Gimme Shelter: Finding Homes for the Lost 60,000

By MARYAM ZAR | Special to the Palisadian-Post

The statistics are out and homelessness is on the rise—more than 20 percent across the city of Los Angeles and slightly more across LA County.

Even across our council district, people cannot provide a roof over their heads, and while agencies scramble to come up with formulae that might lead to more affordable housing, homeless individuals continue to face job loss, eviction, unexpected life events and even mental breakdown that land them on our city streets.

At nearly 60,000, the county’s homeless population faces a plethora of challenges that are addressed in various policy plans aimed at services and housing, but rarely a focus on jobs and real-world salaries that can help people survive.

Right here close to home, a young woman who recently lost her mother is struggling to raise her niece, left behind by a brother that died not long before her mother, and a boyfriend that wants her out of his apartment. She works, full time. But if she can’t find additional support, fast, she’ll be on the street.

We talk about wrap-around services and long-term affordable housing for chronically homeless people. But we rarely talk about preventing homelessness. The people who experience short bouts of homelessness are termed “situationally homeless.”

Somehow, they are deemed less urgent. No one stops to consider that if modest resources could support these people to find jobs and a serious policy put in place to secure a stable roof over their head without the threat of greedy slum lords hiking rent or exploiting the meek, it would save us millions down the line. Years from now, this same person wouldn’t be chronically homeless and mentally battered in need of wrap-around services to treat addiction, mental health and substance abuse as a method of survival and coping.

A local homeless man who was able to secure work with the help of this community has gone on to rent himself a granny flat, save up some money and now even helps other homeless people when they are in dire straits.

What helped him turn the corner? A job. Real work, that could pay rent and buy food. Another local mom was a housekeeper until the family moved. With two boys and no work, she relies on county handouts as long as they last, hoping for a new job, with decent pay and hours that she can manage as a single mom.

These are realities out there. These are real people struggling against the odds to keep their head above water and survive to see another day, another month, another year, and hope things get better. Why don’t we invest in them?

Let’s ask our policy makers to develop a two-pronged approach of job creation and responsible landlord-tenant laws as a remedy to homelessness and a path to prevention. It’s not just what we do after people have lost everything; it’s what we do before they lose it all that can stem the rise in homelessness.

Maryam Zar, chair of the Pacific Palisades Community Council, was a co-founder of the Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness.