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Hello, and thanks for joining us, for sustaining us here on KLCS Public Media.

I'm David Nazar.

In part one of our two part series, homeless in LA, we explained how there has no been a slight decrease in the LA homeless population.

This is according to the 2024 Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Survey, or Lahsa, as it's known.

However, most Los Angele residents and business owners, even some homeless experts, are questioning the loss of a survey, saying the study does not reflect an accurate portrayal of the homeless crisis all throughout L.A. County.

And they say this survey is misinformation, with tens of thousands of homeless people living on the streets.

And with all the encampment found everywhere from downtown Los Angeles to Mid Wilshire to West L.A., South L.A., the South Bay, the San Fernando Valley and beyond.

So now, in part two of this special report, we further our investigation.

Homeless in LA.

And joining me now to discuss all this is a great panel of experts.

Paul Webster is the executive director of the organization LA Alliance for Human Rights.

Paul has dedicated his career to helping underserved and vulnerable populations at the federal, state and local level to find solutions to this humanitarian crisis.

And Paul was a senior policy advisor on homelessness in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Also joining the panel is Daniel Conway.

Daniel is a vice president of government relations for the California Grocers Association.

He's based in Sacramento and has been involved in local and state politics for years.

Thank you both so much for being here.

You're welcome.

Thank you for having us.

I should let both of you know, I also invited several nonprofits who deal with the homeless and city officials to be part of this panel when they learned of this investigative nature of the report, they all seem to decline.

This interview panel.

I'm going to get to you in just a moment.

First, though, let me kind of set the stage here.

Obviously, homelessness i an extremely complicated crisis with many layers of challenges.

The homeless populatio is dealing with so many issues as both of, you know, mental illness, drug dependency, no money, no services.

Some living on the street are victims of domestic violence.

Others are victims of a bad economy.

Many are victims of the housing crisis.

Right.

The shocking home costs, the exorbitant rents, the lack of affordable housing, what have you.

Some living on the street are homeless veteran who bravely served our nation.

Some are their victims of their own circumstance.

Whatever the case may be, homeless people are suffering and they need help and panel to be fair.

Often the root cause, the root cause of homelessness, which I just mentioned, is not, I repeat, not the fault of city, county or state leaders.

And often they can get an unfair rap for that.

However, with all that said, what is in thei control is taking responsibility and taking accountability and taking the homeless population off the streets and getting them proper help.

Services, some type of housing, any type of housing.

So with that said, we have a lot to discuss.

Paul Webster with the Alliance for Human Rights, let's begin with you.

Take just a moment to explain what your organization is, and then talk about the Los Angeles housing Services Authority and their 2024 surveys.

You know, Lo has their new homeless numbers, which suggest there's a slight decrease in the homeless population.

So talk about the numbers, because to be fair, there should be good news.

However, most Angelenos say homelessness is the worst it's ever been in L.A. so again tell us about your organization, the survey, and in your opinion of the survey, Paul.

Sure.

Thank you.

David.

So the Los Angeles Alliance, L.A. Alliance for Human Rights is a grassroots organization of residents, business owners.

We even have people experiencin homelessness as a part of our, our network and our coalition.

We really started off in 2019 after, you know, regular people in Lo Angeles, people who are renting businesses, peopl who have apartments, people who, you know, drive to work every day.

Like everybody just felt completely ignored and, not heard when it cam to the quality of life issues, when it came to a lot of the challenges, in terms of their businesses and came to, you know, just just regular everyday activities that were impacted by the uncontrollabl homeless crisis in Los Angeles.

And so, after going to our city council members, after talking with the mayor, and getting no satisfaction, we filed a lawsui against the city and the county of Los Angeles to, compel them to provide places for people to go, to get off the street, to begin to treat people so that they could stay off the street because of their underlying challenges.

And third, to return publi spaces to their intended uses.

So they weren't overwhelmed by trash and tents and people living and things like that.

So we settled our lawsuit with the city in 2022.

We settled our lawsuit with the county in 2023, and now we're in a period where we're holding the city and the county accountable t the specific, concrete metrics that we achieved in our lawsuit, which include the city's commitment to increase the number of beds by over 12,000 beds, the county's commitment to increase the number of treatment beds by over 3500 beds, and the city's commitment to reduce the number of homeless encampments all throughout Los Angeles City by almost 10,000 homeless encampments.

