We see them everywhere we go. Cardboard homes under the 405 freeway, shopping carts filled to the brim with eclectic finds in parks, and sleeping bags on benches inches away from media conglomerate headquarters. With over 200,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone, the homeless crisis seems insurmountable.
However, such fixtures are not exclusive to Los Angeles. 30% of the homeless population in all of America, almost 200,000 people, live in California, according to the federal government’s 2022 “Point in Time” study. To make matters worse, extreme weather due to climate change has left about 230,000 people unsheltered, furthering the need for solutions. Despite the urgency of this situation, lawmakers remain divided on plans to help unsheltered individuals get off the streets as rising rent prices and Covid-related financial hardships only compound matters further.
Although homeless shelters seem like the most plausible solution, there are several issues with the homeless shelter model that governments have relied on to fix the homeless epidemic. Not only is there not enough room to accommodate the homeless populations in various cities, but oftentimes, these shelters lack the resources and security to help homeless people find long-term housing and resolve mental health concerns. With regards to Los Angeles, only 17,225 homeless individuals are living in a permanent shelter, according to a study by Quickhaven.
With the homeless crisis at its tipping point, California should take Finland as an example and implement their ideas to solve the homeless issue. Finland, which has one of the lowest homelessness rates in the world, ensures that unsheltered individuals are promptly placed in temporary housing and are provided with resources to help them get back on their feet. As a result, the country has decreased its homeless rate by 75% despite its growing population.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has already begun to employ this tactic through Inside Safe, her recently launched homelessness program that seeks to relocate the city’s estimated 40,000 homeless people into independent and temporary housing like motels.
Despite the nascent program’s apparent successes, having already moved around 21,000 people indoors and provided 5,000 of them with permanent housing, simply building more housing and utilizing spaces such as motels will not solve the homelessness crisis altogether, an idea emphasized by many of the activists and housing specialists working to resolve the crisis.
What Inside Safe and programs like it are ultimately doing is addressing the symptoms rather than the underlying disease. Homelessness arises through a multitude of intersectional social, medical forces, the primary two being rampant poverty and astronomical housing costs pricing an already vulnerable population out of the housing market entirely. Motels alone will not even begin to resolve either issue, and instead, we need to think bigger, enacting long-term solutions that get to the root of the problem.
To tackle poverty, we must increase the number of economic opportunities available to impoverished Angelenos while doing what we can to lower increasingly inflated costs of living. In order to increase job prospects (while ensuring that the wealth generated is concentrated in the communities that most need them), we should instate community development and investment programs by expanding public infrastructure, subsidizing locally-owned businesses, and introducing job placement and technical training programs. By expanding social welfare programs and relaxing the eligibility requirements for food assistance programs such as CalFresh, we can dramatically increase the purchasing power of people living in low-income neighborhoods, boosting consumption and growth for whole communities.
Furthermore, extending the accessibility of affordable housing is pivotal to provide assistance to individuals and families who may find themselves homeless due to the lack of affordable housing options. Allocating more funds for affordable housing units and expanding programs tailored towards helping impoverished tenants pay their rent are all feasible solutions to tackle the source of homelessness.
Rather than spending billions of dollars on short-term solutions such as booking motel rooms for homeless people for a few nights, politicians should implement more permanent solutions to address the root of the housing crisis in America on a larger magnitude. Ultimately, we cannot put the future of our communities and the welfare of citizens solely in the hands of lawmakers who continue to ignore an issue that can be seen on almost any street corner.
