Street Fight Part III: Can We End It?

10:39Stephen Eide:Where the hell did they put everybody to find out?

10:43Estela Lopez:And he interviews the guy who's in charge of this program and he presents the solution as almost stupidly simple. We did it by giving homes to homeless people. Who? You did what? We gave homes to the homeless. It's simple. You give them housing and you end homelessness.

11:04Stephen Eide:That's right. As part of a program called Housing First, Salt Lake City is just giving apartments to the homeless. All right. So it sounds like we already solved this problem in the 2010s. Am I wrong here? Like, should we be celebrating?

11:18Estela Lopez:We did it. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so, right. You might have noticed that we did not end homelessness. Okay, so let's bring in a Housing First skeptic that we've already met, Stephen Eide.

11:31Stephen Eide:Housing First has never shown the ability to scale effectively.

11:36Estela Lopez:To Stephen, the rhetoric over ending homelessness through Housing First is just embarrassing to read in retrospect.

11:44Stephen Eide:Not only did homelessness not end, they didn't even reduce it.

11:48Estela Lopez:Because cities that went all in for housing first on the West Coast, homelessness there, it grew. As in it got worse instead of better. Yes. Oh, my God.

12:00Stephen Eide:In the cities that went in so deeply for housing first, homelessness grew. It didn't reduce and it certainly wasn't ended. So what happened? Like, what is the explanation for why the data seemed to be so promising? And you had this bipartisan support for this strategy. Like, what went wrong?

12:20Estela Lopez:So there isn't just one consensus opinion for why it didn't work. Some people think that the Cardinalson was seeing Housing First as a silver bullet and that we just didn't take seriously how handing someone an apartment with very few strings attached when that person has a, you know, serious drug addiction to something like meth. Or fentanyl. Or fentanyl or one of these lab-created drugs or, you know, maybe there's someone with a serious mental illness who's hearing voices. How for that person, having four walls and a roof around you might not, like, solve your problems or help keep you in that housing.

12:58Estela Lopez:And some people say, look, we just failed to build or make available enough housing. And the affordable housing crisis keeps pricing people out and putting more people on the streets faster than cities can construct their way out of it, especially with all this resistance in states like California to housing development projects like this. Right. This is the NIMBYs. The NIMBYs, right? Like, blame it on the NIMBYs, blame it on the economy. You know, we just can't build our way fast enough through this problem. And even big Housing First supporters like Ian, they admit that the policy has so far not been as effective as they'd hoped.

13:37Estela Lopez:But, according to him, that's because in some places what got called Housing First was really...

13:45Stephen Eide:Housing only.

13:46Estela Lopez:Housing only.

13:47Stephen Eide:All I have to do is get them an apartment and then move on to the next person and get them an apartment. As opposed to getting them into housing is actually the start of the trajectory of really intensive services for a long period of time. So housing only as in they just did step one. They got someone from living under a bridge or on a sidewalk into an apartment. They didn't do the other steps like provide them with medical or mental health services or job placement or any of the other things that were supposed to keep them in that house for the long haul.

14:17Estela Lopez:Exactly. And people like Ian think that if we dedicated ourselves more fully to the original vision of Housing First, not these watered-down options, then it would work. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people. Yeah, so it's still a good plan, but implementing it is proving to be difficult. And also, we need to give this program a little more money, or a lot more money. That's their point of view. And now I think we should turn to the other side. Well, it's certainly not for a lack of money. This again is Estela Lopez. We met her in the last episode. She works in Skid Row in L.A. Because California and Los Angeles have spent, our spending will continue to spend billions to address this issue.

15:02But it doesn't move the needle.

15:05Estela Lopez:For Estela, and a lot of people like her, the idea that what we need to do is keep pouring more money into the current strategy is just blatantly absurd. As long as you want to give every single person on the street an apartment, you're never going to get out of this problem. In their eyes, like, a lot of money has gone towards homelessness with little visible results. So take L.A., for example. Back in 2016, voters passed this huge bond measure called Proposition HHH. It was over a billion dollars specifically to build housing for homeless people, mostly this, like, permanent supportive model that we've been talking about.

15:42The Housing First model.

15:43Estela Lopez:The Housing First model. The promise was like 10 ,000 units and you'll see a difference on the street. Like that was what voters thought they were getting anyway. But progress was incredibly slow and expensive. We're talking construction costs blowing past half a million dollars per apartment. Wow, that is a nice apartment. That's luxury prices. Right, right. And I should say after 10 years, like thousands of those units are available now. So we'll see if they end up delivering what was promised. But keep in mind, housing is just one piece of homelessness spending.

