1990, A, 1. 71. Los Angeles Shelter Partnership, Homeless Reporter (Los Angeles: Los An­

geles Shelter Partnership, 1991); Michael Cousineau, An Evaluation of the ic/go Cen- of the Homeless in Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Homeless Health Care Project, 1991). 72. U.S. General Accounting Office, Homeless Mentally III: Problems and Options

in Estimating Numbers and Trends (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1988).

sus

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I THE RISE OF HOMELESSNESS DURING THE 1980s 4 25

73. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, A Report on the 1988 National Survey of Shelters for the Homeless (Washington, D.C.: Division of Policy Stud­ ies, Office of Policy Development and Research, 1989), 18-19.

74. Los Angeles Shelter Partnership, Homeless Reporter. 75. Statement made during a survey of local responses to homelessness; for de­

tails, see Robin Law and Jennifer Wolch, “Homelessness and the Cities: Local Gov­ ernment Policies and Practices in Southern California,” Working Paper no. 44, Los Angeles Homelessness Project, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, ms-

•i'

76. County wide Task Force on the Homeless, Homelessness in Los Angeles County, (Los Angeles: Community and Senior Citizens Services Department, County of Los Angeles, 1985).

77. City of Los Angeles, Homeless Policy for the City of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: City of Los Angeles, 1987).

78. City of Los Angeles, 15-Point Homeless Action Plan (Los Angeles: City of Los Angeles, 1987), 2.

79. Santa Monica Task Force on Homelessness, A Call to Action (Santa Monica: City of Santa Monica, 1991).

80. Janet Clayton, “City Studies Condition at Shelter Site for Homeless,” Los Angeles Times, 5 May 1985, III, 1.

81. Frederick Muir, “Homeless Moved by Chits, Arrest Threat,” Los Angeles Times, 7 July 1988, II, 1.

82. Louis Sahagun, “Homeless Encampment in Alley Bulldozed,” Los Angeles Times, 13 September 1991, B, 3.

83. Frederick Muir, “41 Homeless File Claim over Seized Belongings,” Los An­ geles Times, 28 June 1988, II, 1.

84. Frederick Muir, “Police Try to Confine Skid Row Homeless to Areas by Mis­ sions,” Los Angeles Times, 10 February 1989, I, 1.

85. Hamilton, Rabinovitz, Alschuler, Inc., Confronting Homelessness: What Should Be Done? (Los Angeles: Greater Los Angeles Partnership for the Homeless, 1988).

86. David Ferrell, “Council Oks $1.5 Million Allocation to Purchase 102 Trail­ ers to House Homeless,” Los Angeles Times, 29 September 1987, I, 28.

87. City of Los Angeles, /5-Point Homeless Action Plan; Hamilton, Rabinovitz and Alschuler, Inc., Confronting Homelessness.

88. Community Redevelopment Agency Housing Committee, Central City East, Central Business District Redevelopment Project, Briefing Report (Los Angeles: Commu­ nity Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, 1991)-

89. The per capita estimate spending for Los Angeles includes all city spending, plus Community Redevelopment Agency spending for Skid Row. It does not include any agency spending in other areas, such as Hollywood; however, such expenditures are minor in comparison with downtown spending.

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