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Sheriff Baca Hunts Solution To Hidden Homeless Dilemma

Len Ly |
April 6, 2009 | 10:28 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is a longtime advocate for homeless outreach efforts. Photo by Neon Tommy/Len Ly
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is a longtime advocate for homeless outreach efforts. Photo by Neon Tommy/Len Ly
The thousands of homeless residents who call downtown Los Angeles' Skid Row home are a constant reminder of America's homeless problem. Most of the county's 80,000 homeless live beyond the Skid Row enclaves, however. Longtime homeless outreach advocate Sheriff Lee Baca sat down to discuss the county's homeless population beyond Skid Row and his plans to solve the problem.

How big is the homeless population in Los Angeles County outside of Skid Row?
The homeless population in Los Angeles County is much greater than what is happening in Skid Row.  Skid Row is estimated to be around 2,000 or 3,000 people, and the entire Los Angeles County has over 80,000 homeless people. So, I would say Skid Row is a fraction but a concentrated colony of homeless people. 
What types of homeless colonies are found?
Well, there are numerous colonies all over Los Angeles County. You can most likely find them in inaccessible places of the freeways, which are on-ramps and off-ramps where there is a circular road that can offer a roofing capability for bad weather. You can find them mixed in with the vegetation that is planted in the on-ramps and off-ramps, where there's easy access from the sidewalks to the area where the off-ramps are located. We've also found them in riverbeds and places where there's a scarcity of what you call general pedestrian population.  The key to the whole point is that people are very creative when they're homeless and they'll find shelter somewhere.
There are 80,000-plus people total found outside Skid Row in L.A. County. But how many individual encampments have you found total?
I don't really know. But I would suffice to say that there are over 100 or more, because there was a statistic that I saw recently that said close to 6,000 people were living in colonies that we were able to discover and deal with in an appropriate way. The question is, 'how many more are there,' and I really don't know.
You didn't record the specific populations, but are there concentrated areas throughout the county?
We all know that Santa Monica has been a periodical safe haven for homeless people. Certainly now Los Angeles is a safe haven. There are parts of Long Beach that are a safe haven, and services are there, and Pasadena certainly has a homeless population. But the key is, it's a mobile population for the most part. There are people who are moving around. There are also people who are fixtures who are lone rangers. They won't be in colonies. But they will sleep in doorways, they'll sleep in alleys, they'll sleep where they can in a way to accommodate their need. But the complexity of how to manage the homeless is still yet to be found for the main population. We can find it for the people who are more repeatedly staying in one spot, but we really don't know what we are doing when it comes to those who are transient.
What is the current demographic of homeless in Los Angeles?
Sadly, a huge amount are African American--
A huge or a majority?
A huge! I don't know. It could be a majority. It might be as much as 50 or 60 percent. But bear in mind--It's not how many that matters. And it's not even to the extent that you got one group versus another group; one race versus another race. That's not the issue. The issue is that there are too many homeless people. 
There were reports that the number of nonviolent deaths on Skid Row was down 36 percent since 2005 because of the Los Angeles Police Department's Safer City Initiative. However, critics say that if Skid Row is getting better, it's getting better because a lot of homeless people from Skid Row are going elsewhere. What do you think?
Well I think the policies of the city have been rather effective. There's been an intense amount of policing action regarding homeless people. Once it's determined that that is not a comfortable place to live, people move on and yet the problem still isn't being solved. You can disappear the problem and that's part of the reason for you seeing the trend. 
But that doesn't eliminate homelessness. The economic reality of why people are homeless, as well as the mental health reality, and the substance abuse reality of homelessness--those are the three cornerstones--that's why people are homeless, and unless you address it, no amount of police work is going to change it.
These populations, there is a separate crime world?
There are a lot of people who are victims of crime that are homeless and often they won't report the fact that they are victims of crimes. 
Some involve drugs. Some involve small crimes. Some are fugitives from the state prison, from the county jails and local jails, other units, of course the mentally ill and then the drug addicts. They run the gamut, and those who are just down on luck. They are a lot of people who are just down on luck and they're living inside their cars.
What about the costs for clean-up and outreach operations?
Well I think it's costly to clean up homeless colonies and camps under freeways and wherever they might be. You want to move all that trash out of there and secure the area so it doesn't repopulate. But, like anything, everything worth doing costs something and I think our strategy has to be comprehensive.  
The constant variable is not the homeless people. That's a fixed variable. The constant variable is the continual disorganization of all of the resources that could be used.
