XPost: alt.society.homeless, sbay.politics, talk.politics.guns
XPost: alt.politics

The South Bay and Long Beach areas saw an increase in their homeless populations — as did Los Angeles County as a whole — over the past year, according to data released on Thursday, June 29.

Related: Homeless population rises 9% in LA County

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority conducted its an annual point- in-time survey throughout LA County — except in Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale — earlier this year and published the data on Thursday.

LAHSA’s data largely focused on Los Angeles city proper and the county in general, offering scant in-depth information about the homeless population
in the South Bay and Long Beach areas. The data also did not have a city- by-city breakdown. Instead, the data shows homeless populations by service planning areas, or SPAs which are essentially regional breakdowns.

It appears LAHSA may not release city-by-city data breakdowns this year
because of “imprecise extrapolation process at the city level,” according
to the South Bay Cities Council of Governments.

Representatives for that agency, which is a coalition of 16 cities, said
they had meetings with LAHSA to review the 2023 data.

LAHSA didn’t confirm whether it planned to release the city breakdowns, or when.

“Homeless Count data below the SPA level is not typically available on the
day of the release,” LAHSA spokesperson Chris Yee said Thursday. “We are working with our researchers on the data and will provide an update soon.”

The city-by-city breakdowns, however, were available with the rest of the
data when the results of LAHSA’s 2022 count were released in September.

Ronson Chu, the SBCCOG’s homeless services manager, said the agency is
unlikely to release the specifics because LAHSA is still working out the
kinks with its new data collection methods.

Prior to 2022, Chu said in a Thursday interview, the agency had only ever employed a paper survey to collect information for the homeless count.

But the agency transitioned into using apps since then — and has employed
two separate ones in the past two homeless counts.

“There’s growing pains,” Chu said. “And so what you’re seeing might be the result of this new data collection methodology.”

LAHSA itself, meanwhile, said in a report released Thursday that the
agency conducts extensive data quality control to provide a reliable
countywide overview of the unhoused population — but that the report
“isn’t a useful guide” to neighborhood-level homelessness.

Still, its a marked change from LAHSA’s reports in previous years.

“I think this year, what (LAHSA) saw and what we saw was just more
fluctuations than we’ve seen in the past,” Chu said. “I think they’re just
a higher discomfort level at at kind of that imprecise nature of the city- level data.”

Related: City of Los Angeles sees a 10% increase in its homeless
population

LAHSA also said that various communities have established their own
individual counts, which could provide a more nuanced understanding of homelessness on a local level — though there are only three major cities
in Southern California that do so.

Long Beach is among those cities that conducts its own homeless count.
That city’s Department of Health and Human Services released the results
of its 2023 survey in late April, with the data showing about a 4.6%
increase in the amount of unhoused folks there compared to the year prior.

That result marked Long Beach’s smallest increase in the overall
population of unhoused people since 2019. The 2022 results, comparatively, found a 62% spike in unhoused people in the city over a two year period;
there was no homeless count in 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

City officials and homeless advocates largely blamed that whopping jump on economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic throughout 2020 and 2021.

The 2023 results, meanwhile, were touted by city officials as progress and recovery from the pandemic’s impact in years prior.

But in Long Beach’s neighboring cities, throughout the South Bay and in LA county generally, the unhoused population appears to be growing, despite regional efforts to address the issue.

The amount of unhoused people increased in all but one SPA, which are geographical distinctions within LA County used by the county Department
of Public Health to develop targeted services based on the specific needs
of each community, according to Thursday’s data.

SPA 8 — the planning area that includes the entire South Bay, from the
Harbor Area to El Segundo to Inglewood — saw the second largest increase countywide, according to the data, with a total unhoused population of
6,476 people. Long Beach was not included in that data.

That represents an increase of more than 2,000 more people who were
homeless in that SPA compared to last year — a 45.7% increase.

In SPA 7, meanwhile, the homeless population increased by more than 1,700 people over the past year, the data said. SPA 7 accounts for several Long Beach-area cities, including Bellflower, Downey, Cerritos, Lakewood and Hawaiian Gardens.

There were 6,511 people who were homeless in that area at the time the
count was conducted in January, the report said. That represents a 36.2% increase compared to 2022.

But even with that sobering information, some cities — who don’t conduct
their own surveys, and rely on LAHSA’s data to inform their own strategies
to address homelessness — say the available data doesn’t provide a clear
enough understanding of the crisis locally.

“I’m concerned that (LAHSA isn’t) sharing the numbers by city because
obviously we had people that were deployed in our city to count the
homeless in our city,” Torrance Councilmember Mike Griffiths said on
Thursday, “and so to me, I would think those numbers are available and I
think it’s important that we have that.”

Specifically, it would be helpful to know on a granular level whether Torrance’s recently launched tiny home interim shelter has been successful
in reducing the city’s overall homeless population, Griffiths said.

“We want to know that our efforts are paying off,” Griffiths said. “By
creating the village and paying for that, the hope (was) that this was
going to decrease our homeless count in our city — and and to hear that
it’s potentially gone up is very troubling.”

Chu and the SBCCOG, though, have taken issue with LAHSA’s SPA 8 number —
at least for the 16 incorporated cities the coalition represents,
including Torrance, Carson, El Segundo, Rolling Hills, Inglewood,
Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes Estates.

“We have not been able to confirm the SPA number,” Chu said. “We have
asked LAHSA to get a more detailed breakdown of the number — most years,
we’re able to do a sum of the parts and get close to the SPA number.”

But that’s not doable this year, he said, because LAHSA hasn’t sent out
the city-by-city breakdowns. LAHSA, though, did share some information in
a meeting between the agencies, Chu said.