16:21Stephen Eide:Several L.A. leaders, including Mayor Karen Bass, were summoned to federal court after an audit found billions in homeless funds were poorly tracked. County leaders spent billions of taxpayer dollars last year to get people off the streets, but they can't account for all the money they spent or what the exact results were.

16:38Estela Lopez:Audits in California have shown that state and local agencies have poured like billions into homelessness programs of all kinds, housing and shelters and rental assistance and outreach, without consistently tracking what any of it actually accomplished. And all of that spending has led many critics to adopt the phrase.

17:00Stephen Eide:We just had a whistleblower from inside of the homeless industrial complex. The homeless industrial complex.

17:05Estela Lopez:Homeless industrial complex.

17:07Stephen Eide:The homeless industrial complex.

17:10Estela Lopez:You might have heard Elon Musk use the term.

17:12Stephen Eide:The homeless industrial complex is really, it's dark, man.

17:16Estela Lopez:But also, I interviewed someone who worked at an L.A.-based homelessness nonprofit for six years. And I asked her, essentially, like, what do you think is the reason why this problem is not getting solved? And to my surprise, honestly, this was what she said. This was her first answer. Homeless industrial complex. And essentially, I mean, obviously it comes from Eisenhower's military industrial complex. It's the idea that these government agencies and nonprofits and private contractors, they want to keep the funding faucet on. And so they just aren't that motivated to solve this problem. Right.

17:55I feel like the easiest way to understand this is almost like a Soviet-style system where so many people want to keep their job. They want their colleagues to keep their job. They want their nonprofits to stay in business. And the best way to do that is to keep the status quo.

18:13Estela Lopez:Right. And I think that this term, it can be applied really cynically to mean, like, there are literally people who are trying to conspire to not solve this problem. But I also think people use this term to talk about the kind of stasis that sets in among nonprofits and organizations that have to kind of continue justify doing things the way that they've been doing them. All right. So if one side of the debate has been promoting the housing first strategy, and it sounds like they've come under a lot of criticism lately, how should we think of the people on the other side of the debate? Like, who are they?

18:48Estela Lopez:Well, before I tell you about them, you first need to know that in the last couple of years, there's been an important change in the legal landscape. We'll hear arguments first this morning in case 23175, City of Grants Pass versus Johnson. So remember in the last episode, I told you about that case, Martin v. Boise, and how the Ninth Circuit essentially made a constitutional right to sleep outside under certain circumstances. Yes, this is the cruel and unusual punishment case. Yeah, exactly. Good memory. So the legal system just kept moving that way. There were more and more legal protections for the homeless to be out on the street and fewer ways for cities to compel people to get off the street.

19:30Estela Lopez:And eventually it all reached a boiling point with a case called City of Grants Pass versus Johnson. And that ended up at the Supreme Court. Like cities nationwide, Grants Pass relies on camping laws to protect its public spaces. These generally applicable laws prohibit specific conduct and are essential to public health and safety. So Grants Pass, it's a city in Oregon. It had a set of laws on the books that said you couldn't sleep outside in public with so much as a blanket or a pillow. And the city had been blocked from enforcing those laws because it didn't have enough shelter beds for its homeless population.

20:08Estela Lopez:You know, without a bed to offer someone, punishing them for sleeping outside is cruel and unusual. The Martin logic. This sounds like essentially the same circumstances. Yeah, yeah. It's really similar. But from the city's perspective, this was leaving them with really no way to control their public spaces and no way to actually compel anyone into shelter. And by this point, other cities around the country felt like that, too. This constitutional right that shielded homeless people from cruel and unusual punishment, from their perspective, it had led to sprawling, massive tent encampments, to piles of discarded needles and trash and human waste on the ground, to encampment fires every other night.

20:52Estela Lopez:So those cities, many of them led by Democrats, they did something that might surprise you. They asked the Supreme Court for help. They said, you got to undo what the Ninth Circuit did to us. This court should reverse and end the Ninth Circuit's failed experiment, which has fueled the spread of encampments while harming those it purports to protect. So the Supreme Court agrees to look at the case.