So we feel like we've made a big impact.

Now we're following through to make sure the city and the county does its job.

Talk about the losses survey.

As you know, there's a slight decrease in those numbers.

We were out on Skid Row.

We were in West L.A. we were all over Midwest for downtown.

We've talked to so many folks who say that's misinformation, disinformation.

They're saying, no way.

That's not accurate.

Are those numbers, in your opinion, accurate?

What's your opinion of that?

Because really, there should be good news.

There is a decline in homelessness and we should be celebrating that.

But no one's believing it.

I hate to say so.

As somebody who used to work in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who requires communities to collect these estimates of how many people are actually living on the street and people who are experiencing homelessness.

I can tell you firsthand that this data is suspect.

It it's hard.

First of all, it's hard to to conduct these counts.

It's hard for the the volunteers who go out there to produce accurate numbers.

But I think some of the real challenges is how do local governments, tell the story that the billions and dollars that are going into helping people aren't having the impact that they're supposed to be?

And that's what I think we're seeing with this latest, point in time count.

By percentages.

Yes.

It look as if there's a slight decrease in the number of people who are experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles.

But when you look at the raw numbers, it's really only about a thousand people across the city.

Now, let's just understand the scale of this.

Los Angeles has over 70,000 people experiencing homelessness across the region.

And when we, you know, the idea of cheerin over a reduction of about a 1000 listen, that can be attributed to roundin errors, mathematical problems.

I mean, one of the things that that really needs to b talked about is that six people a day are dying on the streets of Los Angeles.

When you add that up, it's more than a thousand people a day, over the year.

And so this idea that somehow these programs are being effective and we're seeing kind of this first slight dip, I'm very skeptical of it.

I don't think it's representative of what's happening on the street with these, with these programs.

And that's why we're pushing the city and the county for better data transparency and better accountability with respect to the outcomes of their programs.

Daniel Conway with th California Grocers Association, take just a momen to talk about your organization.

And to my question, has the trajectory of the homeless crisis improved?

Are these numbers progress to you, or do you also question the validity of the survey?

Like Paul, like so many Angelina's are.

Well, thank you again, David, for having me.

You know, CGA has existed for over 125 years, is an association that represents both grocery retailers as well as suppliers.

And more importantly, you know, we are a voice for our customers and our employees as well.

And I think from that perspective, you know, we have certainly seen, the the tragic trajectory of homelessness here in California play out over the last decade or two.

And, you know, as you can recognize, grocery stores are a cornerstone of communities and of neighborhoods.

And, you know, the best thing that happen in our neighborhoods happen around, in and around grocery stores.

Right.

But so, so too, unfortunately, some of the worst things.

And I think what we've seen with homelessness, just with the proliferation of encampments around stores and really just with so many of the neediest people in our communities left to fend for themselves, what that can result in is, you know, people in crisis entering a grocery store and you know, in, in the course of, you know, dealing with an episode or something, you know, you can have acts of violence, you can have, you know, destruction of property.

You know, we've seen, stores get set on fire, things like that, unfortunately.

And so just the reality is, is that, you know, that the the challenges that we se in our communities, particularly as it relates to homelessness, don't stop at the walls of our stores.

Right.

And so for our organization, you know, this is something that we've heard repeatedly from our, our employees, from our customers.

They're just really looking for kind of a lifeline and a pathway forward.

And so I think to your question about, you know, losses, latest study and, the point in time count in general, you know, Paul alluded to this in his comments, but, you know, I have the opportunit to serve as the chief of staff to the mayor here in Sacramento about a decade ago.

And, you know, I've seen firsthand that, you know, the methodology, the point in time count is, is flawed at best, right?

You basically spend, you know, 2 or 3 nights, during a 365 day year, walking around with a clipboard and kind of looking at tents, looking at cars, and just making a guess as to how many people you think might be living there.

Right.

And so I just think that alone, and, you know, it's don by well-intentioned volunteers, right?

Who got in at best, a few hours of training, and then they take that data, they run it through an algorithm, and then they come out with the number.

And I just think we've seen time and time again that these numbers can kind of go all over the place, and that sometimes will be corrections after the fact and things like that.

