Shut Up! Opposing Viewpoints Not Wanted

Homelessness cannot be fixed until policies change.

By TIM CAMPBELL

In early July, a member of the Venice Neighborhood Council notified me I was invited to speak at its upcoming meeting about recent developments in LA’s homelessness environment.  About a week later, I was informed I’d been bumped to the August meeting due to reorganization within the Council.  I was scheduled for the August 19 meeting.  The day before the meeting, I found I’d been disinvited.

Officially, the reason was that my appearance was referred to the NC’s Homelessness Committee for “approval” at a date uncertain. As a former bureaucrat, I understand the language of avoidance.  The referral to committee was a polite way of telling me I will not be speaking in public before the Council.

We can only guess the reasons I was disinvited, but a casual review of the Venice Council’s membership gives us a few clues.  Some members are closely aligned with advocacy groups like Knock L.A., and the large nonprofits that have benefited from the current homeless system.  As I have said in several CityWatch and Westside Current columns, advocates rely on controlling the narrative about homelessness to maintain their grip on billions in taxpayer revenue.

You see it in the membership of LAHSA’s Board of Commissioners, which is well-supplied with Housing First champions and developers, but has no medical professional specializing in mental health or addiction treatment. As I wrote last April, you can see it in the policy group that will control funding for Measure A, which consists almost exclusively of proponents of the status quo.  You can see it at City Council meetings where advocates accuse members and others with whom they disagree of hating the homeless and criminalizing poverty.

But controlling the narrative can be burdensome.  You must constantly scan the political horizon for any signs of disagreement, and act quickly to quash them.  Even someone like me, who writes an occasional column for a relatively small news site like CityWatch, must be prevented from being heard.

It also means projects that align with advocates’ worldview must be pushed through regardless of opposition, even if that means making back room deals, as described in a recent Current article on the opaque approval process for a new shelter in West LA. In public, advocates brag about the moral and economic superiority of their ideas, but they often resort to behind the scenes deals to pass their programs.

Perhaps it is no coincidence the Sawtelle Neighborhood Council ignored requests from the community surrounding the West LA shelter for security and behavioral requirements at the West LA shelter at the urging of leaders from The People Concern, a large nonprofit that, according to its tax records, has seen its revenues increase by 87 percent, its assets increase by 97 percent, and its CEO compensation increase by 34 percent since 2019. (People Concern also received FireAid funds.) Substantial financial resources like that must be protected.

Control also creates the fear of losing command of even the smallest part of the narrative.  That fear permeates LA’s homelessness system. As I wrote in a previous Westside Current column, the fear of admitting failure has driven the City to spend nearly $2 million on high-priced legal talent to appeal a federal judge’s order to appoint a monitor over the city’s homelessness data collection.

It is the fear that prevents allowing any debate outside of advocate-approved subjects.  Homelessness must always be exclusively about housing, with discussions about untreated mental illness and substance abuse sidelined as peripheral issues.  When an assessment showed billions spent without tangible benefits, Mayor Bass flippantly dismissed it as too focused on “administration” even though the team from Alvarez & Marsal clearly described the human costs of the City’s failures.

But fear comes at a cost.  One of the subjects I was going to mention during the VNC meeting was the approach suggested by Ronson Chu, manager of homelessness programs for the South Bay Cities Council of Governments (SBCCOG).  The SBCCOG made the news earlier this year by achieving “functional zero” homelessness.

Mr. Chu said the agency uses a variety of programs to individualize solutions for its homeless clients.  When I asked Mr. Chu if his approach could be scaled up for the City of Los Angeles, he said it could be if the Neighborhood Councils were empowered to tailor city programs to their areas.  I was looking forward to the chance to bring that message directly to a neighborhood council, but the fear of having an open discussion of any subject not pre-approved by advocates squandered that opportunity.

My experience with the Venice Neighborhood Council, while annoying, was not a major issue.  However, it is an example, in microcosm, of the larger problem with Los Angeles’ homelessness programs: as long advocates support an extremely limited range of solutions, meant primarily to benefit them and their agenda, the crisis will never be solved.

(Tim Campbell is a resident of Westchester who spent a career in the public service and managed a municipal performance audit program.  He focuses on outcomes instead of process.)