The state has made significant progress in recent years in investing in housing, he noted, but the benefits can sometimes take more than a decade to materialize. It’s a slow process,” said Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project. “One of the challenges of housing policy is that it’s like turning around a giant ship. Responding to the crisis, California is pouring billions of dollars into housing and related services, but the success of new programs meant to expand affordable housing and emergency shelter has been mixed. UCLA research on the residents of one LA encampment found that people cited a range of factors that led them to become unhoused, including eviction, job loss, domestic violence, former incarceration, family conflict and low wages in gig economy jobs. In recent years, income inequality has only worsened. More than 1.5 million renters spend half of their earnings on rent, leaving them potentially one medical emergency or crisis away from homelessness. Californians spend significantly more of their income on housing compared with the rest of the nation. The crisis has grown since: “We’ve become so disconnected as a society, so cold to the issue that people are OK with stepping over someone who is passed out on the floor.” A $14bn investment – and a crackdown on campingĬalifornia’s catastrophe stems in part from a longstanding, statewide housing affordability crisis. As a kid, she would pass by Skid Row and struggle to understand why so many people were forced to live outside, she said. “It’s just not acceptable,” said Wendy Carrillo, a state assemblymember who represents parts of LA and chairs a budget committee on homelessness. Bar chart showing the increase in LA county unhoused deaths from 2015 to 2021.ĭata analyses have revealed other disturbing trends: one UCLA study estimated that at least 269,000 students from kindergarten to grade 12 in the state were experiencing homelessness before the pandemic in LA county, Black residents were four times as likely to be unhoused and also in LA, there was a 20% jump in the number of unhoused seniors, with nearly 5,000 elderly people living outside before Covid arrived. While homelessness remains concentrated in major metro areas like Los Angeles, San Jose, the San Francisco Bay area and San Diego, communities from the north to the Mexico border are facing their own emergencies.ĭeaths of unhoused people in LA county up 160% since 2015. In a new series that will be published over the next several months, Guardian US is examining California’s homelessness crisis across the state. There are elderly and the infirm on the streets … It’s a dark time right now, and unhoused residents are very afraid.” ‘Unacceptable’ numbers “There are families with children living in automobiles. “We have failed in so many respects,” said Theo Henderson, a Los Angeles advocate for the unhoused, who was himself living outside until recently. Some unhoused people and civil rights activists warn that those escalating efforts to force people off the streets are only further hurting the most vulnerable. LA and Oakland passed laws meant to prohibit camping in certain zones San Francisco’s mayor has pushed for a police crackdown on unhoused people using drugs in the Tenderloin neighborhood Fresno adopted a law to fine people up to $250 for entering certain restricted areas and Modesto, Bakersfield and Riverside are pushing to expand the number of park rangers in an effort to enforce anti-camping rules and related restrictions. Out of the 20 largest cities in California, the majority have either passed or proposed new laws banning camping in certain places or have ramped up encampment sweeps. In response, governments across the state are increasingly cracking down on people sleeping outside. In a new series, the Guardian’s west coast team reports from across the state, exploring what it would take to address a seemingly intractable problem The pandemic brought money, political will and public support to tackle California’s longstanding homelessness crisis. Unhoused and unequal: a California crisis.
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