And so I think to get to your question, you know, even while pointing to a modest, decrease in homelessness, I think for the most part, you're asking most people to to defy their senses, right, to defy the things that they're seeing in their communities, the things that they're seeing in the news and things like that.

And so I think you know, we've made progress.

I mean, I want to say that the conversation around homelessness really has shifted here in California, where I think people are still wanting to come from a place of compassion.

It's just getting harder and harder to do because frankly, a lot of promises have been made by a lot of elected officials and things have continued to get worse.

And so I think people are rightly skeptical about not just the study, but just kind of the state of homelessness in general in California.

And I think that's why, you know, the work of the Alliance and others has really done a lot to move the needle.

But I think there's still remains much more to be done, both at the local level as well as at the state level.

And I should also let our viewers know.

Again, I mentioned earlier in the broadcast this was not going to be just a two person panel.

I had offered an interview to many various city officials, nonprofits, what have you.

They all declined.

So I am appreciate the fact that both of you are here.

So with that said, Paul to the billion dollar question, it's really a two part question.

Why do you believe the homeless crisis is so out of control in Los Angeles?

And of course, the second part of that question, is there a solution, Paul?

And then back to Daniel.

Yeah.

What we've done at the L.A. Alliance is we've take a very active role in trying to understand what's going on with the programs, with the policies, with the effectiveness of all the money that Los Angeles has.

I mean, remember Los Angeles is taxed themselves.

The citizens of Los Angeles have gone above and beyond, in order to try to solve this, humanitarian crisis.

And from our analysis, as we look at some of the reports from the city, obviously the budgets an the performance of the county, what we're seeing is a lot of money that is not producing positive outcomes.

And so the question is part of the question is what's a positive outcome for us?

It's are we seeing fewer people suffering on the street, or are we seeing the same numbe of people or even more people?

And when we look at the way that these programs operate and the tremendou inefficiencies that happen when, nonprofit organizations receive government grants in terms of what it is that they're trying to do.

You know, we just we put out a report a little while ago that says is th is the juice worth the squeeze?

Do Los Angeles programs perform in terms of helping people experiencing homelessness become now no longer homeless.

And so we see that there' a tremendous efficiency issue.

We believe that the left hand doesn't really know what the right hand is doing in terms of coordinatin a lot of these services between government agencies, between nonprofit providers.

And there's just a real lac of kind of intensity to produce positive outcomes that result i not only people on the street, being helped being housed.

Dealing with their underlying issues, but also in terms of the impacts of the community.

Is quality of life in Los Angeles getting better or is it getting worse?

And so, you know, kind of like what we've been saying, people see with their eyes, they don't see fewer people on the streets.

They don't see, less suffering on the streets.

And they also see the impacts of homelessness, the trash, the fact that people have to walk out into the middle of the street in order to get around some of these encampments, the challenges when they're when they're dining in restaurants or going to a store, all these things are either staying the same or getting worse.

And I'm going to ask you to the second part of that question to answer the solution.

I should also say, and I think we're all going to agree, yes, this is a critical investigativ look at the homeless situation.

No one gets a pass.

But to be fair, there are many city and county leaders.

I do believe their heart is in the right place, right?

No one wants to see this suffering on the street.

I've seen people like supervisor Holly Mitchell.

I've seen Mayor Karen Bass with her Inside Safe program.

I've seen so many others really trying to fix the problem.

And it's just it is devastating.

So the heart is there.

Paul.

The question is, what's the solution?

Before I ask Daniel the same question?

Well, when we did what we did with the L.A. Alliance, when we, when we filed our lawsuit with the city in the against the city, in the county, we we proposed a model.

And the model is really, you know, best, the best analogy is kin of a three, three legged stool.

We've got to have places for people to go.

So that's really critical.

Whether it's housing, whether it's shelter, whether it's, you know, we we're really indifferent to what that actually looks like.

We just know that people can't do well on the street.

So there needs to be places for people to go.

And the second thing is, once they get off the street, they need to have the services and treatment to help them stay off the street.

We kno because we know that there are there are a number of studies.

There's a number of evidence that suggest that a high proportion of people who live on the street have serious health needs, whether they're substance use disorder needs, whether they're mental illness needs.

So not integrating that treatment and that kind of hel with the housing in the shelter is is a recipe for just a disaster and the kind of churn that we're seeing.

