Los Angeles, it is often observed, is a city of contrasts. A place famed for its celebrities and its street gangs, and where sunny days turn to neo-noir nights. On the streets near USC, you can find one of the most striking examples. Just a couple of blocks from the Romanesque Revival architecture and manicured lawns of campus lie tarpaulin tents pitched on concrete, ramshackle shelters to some of LA’s burgeoning population of rough sleepers.
Many students and locals are troubled by the conditions in which so many people are living but have little faith in the city authorities to address the issue. There are also safety concerns. Some homeless people, often with mental health or substance abuse problems, can behave unpredictably or violently. Several female friends of mine will not walk outside of campus at night, for fear of being accosted.
LA’s homelessness crisis was the main topic of debate between Rick Caruso and Karen Bass in the LA mayoral race last November. As it should been: LA has 518.9 homeless people per 100,000 of population, roughly three times the national rate and highest of any major city in the nation. Moreover, the problem can be traced directly to failures in City Hall and Sacramento.
There are three ways in which City Hall orthodoxies have contributed to the current crisis. First, rent controls and NIMBY zoning restrictions have exacerbated the lack of affordable rental housing. These measures make it significantly harder for those trying to rent a home, by restricting the supply of new homes being built and reducing the turnover of rental properties. Rent controls are great – if you already have a lease and don’t mind staying put. But they are disastrous for those needing a rental property, as they reduce the incentive for current tenants to downsize or move property, even if they would otherwise like to.
Second, high taxes and excessive regulation, including heavy-handed COVID restrictions, have destroyed jobs and hurt economic growth. In September, LA County’s unemployment rate was over a third more than the national rate (5.1% vs. 3.8%). Economic Roundtable, a non-partisan group that has studied homelessness in LA, estimates that homeless adults are 40% more likely to be out of the labor force than their non-homeless counterparts, and those who have work are concentrated in the lowest paying occupations.
Donald Trump was an extremely flawed president, but it is undeniable that his administration created record job growth, with the primary beneficiaries being the low paid. Driven by tax reform, between 2017 and 2019 the prime-age labor force grew by 2.1 million, and the real wage growth for the bottom 10% of the income distribution rose at double the rate of the top 10%. By 2019, the eve of the pandemic, homelessness across America was falling.
Third, reforms to mental health laws have been stymied by misguided activists. The United States, in comparison with most other developed countries, makes it extremely difficult for doctors to commit people with severe and enduring mental illnesses to compulsory treatment. This is partly due to the strong emphasis on individual rights in America, but what good are civil liberties if you are too ill to exercise them meaningfully? As things stand many rough sleepers are, to use psychiatrist Donald A. Teffert’s phrase, “dying with their rights on.”
To give credit where it is due, Governor Gavin Newsom is now trying to make it easier to place the mentally ill homeless into conservatorships to ensure they get the treatment they need. In LA, however, there is no conservatorship program at all, and Karen Bass declined to endorse the creation of one during her mayoral campaign, possibly out of a fear of upsetting left-wing activists.
Homelessness has been an indictment of the City Hall establishment. Mayor Bass is nearing a year having been in office, and things have yet to change. It’s up to her, but don’t get your hopes up: she is steeped in LA politics, and part of the old guard on whose watch this crisis has happened.
