LA Homeless Program Is Broken

(Los Angeles) Jeez! You give homeless people stuff and more homeless people show up. Imagine that.

From SacBee.com:

The agency that deals with Los Angeles County's homeless population must be overhauled or dismantled because it has failed to curb the problem, officials said.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said Friday that he will seek to "fundamentally reconfigure" the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Since the agency was created in 1993, the number of homeless in the county has jumped from 30,000 to 90,000, Yaroslavsky said.

It's worth noting that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) isn't directly involved with helping homeless people. It's function is to primarily coordinate the collection and distribution of resources. Typically, the LAHSA gives money to local do-gooder groups who provide actual day-to-day help for the homeless. In this capacity, the LAHSA has little control over the effectiveness of the help provided.

Also worth considering is the fact that estimates of homeless populations are notoriously unreliable for two basic reasons. One is that homeless people are transients. They arrive and depart with regularity. The best method of counting them is a running average based on daily or weekly counts. To my knowledge, no community nationwide has allocated money to count homeless people daily or weekly. Consequently, all estimates of homeless populations are just educated guesses at best.

Secondly, the do-gooder outfits receive funds based on the number of homeless. Therefore, it's to their financial benefit to have as many homeless as possible which, unfortunately, lends itself to having homeless helpers consistently over-estimating the actual population of indigents. This fact was dramatically demonstrated in March of 2004 when the city of Chicago conducted a census of homeless people. Contrary to the homeless advocates estimate of 80,000, the census counted only 958 vagrants in the city of Chicago. Now, even if the census can be criticized for undercounting the total, it's hard to imagine that over 79,000 people were missed.

In summary, once funds start being distributed to homeless helpers, the estimated number of homeless tends to increase. And, of course, when things are being given away, it's natural for more homeless to be attracted to the community.

So to be fair, there is no way for the LAHSA to decrease the number of homeless and the suggestion to dismantle the office should be implemented. If the city is serious about reducing the homeless population, policies would be established which make Los Angeles an unpleasant place for vagrants to live. Then, they'll go to San Francisco or Phoenix or Chicago. That's how to decrease the homeless problem in LA.