And the third part of that stool is really this idea that once people get off the street one people have offers to help.

There needs to be incentives to move them to making those positive decisions.

So we're very much in favo not of of pushing people away, but making sure that people understand that if there's an offer to help, there needs to be also a obligation to accept that help.

So the three legged stool is really places for people to go, services and treatment to meet them where they are an help them stay off the street.

And the third, for those people who just can't seem to, accept the housing and service to have some incentives to say, look, it's not a crime to be homeless but you can't be homeless here.

They need to be, they moved to be moved somewhere.

And hopefully that motivates a lot of people to accept the kind of services and offer that are being provided to them.

So, Daniel same question, in your opinion, why so many homeless and the certainly what's the solution?

I mean, I think, I think the why so many homeless is, is could be a topic for a dissertation, right?

I mean, candidly and to be fair to, you know our current elected officials, this is a crisis that's probabl 60 years in the making, right?

Going back to decisions that were made at the state and federal level in the 1960s, right to close institutions and things like that.

Right?

I mean, we all seen One Fle Over the Cuckoo's Nest, right?

I mean, there's this image of kind of what public care used to be like.

Right.

And how it wasn't.

And we can understand why there was a shift away from that.

Right.

But challenge was that there was never really a communit based model put in place to, to, to substitute for it.

Right.

And so what we saw over time was, when it comes to people who are unhoused and people who are dealing with mental health challenges and things like that, we basically just had here in Californi a series of bad defaults, right, where for a long time, you know, we had these public institutions like Napa One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and for a variety of reasons that didn't work for people.

Right.

And so as we shifted away from that model, our, our new default, frankly, became county jails, right.

And at one point, L.A. County Jail was the largest mental mental health institution in the country.

And there was recognition that that was both, not sustainable fiscally, but also, you know, really not the right place for people to be receiving treatment.

And, you know, under Governor Brown, we saw a shift away from that model.

And the challenge at that point became that our new default became ou sidewalks and our parks.

Right?

Because at every step of the way, what we've done is really failed to to find a scalable, workable solution to to people for peopl who really need help the most.

And I think, as Paul kind of alluded to, I think part of the challenge in this is that the way our system is currently constructed, we put the onus on unhoused individuals to kind of solve their own problems.

Right.

And that means, you know, having multiple forms of ID, dealing with multiple agencies, having to get paperwork approved, having to keep track of paperwork right, and having to get to appointments and things like that.

We set people up to fail.

And so we shouldn't be surprised when they fail.

And I think part of it, too, is if you're dealing with people who have mental and physical disabilities and ofte kind of a lack of agency, right.

And so it's a situation where you you might totally opt in for help.

You understand that, you know these services will benefit you, but all it takes is one bad da where you meet with, you, know, your social worker and say, you know what, I'm done.

I'm out.

And then you're back to the back of the line.

And I think it's those kind of, defaults and lack of failsafe that have really put people in this position.

And so I think for us, again this is 60 years in the making.

And so I think we do need to be cognizant of the fact that it's going to take a few years of real dedicated work to kind o get us to where we need to be.

But at the same time, and as Paul kind of nicely laid out, it is doable.

I mean, there are ways to, start to take this take this take on this challenge one step at a time.

And I think, again, what we've seen in LA has been promising.

We've seen other big city mayor like Todd Gloria in San Diego, London, Breed in San Francisco, Matt Mehan in San Jose.

They've all really stepped up and said, you know, we this is no longer sustainable for our communities, whether you're housed or unhoused.

And so I think the tide is really shifting.

And so I'm definitely optimistic from that perspective.

It's taken us a long way to get to this point.

But I'm optimisti that we're starting to see the shift in the right direction.

I have final question for both of you, and I want to give each of you about a minute, a minute and a half each to answer this question.

That's all we have left in the program, Paul.

Homelessness in California during the Governor Newsom administration has increased.

Let's be honest, honest.

Yet ironically, his homeless council kind of blamed local governments for failing to track billions of dollars spent on this crisis.

In fact, wasn't there some?

There was some federal data.

Recently I read California spent over 17 billion, I said $17 billion to fight homelessness.

In the last few years in the homeless population has gotten worse.

So what's going wrong here in terms of the financial accountability or lack thereof?

Paul.

Well, I over the last 10 to 12 years we've had and this is at the federal level, at the state level and at the local level at all levels of government.

