KCRW’s departing reporter Anna Scott speaks with host Steve Chiotakis about the gains and setbacks in housing and homelessness — after eight years covering the beat.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Steve Chiotakis: What’s changed, and what hasn’t, when it comes to homelessness in LA over the last eight years?
Anna Scott: A lot has changed. It’s easy to forget that large street encampments were still relatively rare outside of Skid Row eight years ago. In 2015, I reported a story that was essentially a slice of life inside one block-long camp on the west side. The camp was novel because of its size, and honestly that story seems quaint now.
Since then, homelessness has become the dominant political issue in LA, as the crisis has grown from about 44,000 people living on the streets in the county to roughly 75,000. And the central tension that’s developed around that and is now driving policy fights is: How do you manage an enormous unsheltered population when you still don’t have enough permanent, affordable housing to meet the need and truly solve this crisis? On a more positive note, the COVID-19 pandemic has also changed things and brought hotel and motel rooms into the mix as shelter options.
LA Mayor Karen Bass has been on the job for a little more than a year now. Has she approached homelessness differently compared to the previous mayor, Eric Garcetti?
In some ways yes, in some ways no. Both of them have focused on expanding shelter beds, with Garcetti’s A Bridge Home program and Bass’ Inside Safe initiative, for example. Bass says she’s moved 14,000 people off the streets since taking office, and she’s one of several city and county officials who say a top priority right now is moving people indoors, even if it’s to temporary places.
More: Karen Bass introduces new system for homeless housing
More: Can Bass’ ‘Inside Safe’ homelessness effort overcome messy rollout?
More: Aetna Street encampment residents say ‘Inside Safe’ hasn't worked as promised
Isn’t that a departure from the idea of “Housing First,” which says you find people permanent housing as the first goal?
Sort of. The Housing First strategy is still considered best practice, and it’s still the guiding principle behind federal and local homelessness policy by and large. But now city and county officials say that we can’t have a binary approach to investing in shelter versus permanent housing; we need both, because as long as we’re short on affordable housing, we can’t have the streets be the waiting rooms. That said, resources are finite, and while for some people, if homelessness is out of sight, it’s also out of mind, but that’s not the case for the people experiencing it.
