End Homelessness

How much would it cost to end homelessness in the United States? About as much as we spend on Christmas decorations every year. According to the latest report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the national homeless population held pretty much steady from 2011 to 2012, which is good or bad, depending on how you look at it. What's needed to turn things around, says Mark Johnston, acting assistant housing secretary for community...

Lourdes was 69 years old when I first met her in 2012. She was living next to a bus stop on a busy four-lane street in front of a Silver Lake supermarket. Lourdes had claimed the spot three years earlier, after she was rousted from her encampment in Griffith Park. Before that, she'd lived in her 1973 Toyota, but it was eventually impounded because of overdue parking tickets. Lourdes was one of the folks we call "chronically homeless. " She'd been surviving on the city's margins for 20 years after losing her low-cost housing because of gentrification.

As a person who has been involved in working with homeless youth and families for over 12 years, I want to respond to "Recovery Does Little to Help L.A. Homeless" (May 19). Homelessness does not just rest in the hands of Mayor Richard Riordan. We all have to take responsibility. Only when former homeless people, community-based organizations, homeless agencies and advocates, business leaders, public officials and residents invest in meaningful dialogue to end homelessness will there be change.

At a time when many residents are grappling with foreclosures and rising rental costs have far outpaced growth in their incomes, the three top Los Angeles mayoral candidates promised Friday to make housing policy a central focus for their administrations. City Councilman Eric Garcetti renewed his ambitious pledge to end homelessness in Los Angeles, rather than "manage it. " Councilwoman Jan Perry said she would try to replicate citywide her achievements getting affordable housing units built in the disparate communities of downtown and South L.A. And City Controller Wendy Greuel argued that her experience as a former federal housing administrator, as well as an aide to former Mayor Tom Bradley on housing and homelessness issues, would help her expand L.A.'s share of housing funding to reach a broader spectrum of city residents.

At a time when many residents are grappling with foreclosures and rising rental costs have far outpaced growth in their incomes, the three top Los Angeles mayoral candidates promised Friday to make housing policy a central focus for their administrations. City Councilman Eric Garcetti renewed his ambitious pledge to end homelessness in Los Angeles, rather than "manage it. " Councilwoman Jan Perry said she would try to replicate citywide her achievements getting affordable housing units built in the disparate communities of downtown and South L.A. And City Controller Wendy Greuel argued that her experience as a former federal housing administrator, as well as an aide to former Mayor Tom Bradley on housing and homelessness issues, would help her expand L.A.'s share of housing funding to reach a broader spectrum of city residents.

While Molina is portrayed as being motivated by the "politics of anger," it is the homeless and destitute and those concerned with the growing number of homeless people on our streets who should be angry with her recent vote to cuit general relief from $341 to $293 a month. About her angry style, Molina comments, "I didn't wake up like this; I became this way because of politics." To paraphrase Molina, the homeless didn't wake up homeless, they continue to have fewer resources because of politics.

Re "Cost of homeless project questioned," May 27 Though concerns about cost are justified, there is data from cities across the country showing that housing chronically homeless people can be cost-effective, saving millions of dollars in public money. As the debate continues on the best way to reduce, prevent and end homelessness in Los Angeles, I sincerely urge building on the successful Project 50. Nan Roman Washington The writer is president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

To many people, the world today is upside down. Look at the problem of homelessness, for example. We are the richest and most powerful nation in the world, and yet there are still thousands and thousands of people who sleep on our streets each night. It doesn't make sense; it is an upside-down reality. But maybe we need to look at homelessness with an upside-down perspective, with an absurd logic that just might illuminate the immensity of this crisis and move us into positive action.

The National Coalition for the Homeless unfairly ranked Los Angeles as the "fourth-meanest city" for the homeless (Aug. 6). The past year has, in fact, been a historic watershed for homeless services in Los Angeles. Ten elected officials have formally launched a 10-year plan to end homelessness. Local discretionary funding for homeless services almost doubled. City officials expanded a temporary winter program to a year-round emergency program, adding 860 much-needed beds throughout the city.

Your editorial ("Shelter Imperative," Aug. 25) was underscored in the article by Penelope McMillan on the eviction of several disabled people, with very little notice and no relocation payments (Metro, Aug. 29). Though these tragedies must certainly be rectified, the crucial point of the article was that about 200 single-room-occupancy hotels have been torn down over the last 10 years, leaving only 273 remaining. This has resulted in a situation repeated throughout the nation, that of homelessness.