We've seen more funding than ever before to address homeless people experiencing homelessness and the crisis that they're in.

At the same time, we've see more capacity than ever before.

What that means is more permanent supportiv housing, more interim housing.

We're navigation centers, more outreach workers, more mobile showers at every single level.

We've seen more capacity.

There's more things out ther to help people than ever before.

And unfortunately, according to the data, particularly in California particularly in our urban areas Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose, San Francisco, we're seeing more homeless than ever before.

So it's incumbent on our government leaders and the folks who, you know, are supposed to be watching the henhouse, so to speak.

It's incumbent on them to understand that these programs that are happening right now, whether they're programs from the federal government that come down because of funding ties and funding restrictions to the state and local level, whether it's policies at the state level that that kind of bias one way versus another way, or if it's just decision at the local level in terms of who they're funding, wha programs are actually doing good and why they're doing good, it's incumbent on every one o those, every one of those levels for people to sa this is a humanitarian crisis.

It's not just, you know, push around money to enrich, city budgets and county budgets.

This is money that needs to go to address the humanitarian crisis.

And there needs to b accountability for that money.

We need to know what is the best way to use a dollar that's going to help people get off the street.

And I got to tell you we've not seen that, it's great.

I applaud Governor Newsom fo basically taking a no excuses.

You've got every resource available to do this.

I applaud that.

At the same time I want to see even more scrutiny on the kind of money the kind of grants that set out and the kinds of programs that are there.

These are not small grants.

These are large grant that are going to programs year after year after year.

What results are they getting?

Why is it that we're seeing the why?

Why can't we connect the dot between a program and the larger estimate of how many peopl are experiencing homelessness?

We need to zoom in on that.

We need to be more innovative.

We need to think about integrating treatment with housing and shelter.

We need to really hold people accountable to do what they say they're doing and what we like to do it.

The L.A. Alliance is, you know, we say we sued the city and the county so that they would do their jobs.

So we need to force people, compel people to hold people accountable, provide transparency so more people can understand, are you doing your job?

Are things getting better?

Great.

If things aren't getting better, what do we have to change in order to make them better?

Daniel, we've got a minute remaining.

You get a final word about the accountability or lack thereof.

In this case.

Yeah.

Well, certainly, accountability has been a missing piece.

And, you know, not only have we seen, through some of the media coverage of this topic, but, you know, the state audito came out with a report earlier this year, really critiquing just the way that money has been used and just the lack of oversight that we've seen.

You know you asked about Governor Newsom, and, you know I want to acknowledge, you know, he said repeatedly that, you know, his administration has put more resources in just kind of more dedication in this topic than than any prior administration.

And and I think that's correct.

You know, and as a former big city mayor himself, I think he has an understanding of this issu that that other leaders don't.

And, you know, I look back to his state of the state speech in January of 2020, where he was completely focused on homelessness and ready to take it on.

And we all know what happened two months later.

Right.

And so there's definitely a part of me that thinks about what might have been, but as Paul kind of just referenced, you know, some of his recent statements just kind of talk about the, lack of progres and the lack of accountability and the lack of citizens sense of urgency, frankly, from by some local governments has really been encouraging.

I think the frankly, the resistance from the Board of Supervisors in Los Angeles and even Mayor Bass, I think has been interesting to kind of observe.

And as I look ahead to 2025, you know, I really do think these issues are only going to continue to be front of mind for voters as well as policymakers.

And I wouldn't be surprised to see efforts in the state capital to really answer the governor's call so that we can really have not only accountability, but more importantly, the results that everyone's looking for.

Thank you so much, Daniel Conway.

Thank you, Paul Webster, for a great interview.

Again, we're sorry our other scheduled guest declined this interview.

Unfortunately, the subject is serious.

I'm not going to present this homeless crisis without being critical in some respects to the powers that be.

And if that's too political for some, I get it.

No worries.

Thank you both.

Now, for more information about our program, just click on course and then click contact Us to send us your questions, your comments, even your story ideas so we can hear from you.

Or contact me at DavidNazarNews on X or jus go to DavidNazarNews on YouTube.

Contact me there.

You know I'll get back with you and be sure to catch our program here on PBS or catch us on the PBS app.

Thank you all so much for joining us.

I'm David Nazar.