Letters to the Editor: Is Rick Caruso’s ‘short-term’ homelessness plan what L.A. needs?
Is Rick Caruso’s’short-term’ homelessness plan what L.A. needs?
I wrote back then, when the idea of creating a program to house homeless people as well as the homeless themselves was first being discussed, the idea for a “shelter by the sea,” or “a sea-side hotel.”
This has since been refined and put into action. And it is working. There are now over 20 shelters in California, New York, Washington and British Columb. And today they are all housing the most vulnerable among our society.
This past week, the LA Times took the time to praise those shelter workers. And yet, to my knowledge, no L.A. shelter has been named as one of the top 50 shelters in the U.S. – and that is a serious omission.
But I should clarify that I did not write those laudatory articles. I did it for my fellow citizens. It is not the job of city officials to build a permanent home for homeless people. What they should do is to provide them temporary housing in a manner that the community can embrace.
We have so many options in the city. And that is why my organization, Homelessness Solutions, has spent the last 20 years advocating for a permanent, permanent housing program, modeled after L.A.’s former and current homeless “cluster” system.
That is why we worked for the last 15 years to pass Proposition H (the city’s 2008 Homeless Initiative) which created a permanent housing plan. We created our permanent housing plan to help Los Angeles end the cycle of homelessness.
And we know that this problem is not going to go away any time soon.
In the meantime, Los Angeles will need all the housing and services it can get. The city needs “short-term” housing. That is what