21:17Stephen Eide:How about if there are no public bathroom facilities? Do people have an Eighth Amendment right to defecate and urinate? No, we... Is that conduct or is that status? It's obviously, there's conduct there and we are not suggesting that cities can't enforce their... Why not if there are no public facilities available to homeless persons?

21:40Estela Lopez:That's Neil Gorsuch maybe being a bit cheeky and asking essentially how much human need is protected by the Constitution.

21:49Stephen Eide:How about fires outdoors? I know you say time, place and manner, but is there an Eighth Amendment right to cook outdoors? No, I think what. That's an incident in this human necessity. But this is one of those things that, you know, is taken care of on the ground as a practical matter. There are restaurants where someone can go. Well, no, no. We're talking about homeless people. They're not going to go spend money at a restaurant necessarily. There may be inexpensive places. Some people get— Let's say there isn't, OK? Let's say that there is no— And the local community— Do they have a right to cook?

22:26They have a right to eat, don't they?

22:28Estela Lopez:And in the end, the court majority sides with the city. They write that homelessness is a thorny problem and local governments should be the ones trusted to sort it out, Which means that as of 2024, that right to sleep outside under the Eighth Amendment is no more. So just to be clear, you're saying that it is no longer considered a constitutional right to sleep outside even if there aren't enough shelter beds available in your town. Exactly. And so with the restrictions lifted, now enter the camp that is having the most public fight in opposition with the Housing First advocates. And they are a group that I'll call Enforcement Now.

23:11These aren't people that just, like, missed a paycheck and we need to get them help and get back. This is a drug problem that needs mandatory treatment, not handing people needles and pipes and saying, oh, here's a million-dollar bed.

23:24Estela Lopez:And this year, this Enforcement Now camp found essentially a national spokesman in a former reality television show star and also brief L.A. mayoral candidate, Spencer Pratt. ask yourself this what if that addict on your street were your son the baby boy you love more than anything unemployed doing drugs every day defecating in public would you buy him crack pipes would you let him continue to degrade himself in public of course not you would stop the cycle you grab him by the wrist drag his butt to rehab and get him sober whether he liked it or not.

24:04Stephen Eide:And a good evening, everyone. I'm Colleen Williams. Thanks so much for joining us tonight. There are a number of issues for Angelenos, and with the primary election now just four weeks away, the stakes are very, very high.

24:16Estela Lopez:And it was also this spring, thanks to Spencer Pratt, that this whole debate that we've been unpacking, it finally found its way onto an actual debate stage.

24:26Stephen Eide:Many residents say the homeless in their neighborhoods make them feel unsafe. They feel the homeless have more rights than the residents do.

24:35Estela Lopez:Much of the L.A. mayoral primary race, like really a surprising amount, centered around homelessness and what should be done about it. Right now, getting off the street is voluntary. Should that change if a bed or a shelter is available? Mr. Pratt, we're going to start with you. Yes or no? It's illegal to live on the street. So yes, everyone needs to go inside. On that stage, Spencer Pratt's opponents, the current mayor, Karen Bass, and a council member, Nithya Raman, they push back against Pratt's enforcement now approach to the problem.

25:10Stephen Eide:Okay, Mayor Bass. Everybody needs to go inside. Making it illegal and arresting people is not the way to solve this problem. The way you address homelessness, the way you address people living on the street is by bringing them off the streets and indoors. That's how you achieve real public safety outcomes. that's how you ensure that the people of Los Angeles are safe. And was this a debate that had the viral super meth moment, the stab you in the neck moment? Yes, it was. Councilwoman Robin's plan for treatment first. I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her and we can find some of these people she's going to offer treatment for.

25:44She's going to get stabbed in the neck. These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super meth. These ideas cost us over$400 million to house, for 70, what did you say, 3 ,000 people for 400 million? This is an absolute failure for both of them. They're a team.

26:02Estela Lopez:And really, the enforcement now philosophy that Pratt embodies, it essentially says we need to stop treating homeless people as a special protected class. He says the Housing First advocates just have the wrong idea about who homeless people really are and what their problems are, that they're living in a fantasy while many Californians are living in a nightmare. None of my opponents are living in this reality, and all they want is more taxpayer-funded housing. He says these people are a danger to themselves and to others, and programs that focus on things like harm reduction, so giving clean needles and pipes to addicts, or just the usual status quo in places like L.A.

