Fires Undercut L.A.’s Headway on Homelessness

Los Angeles County homelessness leaders last year reported nearly 30,000 permanent housing placements — an annual high for the sprawling region of 10 million residents. Thousands more got into shelter and short-term housing.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and local leaders celebrated the progress as evidence that an unprecedented multibillion-dollar public investment to move people off the streets was working.

Then the wildfires hit.

Early evidence suggests that the January disaster is reversing hard-fought gains to get people into permanent housing. Local leaders say that as the devastating blazes displaced thousands, some who were barely making their bills and couldn’t find affordable housing have now become homeless amid an already strained housing supply.

“We’re already seeing some people have moved into their vehicles because they don’t have the money to pay for even temporary housing,” said Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Among those displaced were formerly homeless people such as Alexandria Castaneda, 29, who lived at a sober-living home in Altadena called Art House as she recovered from a methamphetamine addiction. She and dozens of other residents evacuated safely and watched the two-story house go up in flames on live television. The nonprofit that operates Art House is now trying to rehouse those displaced.

“It’s constant stress of not knowing if I’m going to be in a stable housing situation,” said Castaneda, who moved into temporary shelter after the fires.

Much of the progress Los Angeles County has made has been due in part to locally approved measures that have injected billions of dollars into housing efforts. But it’s also a result of the state’s staggering $27 billion investment in addressing homelessness statewide.

Local officials and state lawmakers say the state must provide additional homelessness funding. But those calls are running up against political demands for results.

Newsom wants accountability over how homelessness funds are spent.

The two-term governor, who has made homelessness a central focus of his administration, says he’s open to negotiations, contingent on strict requirements for cities and counties to use the funding to clear encampments and dismantle tents crowding freeway underpasses, city sidewalks, and riverbeds.

Without more focus on unsheltered homelessness, “I am not inclined to continue to support the funding to the cities and counties,” Newsom said in a news conference Feb. 24. “We have been too permissive as it relates to encampments and tents.”

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