“There’s no doubt that in the short run, this will reduce the number of encampments on Skid Row and increase property values,” Blasi said. What was needed was long-term housing, not temporary shelters that “in many cases are inferior to encampments”, Blasi said. Gary Blasi, professor emeritus of law at University of California, Los Angeles, agreed that the judge’s order contained “a compelling description in all the ways that public policy has failed poor people and homeless people in particular”.īut Blasi said Carter’s order “is not well thought out” and invited confusion about what the judge meant by “shelter”. Now they have to make it right,” Conway said Tuesday.
It shows the culpability of the city and county of LA for decades. “Carter is able to put together a history of racist and discriminatory policies and connect them to the policy failures of today. “This order is a vote of no-confidence in the mayor, the city council and county officials,” said Daniel Conway, policy adviser for the alliance.Ĭonway said he was struck by Carter’s grand prose in the court filing, which quoted Abraham Lincoln and traced the history of homelessness back from slavery through decades of redlining, containment, eminent domain, exclusionary zoning and gentrification. It accuses the city and county of failing to comprehensively address the desperation that homeless people face – including hunger, crime, squalor and the coronavirus pandemic. The lawsuit was filed last year by a group of business owners, residents and community leaders called the LA Alliance for Human Rights. Some experts and activists fear the order could serve as ‘an excuse for police to clear people off sidewalks’. “That would be an unprecedented pace not just for Los Angeles but any place that I’ve ever seen with homelessness in America, ” he said. The mayor also raised doubt about the judge’s timeline under which the city and county would be required to provide shelter to every person on Skid Row by October. While he declined to comment on the judge’s intentions, Garcetti said: “Putting a billion dollars in escrow that doesn’t exist doesn’t seem possible,” emphasizing that it was up to city council to review and enact his proposal. He told reporters at city hall that he and the judge shared a sense of urgency, but the mayor warned that the city could not tolerate delays in the proposed record investment in housing, services and treatment for the homeless. Garcetti said he had been briefed on the lengthy ruling but had not yet read it. “We’re now evaluating our options, including the possibility of an appeal,” Miller said, adding that the county had spent millions on “proven strategies that have produced measurable results throughout the region, not just on Skid Row”. Skip Miller, an attorney representing LA county, said the judge’s order “goes well beyond” what the plaintiffs asked for in their preliminary injunction. While the homeless population was once largely confined to the Skid Row neighborhood in downtown, rows of tents, cardboard shelters, battered RVs and makeshift plywood structures are now familiar sights throughout the nation’s second-most populous city. Carter on Tuesday ordered “that $1bn, as represented by Mayor Garcetti, will be placed in escrow” with a spending plan “accounted for and reported to the Court within seven days”.Īs of January 2020, there were more than 66,400 homeless people in Los Angeles county, with 41,000 within LA city limits. That project has been slow to ramp up.Ĭarter’s filing was made a day after the Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, vowed to spend nearly $1bn in the coming year to get people off the streets. In addition, Carter mandated the city auditor examine all public money spent in recent years to combat homelessness, including funds from a 2016 bond measure approved by voters to create 10,000 housing units over a decade. “All of the rhetoric, promises, plans, and budgeting cannot obscure the shameful reality of this crisis – that year after year, there are more homeless Angelenos, and year after year, more homeless Angelenos die on the streets,” Carter wrote in granting a preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiffs last week.Ĭarter ordered the city and county to find shelter for all women and children on Skid Row within 90 days, and every homeless person in the downtown area must have a place to stay by mid-October.
In a fiery 110-page order, Judge David O Carter on Tuesday condemned Los Angeles officials’ inability to address the rise in homelessness in the region. A federal judge overseeing a sweeping lawsuit about homelessness in Los Angeles ordered the city and county to find shelter for all unhoused residents of Skid Row within 180 days.
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