Homeless In Karen Bass’ Los Angeles

This week, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass celebrated her first year in office, and highlighted the “success” of her Inside Safe project. However, as the Globe and other outlets have pointed out, her program has been far from a success, with LA’s homeless problem growing even worse under her tenure. Homelessness has gone up 10% under her watch, with only 255 homeless people out of 46,000 getting permanent housing through a $67 million program. While 21,000 were housed in some way, shape, or form, almost all of these were temporary slots, with no statistics showing how many stayed in shelter long-term or went back on the streets.

To get a sense what life is like under Bass’ program, the Globe talked with several homeless people in LA on Friday.

“Nothing has changed,” said Malik Hayes, a homeless man who lives nearby the Skid Row area of the city, to the Globe. “I did get clean a few years ago when [former LA Mayor Eric Garcetti] was running things, but I got back on it no too long after. If I had some stability I don’t think I would have, but I did. And here is something you won’t hear from many of us: It was my fault. I’m an addict.

“But now we have this new Mayor, but nothing has changed. All except they keep pushing people to go into these shelters. That’s all they seem to care about. I want to get clean again and get my own place with a job. That isn’t too much to ask. I need help though. But a shelter bed isn’t my own place. A shelter bed is a long way where I can get work. A shelter bed is away from a place where I can get help with my addiction. These people don’t understand that.”

Another, Kyle Wright, has been in and out of homelessness since the mid 2010s.

“Please, God, do not say ‘Inside Safe’ to any of us ever again,” added Wright. “Those words make homeless people cringe.

“For a lot of homeless people like me, we go in and out of the system. Housing and costs are high. So we work up to get our own place, but then the rent goes up, or costs go up, and soon our job can’t cover it, so we’re back in our cars or couch surfing, or like where I am now, living in a tent. I want to get an RV, but those are expensive.

“The reason, the big reason, why I’m always close to getting back up is because I have that flexibility to move closer to where my job is and try to find a place around there. If you go in a shelter how they are right now, you don’t have much say. They just stick you somewhere. It really feels like they just want to stick you somewhere just so that they can say that is one less homeless person on the street. We feel like statistics to them, not people.

“This is why we hate Inside Safe. You have a better chance at recovering by not being in a shelter. We still need programs to help us out. CalFresh, rental assistance and all that. But we can do it. Shelters, you’re stuck. Some people have lost a lot more by taking shelter space, so don’t say Inside Safe around us.”

Inside Safe one year later

Others have similar feelings to Wright.

“Homelessness under Bass? Just as exhausting as ever,” said “Pauline” a transgender homeless woman who wished to remain anonymous. “The best way I can put it is, ok, like giving food to the homeless. All help is appreciated, but food is often the most useless thing for us to directly get from people. We have many ways of getting adequate food, and giving a sandwich or something else to us isn’t the greatest option. We can easily get it, we have no place to store it, and it often goes bad before we can eat it. And sometimes some sickos pee on it or put broken glass in it and see if we eat it when we are given it. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of people out there.

“Inside Safe is like that. For those who really need it, like when it gets cold or raining, its good to have. But we can often find better options ourselves. For many reasons, tents are often better than the shelters LA currently has. Honestly, a secured lot with port-a-potties would be much, much better than shelter space. But the city tries to force our hands too, like limiting public restroom times.

“I’m glad she is trying something, and I understand how tents and homeless encampments are not liked by many people, but Inside Safe is not the way to go. Plus, from some stories we have heard about those shelters, we have some alternate names like “Inside Unsafe” or “Inside Safe, Outside Safer”.

During the Skype interview, when asked if anyone had a positive experience with shelters in the past year, only one hand out of the 18 homeless people participating in the video went up.

“When it rained all those times earlier this year, I was glad to be inside,” said the anonymous homeless man. “But that was March or April right? I haven’t been back since. And they keep bugging me about going back too.”

Nearly the opposite ratio of hands went up when a subsequent question of if they had a negative experience went up.

“The shelter people were incredibly condescending, you never felt like a person to them, and they didn’t get it when you said you wanted some privacy there,” said Franklin, a homeless man.

Another, Pearl, added that “If you ever had that feeling after being evicted or another big sort of loss like that, that was the feeling on entering that shelter. Previously, it was just a sort of temporary thing and it was more on survival. But this year, in 2023, the feeling around it just changed. Before we were more grateful or relieved to get a bed for a night or two when we needed it and needed time to figure things out, like where to live. This year things have felt off. There is, I don’t know how to explain it, less humanity to it it seems.”

“It seems like you’re in a factory, just being processed,” interrupted Wright. “Before  we had at least some dignity going into a shelter. That we caught a bad break and that we could work ourselves back up. That feeling is gone now. Now there is a feeling that we can’t move up from these shelters.”

More on the one year anniversary of Bass’ homeless programs is likely to come out in the next few weeks.