26:45Estela Lopez:are actually creating more problems instead of solving them. By doing this, they are killing six to seven people every day. in the streets, in full public view of you and your children, and they pretend they're the compassionate ones? I mean, his approach to this whole thing was really fascinating to me, in part because throughout the spring, when he was doing his campaign, it was surprising how many of my friends and my family members, including people who are not political fellow travelers with someone like Pratt, sent me his videos and some version of, this guy's got a point, right? Yeah. Well, I think what you're saying is, like, I think some people like Spencer Pratt because there was an emperor has no clothes reality that they were living in where it felt like they couldn't maybe admit or say the real difficulty and just what it's like to be around people who are, again, like really addicted to drugs.

27:43Estela Lopez:Those drugs are potentially making them act psychotic and in scary ways. To admit that and to say that that's actually an issue, I think that was a huge part of his appeal, at least to some people. And, you know, he didn't advance in the mayor's race. But versions of his argument are pretty alive and well. I'm not interested in funding failure anymore. I'm not. I won't. Time to do your job. People are dying on their watch. Dying on their watch. I mean, in recent years, I've heard versions of this from Gavin Newsom. Look at these encampments. They're a disgrace. They've been there years and years and years and years.

28:19I've heard that same rhetoric for years. But also from Donald Trump. The homeless have no right to turn every park and sidewalk into a place for them to squat and do drugs. Americans should not have to step over piles of needles and waste as they walk down a street in a beautiful city. Our first consideration should be the rights and safety of the hardworking, law-abiding citizens who make our society function.

28:47Estela Lopez:The enforcement now philosophy says it's time to take back the streets. It's time to take back our sidewalks. The word offer in shelter offer is really meaningless because if someone can simply say no and stay exactly where they are with no consequences, like what's the point of that? Like there needs to be some stick along with maybe a carrot. But to other people, the idea that cities should control encampments, control homelessness by issuing fines, by arrests is... Literally insane. Literally insane. It's expensive, it's cruel, and it's just going to make homelessness worse.

29:33Estela Lopez:After a short break, we hear from a man who was homeless himself for over eight years, who thinks enforcement is a dead end. People have no place to live that they can afford. That's the problem. So as you like to say, Andy, stay with us. Stay with us indeed.

30:00Stephen Eide:Support for this show comes from Rune. Anyone with a full and busy life can attest to that moment in the day when you just hit a wall. Mine shows up around 3 o 'clock. The coffee's done its job, and a fourth cup leaves me wired and useless. That's exactly what Rune is for. Staying focused and locked in when your energy starts to fade. And here's what got my attention. Rune is a pouch. The same kind we're all familiar with. The one you tuck under your lip. And honestly, the first time I saw it, I was like, wait, is this chew? Well, here's the twist. There's zero nicotine in Rune. None. It's a completely nicotine-free, sugar-free focus pouch.

30:39Stephen Eide:Each one has 80 milligrams of caffeine, plus L-theanine, the compound in green tea that smooths out caffeine, and a few other ingredients that makes the energy last longer and steadier. All of it is printed right on the label. No mystery proprietary blend. It was built by MIT and Harvard scientists who made it for themselves first. Rune recently sent me a sample in the mail, and I've been using it on long edit days in that late afternoon stretch. Head to T-A-K-E-R-O-O-N dot com backslash Longview and use code Longview at checkout for up to 64 % off. That's take Rune dot com backslash Longview.

31:22Stephen Eide:This episode is sponsored by Vinted. Recently, one of the team members here at Longview Presents purchased a new house. Moving into a new place can be one of the most exciting times of your life, but moving out of your old place? Well, I think we can all agree. It's one of those tasks we would rather never do again. It forces us to take a look at all of the clutter and disorganization that's in our lives and wonder how we can make the best use of the stuff that we don't need. And whether you've run out of closet space, you want to refresh your wardrobe, or you're just looking to earn a little bit of extra money, our friends at Vinted have a great solution.

31:53Stephen Eide:Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where members can find great deals on all kinds of items and they can easily sell their clothes they no longer need. Vinted gives truly quality items a second life again and again and again. And here's the best news. With Vinted, there are absolutely no seller fees. I found that listing items on Vinted is easy. The process is not cumbersome. And once the item sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you to use. No crazy paperwork to chase around. No complicated process to follow. So like our friend here at Longview, who's going to move into a brand new house and make a few extra bucks, when you're ready to clean out your closet and go make some extra money, download the Vinted app.

