Talking Back

For the past few years, officials with the City of Los Angeles have been talking about waging a war on homelessness -- while effectively waging war on the homeless themselves.

There is no real policy in Los Angeles to address the problem of homelessness, so we get treated to lots of press conferences, lots of lofty policy debates, and precious little action. Into that void, however, jump the forces of NIMBYism, which manage to convince politicians to take punitive actions against the homeless in the lull between the policy debates.

Well, today, some homeless advocates decided to talk back.

When Mayor Villariagosa and a couple councilmembers showed up on skid row to promote the latest phase of the Safer Cities Initiative -- which some homeless advocates claim locks scores of homeless people for frivolous violations -- a handful of volunteers at a local soup kitchen booed and heckled.

The video is at the LA Times local news blog.

The Times Dave Zahniser typically goes the extra mile for a more nuanced account.

The problem with LA's effort to clean up Skid Row is typical of how city government operates: officials proclaims the need for a multi-pronged solution to a complex problem -- and then inevitably deliver on only a fraction of the promise. When it comes to homelessness, they deliver on the crime crackdown, but fail to produce the affordable housing and social services. When it comes to gangs, there are injunctions and drug raids, but too few job training programs and even fewer jobs.