That's where I've asked that they organize everybody--that they use an automated system where we can track some of our homeless folks so that if they enter one shelter or another shelter, they could be on a system where we don't have to repeat the records of the individual. A lot of their treatment capabilities are already recorded in a variety of sources, including the county jail. I think the law should allow us to share the information so we can do a better job in evaluating and treating homeless people.
How should you deal with the homeless people who don't want to be helped?
The only homeless people who don't want to be helped are those that are severely mentally ill. They have a psychotic or a schizophrenic problem, and those folks tend to be very far out there. Ultimately they end up in the county jail, which is not the right place to be. 
But you shouldn't give up on them and say, "Well wander around until you get killed by somebody else and then you'll be another statistic of another homeless person dying." 
What is the estimate of the mentally ill transient population?
It's usually a third that are mentally ill. A third are drug-addicted. And then a third is a whole lot of categories.
Do you think homeless people have public responsibilities even though they live on the streets?
I think homeless people have the responsibility to do the best they can. I see them living from day to day. Some trying to do some improvement areas but there are some that are smarter than others, and some who have skills, and there are some who can't just manage anything. So it's not fair to just put everybody in one category that somehow everybody has responsibilities. 
That's their responsibility--to find the hope. But it's hard to find hope when people keep on looking at you like you're not worth talking to; when people say, "Don't give him money, they'll just spend it on drugs," or "Don't give him anything."
With the weak economy, can the public afford to dedicate this much money to solving the homeless problem?
Well I don't that we can afford not to try to help and solve the homeless problem even though the economy is suffering right now. It's amazing how we can solve bankers' problems and everyone else's problems but at the same time we've never been able to solve the homeless problem. And I guess it's because in America, the freedoms that we have are too great. You're free to be homeless if that's what you choose to be. The sad part is that most homeless people don't really choose to be homeless. They're homeless because they don't have the economic independence that most of us do.
People who are not concerned about the homeless should pause a moment and concentrate on what the true responsibility of all Americans is. And that is we are a charitable country, we are the most charitable nation in the world. We can do better if we have a willingness to help our own, and our homeless society is an American society. 
What is the new school way to fight the homeless problem?
The new school is intervention. The new school is outreach. The new school is building trust. The new school for policing is to have answers to the problems and to treat the individual as a human being, as a holistic human being, someone who has value. And then from that value of that person, you can get them get to the proper placement one at a time. 
What is the success rate for the homeless person once you find the individual?
The success rate as to how you treat the homeless depends on what you're doing to treat the homeless. The most important thing is to have good providers, like the ones I mentioned. They're very ,very good with what they do and if you go down to for example, the Midnight Mission. They have a system where you move up in responsibility. Asking someone who is homeless to take responsibility is something that I see it as a very, very, I see it as incomplete commentary. What you do is you teach them how to accept responsibility. You got to reinvent the person's independence.
What is the future of L.A. County's initiative to solve the homeless problem?
The future of L.A. County's initiative to solve the homeless problem is a very good future because we're doing comprehensive strategizing and we got a system that is tried and proven. That if you take the longest homeless people who have been out there on the streets and you put them in proper shelter care, somehow it translates itself into a more cooperative process with all the players. Whether it's the police, whether it's the non-profits, whether it's the providers. So this First 50 concept is a very proven concept in terms of how it can help eliminate homelessness and then lift the hopes of people who are ready to be helped. 
I've met with the Apartment Owners Association here locally, and I've sought that we'll let go for some rent subsidies and only one per building. There's thousands and thousands of apartment units throughout Los Angeles County. But you don't want to colonize homeless people in low income housing in the context of thinking that packing a lot of homeless people in one low income housing community is the answer. What you really want is to spread them around to normal kinds of housing but give the apartment owner a higher capacity to make their profit because you want that unit that they're managing and owning to not become a homeless center. That it becomes a normal place where all people can live, including a homeless person. That's my belief is to the next step. And I think there's some receptivity there.

Reach reporter Len Ly, here.


 

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