32:32Stephen Eide:It's free and you can start listing. There are no seller fees, so you get to keep every dollar you earn. Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees. The app is free. Selling is free. The only thing left to do is clean out your closet and start making money. Thanks to our friends at Vinted for being a sponsor. Welcome back. This is Street Fight. We're here with our street fighter, Emma Pettit.

32:59Estela Lopez:All right, don't call me that. All right, never again. So I wanted to make sure that I spoke with a few people who are or had been homeless themselves. And I ended up having a long conversation with a guy named Mark Horvath. If we do not fix what's causing homelessness, homelessness is going to continue to increase. So Mark once worked in television syndication in L.A. in the 90s, but due in part to drugs, he ended up living on Hollywood Boulevard, where he survived by selling photographs of his pet iguana to tourists. That is so L.A. It's so L.A. He sent me a picture. Totally believable story.

33:41Yeah.

33:42Estela Lopez:Well, now Mark, he makes his videos where he interviews homeless people about their lives, and he travels across the country, and he posts them on his YouTube channel, which is called Invisible People. And it was while watching some of these videos and also while talking to Mark that I got a better sense of why something that sounds so sensible to some people, you know, trying to compel people out of the cold and into a shelter, for example, is not as simple as it seems. If I'm out on the street, I control my dignity. If I go into a shelter, it's very much like going into a jail. Mark, who spent several years in shelters himself, he gets why people don't like them.

34:22It's very much a controlled environment where you don't have any choice whatsoever. They're void of any human dignity. Often cots in a room with a hundred other people. I mean, they smell like butts and feet.

34:43Estela Lopez:And when Mark and I talked about public drug use, again, something a lot of people think should be reined in, I asked him, like, if someone is doing drugs on the sidewalk, does he think that person should be arrested? And he basically said, look, homelessness is really hard to do sober. If you're going to the bathroom behind a dumpster in a McDonald's parking lot, you might as well have a beer. So while I do not support drug use or alcoholism, I understand people use drugs and alcohol to escape pain. so I try to understand that and again the solution to that person that's out there using drugs is to get them off the streets so that they can start healing because the the people pushing for criminalization of homelessness often use or paint the picture that a homeless person is using drugs in public and they're drug addicts.

35:48Yeah, I was a drug addict. Addiction is horrible. But the solution to addiction is treating the person's pain so that they don't have to mask the trauma with drugs. The solution to addiction is not throwing people in jail that just creates more trauma for them, for their families. And when they get out of jail, they're back on the streets where they're going to use drugs and they're still homeless.

36:25Estela Lopez:And while Mark doesn't think the status quo that we've all come to know of people sleeping outside on the sidewalk in tents should be our normal. There shouldn't be homeless encampments. There shouldn't be people sleeping under bridges and sidewalks. That should not happen. He also thinks that fixating on homeless individuals is missing the broader point. Homelessness is a symptom, not a cause. And that this is one of those problems that you just cannot punish your way out of. Because if somebody goes into jail or prison, just because they're sleeping on a sidewalk, When they come out, they're homeless.

37:09When somebody gets out of treatment, they're homeless and they won't be able to get a job.

37:18These narratives that people are being swept away and put in jail. Absolutely untrue. Absolutely untrue. Our LAPD doesn't have time to do that. We don't have capacity in our local jails to absorb that. But we're barely actually charging or prosecuting actual misdemeanors.

37:38Estela Lopez:So you're saying the days of, you know, in years past where someone actually might end up spending a night in jail for sleeping on the sidewalk, like those days are done. Those days are over. Those days are over. All right, Andy, let me tell you about one more person and let's go back to L.A. Back to Los Angeles. The primary narrative is that widespread homelessness in California and L.A. is a housing and affordability crisis. And so there has been almost singular focus on permanent supportive housing or affordable housing as the solution to homelessness. But for just here in Los Angeles, we would need$100 billion and 25 years to build our way out of the problem right in front of us.

38:30Estela Lopez:So this is Tracy Park. She's on the L.A. City Council. And because of that, she's heard a lot about housing, about Housing First. And her perspective is, look, even if we tried to build our way out of this, it'd take a quarter century. Mm-hmm. So what do we do in the meantime? And this issue actually is basically the reason she ran for city council in the first place. There was just open air drug use, fighting, violence, trafficking. I mean, it really was a hellscape in every direction. She'd been living in Venice, and she told me that after Martin B. Boise, there was an uptick in the number of people living on the streets, and things just got worse and worse.