“From that, we were able to discern that our (incorporated) South Bay
cities (unhoused populations) had a decrease of 1% combined,” Chu said. “I couldn’t tell you how that mix works out city-by-city, they didn’t send us anything — but that’s what we were able to figure out.”

How that squares with the massive jump in the homeless population in SPA 8
is unclear. And even so, that potential 1% decrease in the amount of
unhoused folks in the South Bay area — which LAHSA also hadn’t confirmed
on Thursday — the day-to-day situation hasn’t improved dramatically, Chu
said.

“In reality, this year, we’re seeing an increased number of phone calls
coming in from seniors and families,” he said. “So, even if the count goes
up or down, we know the situation on the ground still remains dire.”

The Family Promise of the South Bay, for example, is a Torrance nonprofit
that specifically serves unhoused families with minors.

The nonprofit’s current waitlist, according to the organization’s
executive director, Lori Eastman, stands at about 150 families of varying sizes.

Typically, Eastman said in a Thursday interview, the waitlist totals about
20 or 30 families waiting to speak with a case worker to get access to
shelter or other services.

“It’s just really grown by leaps and bounds after quarantine and
restrictions have lifted,” Eastman said. “About a year ago is when we
noticed an increase of families requesting assistance.”

The majority of those families cited loss of income as their main reason
for experiencing homelessness, Eastman said, while others said they’d been asked to leave family homes after COVID-19-era tenant protections ended,
or had experienced intimate partner violence.

“The barriers that we’re noticing is just the landlords’ reluctancy to
rent to low-income families after the pandemic,” Eastman said, “and
families’ ability to get back the income that you need in order to even
do an application for apartment.”

What the nonprofit has experienced reflects the trends reported by LAHSA,
with the 2023 numbers following in the footsteps of the 2022 results,
which also found the homeless population across the South Bay and Long
Beach regions had risen.

And while homelessness in the South Bay and Long Beach areas is still a relatively small portion of the county’s overall population — about
75,518, the data shows — the rate of increase far outpaced the LA region’s
9% spike in 2023.

“These results are disappointing,” said LA County Board of Supervisors
Chair Janice Hahn in a Thursday statement. “It is frustrating to have more people fall into homelessness even as we are investing hundreds of
millions of taxpayer dollars and resources into efforts to bring people inside.”

Hahn represents the county’s Fourth District, which includes Torrance, San Pedro, Harbor City, Bellflower, Downey, Long Beach and many other
communities in the region.

Los Angeles Councilmember Tim McOsker, whose district includes Harbor
City, San Pedro, Watts, and Wilmington, said much the same in a Thursday statement.

“These numbers are startling and show the issue is too big for our jurisdictions to handle by ourselves,” McOsker said. “We need to work
together with every level of government including our neighboring cities
and counties, state and federal partners — because we can’t do it alone.”

The Board of Supervisors, alongside the cities of Los Angeles and Long
Beach, declared local emergencies relating to homelessness in January in
an effort to eliminate some of the red tape that had held up homeless initiatives, affordable housing and shelter development, and other
services in years prior.

Regional leaders, including Hahn, LA Mayor Karen Bass and Long Beach Mayor
Rex Richardson, have repeatedly cited the need for all cities to pull
their weight in the regional effort to address homelessness.

Long Beach, for example, has taken several steps to fast-track its efforts
to expand shelter, housing, and social service capacity in their areas
since then — though the impact of its new programs and investments likely
won’t be realized until next year’s homeless count numbers are published.

Some South Bay cities have taken up other efforts to reduce homelessness.

Last July, for example, Hermosa Beach hosted its first Housing Initiative
Court — which gives homeless individuals facing non-violent misdemeanor
charges or municipal code violations an opportunity to have their charges waived.

Similar programs have been implemented across Los Angeles County; Redondo
Beach began its homeless court program in 2019.

Torrance also has a homeless court in the works — and recently opened its
first interim housing facility, which the City Council voted to keep open
for another two years in April.

Carson Mayor Lula Davis Holmes, meanwhile, said her city has dedicated two staff members to conducting outreach and providing housing vouchers to
unhoused folks.

Nonprofit organizations, though, have historically filled many of the gaps
in homeless services offered by local governments — which often don’t have their own health departments or lack the resources to fully address homelessness on their own.

Eastman, though, said that some South Bay cities are easier to work with
than others.

“I think everyone has compassion and is empathetic to the issue,” she
said, “but it seems like (there are) systems issues that they’re bound by
as well.”

Hahn said not enough cities have stepped up — and that next year’s numbers
need to reflect a regional move in the right direction.

The seemingly renewed effort to address homelessness on a regional level,
said PATH CEO Jennifer Hark Dietz, could have a positive impact on the
South Bay at some point. PATH stands for People Assisting the Homeless,
another nonprofit agency.

Because the South Bay and Long Beach areas are geographically smaller —
and have significantly smaller unhoused populations than LA proper and
larger portions of the county — they don’t often get the resources they
need, Hark Dietz said in a Thursday interview.

“I’m really looking forward to the county’s regional approach,” the CEO
said. “I think that that will help some of these smaller cities that maybe don’t have the same bandwidth as LA to bring in additional resources.”

Staff writers Clara Harter and Teresa Liu contributed to this report.

voctaf35a
7 HRS AGO
Famous fail up little garcia ends up in Washington.

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colli35a
13 HRS AGO
long beach we're democrat council hacks solve nothing, leech off taxpayers
and create more reasons to leave the state.

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bandyln121das
15 HRS AGO
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Los Angeles County tries to become a rent-free mecca WSJ- Jan. 27, 2023.

https://www.presstelegram.com/2023/06/29/south-bay-long-beach-areas-spike- in-homeless-population/

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