How much would it cost to end homelessness in the United States? About as much as we spend on Christmas decorations every year. According to the latest report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the national homeless population held pretty much steady from 2011 to 2012, which is good or bad, depending on how you look at it. What's needed to turn things around, says Mark Johnston, acting assistant housing secretary for community...

WASHINGTON - Unclaimed clothing forgotten by harried passengers at airport security checkpoints would be distributed to needy veterans under a House-approved bill. The Clothe a Homeless Hero Act now goes to the Senate. “As cold weather approaches across much of the country, this legislation will be a greatly needed help for homeless veterans while we work to end homelessness for good," Rep. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.), the bill's chief sponsor, said Tuesday. The Transportation Security Administration collects from 500 to 1,000 garments a day, according to Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis (R-Fla.)

Every year around now, I get requests from people who want a recommendation on where to volunteer at a soup kitchen, emergency shelter or housing facility on Thanksgiving or Christmas. I appreciate these good intentions, and so will the people who benefit. But there are 363 days in the year besides Thanksgiving and Christmas, which happen to be the only two days when there's plenty of extra help. If you're interested, I've got a suggestion on how you can make a more meaningful contribution to thousands of desperately needy people in what is often referred to as the homeless capital of the United States.

The crowd was sparse at a recent candidates forum, and only half of those running in Tuesday's special election to fill a South Bay state Senate seat showed up. But that didn't seem to bother political hopeful Mark Lipman, who enthusiastically outlined his plan for getting the state out of its budget deficit. "I'm a veteran and I've been homeless," Lipman, who is from Los Angeles, told the audience at Century Villages, a housing complex in Long Beach whose residents include formerly homeless families and veterans.

Dozens of elected officials, law enforcement representatives, social service and housing providers, philanthropists and community leaders pledged support Wednesday for a plan that aims to get all homeless veterans and the chronically homeless off the streets of Los Angeles County within five years. The ambitious plan, released by a group of business leaders Nov. 9, is the latest of numerous initiatives to reduce the county's homeless population, which numbers more than 48,000 on any given day. It proposes reallocating about $230 million in existing resources each year to pay for a rapid increase in permanent supportive housing, which includes counseling and treatment, for the most hard-core street dwellers.

Out near LAX, a dozen military veterans man a war room, strategizing day and night. Their mission is to bring other vets in off the ledge, to gather them up from the streets and shake the dust off them. With a budget of just half a million dollars a year, the team of "wild cowboys" is intent on saving lives, says the general of the nonprofit National Veterans Foundation -- an Alabama-raised, Lebanese Catholic Vietnam vet named Floyd "Shad" Meshad. Meshad used to have a big job at the West L.A. Veterans Affairs complex, but he's a guy with no patience for bureaucracy, so he had to get out, way back in the 1980s, and start his own thing.

It's astounding that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors would decimate the only full workfare program that exists ("County to Slash Relief Payments to $212 a Month," Feb. 14). For their meager check, general relief recipients must work for the county at minimum wage--mowing lawns, trimming hedges, cleaning bathrooms. Even if a general relief recipient cannot work for the county because of a disability, when the individual receives federal disability aid the county is reimbursed by the feds for every dollar expended on that recipient.

I was very surprised that my friend Mike Neely says (in "Panhandling: A Give-and-Take," Oct. 3) that the homeless and panhandlers "have no say" in the Central City Assn.'s Downtown Safe and Clean program. The association has solicited input from social service providers who serve the homeless community, including Chrysalis, the Coalition to End Homelessness, Justiceville/Homeless USA, the Ketchum Downtown YMCA, the Los Angeles Mission and the Union Rescue Mission. The outreach also included a Sept.

Los Angeles remains the nation's homelessness capital, with almost 48,000 people living around the county on streets, in cars and in shelters, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority. About a fourth of them are chronically homeless, burdened in many cases by physical and mental ailments that make it hard for them to reintegrate into society. The magnitude and intractability of the problem haven't stopped policymakers and homeless advocates from offering plan after plan for improving the situation, but none has made much of a dent in the homeless population.

In its recent series on a controversial program for the homeless, The Times described a project called Project 50 that seeks to put a roof over the heads of substance abusers without requiring them to undergo substance-abuse treatment, while still offering them as many services as they would use. The new approach, known as "housing first," has been heralded in communities across the nation as a promising solution to end homelessness and save taxpayer...