39:19So out at Oceanfront Walk, which is the world famous Venice Beach Boardwalk, there were hundreds of tent encampments, mountains of garbage, people using meth and fentanyl, gunshots, sword attacks, fires were commonplace. It just, what was allowed to go on was complete lawlessness. And it was a choice. And I know that it was a choice because when I came into office, we chose differently.

40:01Estela Lopez:So when she was elected, she started clearing those encampments, removing the garbage, trying to restore those public spaces for everyone's use, and change the reputation that Venice was getting. And so would she be someone we would consider in the enforcement now camp? Yeah, I'd say so, but it is not as blunt force as something that, like, Spencer Pratt might be advocating for. Okay. So she told me that, like, rather than just show up one day with, like, police and a cleaning crew and heavy equipment to clear out all the tents and mattresses and garbage just, like, out of the blue, what they do is weeks, if not months beforehand, outreach workers try a number of ways to connect the people in the tents with some sort of housing.

40:47Typically, we have to spend some time establishing relationships, assessing where they have already been in the homeless system, what programs and services they may already be enrolled in. And through our outreach, people more often than not were willing to go into a motel or into our congregate shelter and give up the tent. So this isn't a SWAT team operation, right? This isn't cops busting in, grabbing drug users and locking everybody up.

41:19Estela Lopez:Right. This isn't that. And when city workers do show up and come in to clear an area, Park said that they try to do what's called a warm handoff. On those days, we have transportation available. We make sure that people are able to take their pets, that their questions are answered, and that everybody is getting a warm handoff and follow up in their new environments. And Park said that after they've done one of these big sweeps, she'll introduce something that's called an anti-camping zone. I roll out a new protection zone. Which, going forward, makes it clear that it's illegal to sleep or to keep your belongings there.

42:00Because when we've put in that time and money and effort, and we clear a space, a public space, my intent is that it remain clear and safe and accessible. So I just want to make sure I'm picturing this right. They clear out one of these areas that had previously had an encampment. And afterwards, they put up essentially a no camping sign, like not too dissimilar to what I might see when I'm out camping in the woods, saying that this zone is no longer a place where you can sleep.

42:31Estela Lopez:Yeah, that's right. And just a caveat, like the city council has to vote to create a zone. But once there is one, signs go up. You can't camp there. But what happens to me if I decide to ignore that sign and sleep there anyway? Well, the shortest answer is, like, you could get a ticket. A ticket. Right. For sleeping there, it's possible to get a ticket, and you're probably going to be told to move along. And if you refuse, that's actually a different violation, and that one is potentially a misdemeanor, which could come with a bigger fine and maybe even some jail time. But according to Park, it's just really rare that enforcement of this law ever gets to that point.

43:15So what she's seeing is that people either are taking her up on the temporary housing, or at least, if they're not, they're moving along.

43:23Estela Lopez:Her spokesperson says that most people comply. But for some in L.A., even a ticket is too harsh.

43:32Stephen Eide:Displacing our neighbors from block to block, or in many cases from district to district, doesn't help them find housing.

43:41Estela Lopez:These anti-camping zones actually came up at a recent city council meeting, and one of Park's colleagues wanted to repeal about a dozen of them in his district.

43:49Stephen Eide:In fact, in most cases, it makes it much more harder for us to help them. Even a recent analysis of the city found that 94 % of people living in encampments targeted for removal under 4118 wanted some sort of housing. But only 18 % received it.

44:07Estela Lopez:He, and he's not alone with this critique, argued that the sweeps and no camping zones, they just move people around without doing much to end homelessness.

44:17Stephen Eide:To me, that is a policy that does not work. And in our district, these zones were making it harder to do the things that do work.

44:26Estela Lopez:But at the same meeting, Tracy Park got up and she argued back. Thank you, Council President. Colleagues, I'm voting no on this motion, which probably won't come as a surprise to any of you. managing our streets and our sidewalks and shared public spaces is a fundamental obligation that we owe to our constituents. It's not unreasonable for them to expect that they can have parks that their kids can play in. It's not unreasonable for them to expect to be able to use our libraries and senior centers. We have spent billions on homeless housing and services, and our constituents have been incredibly generous.

45:15They have every right to expect something in return, to let their kids walk to the park, to keep needles off our beaches, to make sure our libraries and senior centers are safe and accessible. So, Council Member Sotomartinos, if you don't want those protections in your district, that's a decision you can make and explain to your constituents. But I've seen what happens when we abandon our public spaces. We've lived through it in CD11, and we don't want to go back. And I don't want to see neighborhoods anywhere in our city fall into those kinds of conditions. So until we have a citywide policy that aligns with what we're allowed to do under grants pass, I can't support the removal of common sense measures that keep kids and families safe.

46:02Thank you. Wow. That's quite a speech. did Park win?

46:09Estela Lopez:She did not. The city council voted 10-3 to remove those no camping zones. To be clear, not in Venice or in any part of the district that Park represents but in some places in Hollywood and Echo Park and Silver Lake. So in the hipster neighborhoods. Yeah, you could say that. I think that's journalistically defensible to call them that. So the tension that you've been covering from the beginning since at least 1987 with the Joyce Brown and Ed Koch legal fight, these two competing visions of freedom, they continue to live in tension. That's exactly right. I'm curious to your thoughts about that.

46:45Estela Lopez:Like, is there a risk of over-enforcement? Is there some balance that you're trying to strike? And if so, what is that? Yeah, there is a balance. And, you know, the reality is we have 40 ,000 people today on the streets in the city of Los Angeles that don't have anywhere else to go. and nobody is saying that we're going to arrest our way out of the problem. Nobody is saying that jail is an appropriate or suitable way of dealing with behavioral health, mental health or addiction. But we do have to strike a balance when it comes to the rights and liberties of people who are unhoused and the rights of people who live and work in our neighborhoods and our communities.

47:36Estela Lopez:And it's remarkable how it's not just the tension that remains the same, but just in listening to Tracy Park, she was even using language that like harkens back to where the story began. If the evidence is that this person is not well enough to care for themselves or make good decisions on their own behalf, yes, it may be the case that the state needs to step in on their behalf. And, you know, we have seen, especially with mental illness, family members are frustrated because they don't have rights to help a loved one get care. And I have had so many conversations with constituents that have a family member that has a mental illness or addiction issues, and they feel powerless.

48:30And think about it, especially with addiction, the nature of the disease itself is the inability to stop engaging in that behavior. I can't think of any other medical condition or public health condition where we would allow for that, where we would just walk by masses of people sick and addicted, living in piles of garbage on the side of the road and do nothing and say nothing. If it was any other disease, there would be outrage and a public outcry demanding that we get people medical help. And yet we're not doing that under this circumstances. And I can't explain that. It's a head-scratcher to me because it is neither compassionate nor progressive nor a benefit to either the person on the street or anyone else who loves or cares about that person or the community itself to leave them where they are.

49:30Estela Lopez:You know what's interesting? I started reporting this series focusing on this case in New York City in the 1980s when street homelessness was like still this kind of somewhat novel thing that people were really like, what is happening and how do we solve it? And there was a mayor there, Ed Koch, who thought that the city should express stronger reins of control over severely mentally ill people on the street. And it's interesting because it's like, well, it's been 40 years and it almost feels like we're kind of coming around to an old idea. We're back to where we started. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to feel about that.

50:23It is terrible to see these people who are lying in their own feces, who are clearly gross mental cases, who if they were your mother or your sister or a family relative, you would want to pick up and take to a hospital right away, even if they resisted because they're mentally incompetent to make such a judgment.

50:46Estela Lopez:So, Andy, the fight continues. Well, thank you, Emma. Thank you.

51:01Well, that's a wrap for our mini-series, Street Fight. We would love to hear your thoughts, your feedback, your questions. You can send all of that to us by going to our website, longview.report, where you can also become a subscriber and support our work. This series was reported by Emma Pettit And it was produced by me, Andy Mills With Simon Adler, Ethan Minello, Matthew Bull And a special thanks to Jacob Bull Yes, that is Matt's little brother And he just got married Congratulations, Jake We also had additional mixing help from the wonderful Emma Munger Who is not just a great engineer But also an awesome musician who I'm a fan of So if you'd like to check out her work look for Emma Munger and I would highly recommend the song Chemistry you can find it right now on Spotify go check it out for more information about us and this series including a really powerful photo timeline where we've documented homelessness from the hobo and tramp era all the way into the tent era we're living in today that's all available over at our website longview.report go check it out say hi to us we really appreciate you all for listening and for sharing this with your friends and family and we'll see you soon.