Author: Cameron Goodman
Between Jan. 1, 2000 and May 28, 2007, an average of more than one homeless person died per day in Los Angeles County. That’s 2,815 homeless deaths in less than seven-and-a-half years. With 73,000 homeless people living in the county, Los Angeles has the largest homeless population in the US. Only 16.7 percent of the homeless in LA are sheltered, the lowest percentage of any major city in the country.
These statistics come from a Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger & Homelessness report, co-authored by Whitney Hawke (junior), Max Davis (junior) and head of the Coalition Bob Erlenbusch. The report, called “Dying Without Dignity,” outlines the numbers, demographics, distribution and causes of homeless deaths in L.A. County in an attempt to call attention to the city’s dismal record as the “homeless capital of the United States.” Through a semester-long internship with the coalition, Hawke and Davis compiled and organized the data into a 44-page report that was released on Dec. 21.
Hawke and Davis got involved at LACEH&H as part of their UEP class with Peter Drier. They learned about community organizing in the class, then took their knowledge and applied it to work at a community internship. “I chose the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness because I have always felt that homelessness is a universal and unnecessary problem,” Davis said.
Erlenbusch assigned Whitney to the project on her first day at the Coalition. She was given a massive spreadsheet of data and told to compile a study on homeless deaths in LA County. Since the report is the first of its kind in the county, Hawke had to look up studies from other cities to use as a template. The final product is arguably one of the most comprehensive reports on homelessness in L.A. to date, and has sparked a series of newspaper, TV and radio reports bringing attention to the issue.
“[Hawke and Davis] were absolutely delightful to work with,” Erlenbusch said in an interview. “They really put their heart and soul into doing superior research, and they were really obviously committed to the project.” Since the release of the report, Erlenbusch has met with L.A. County officials to discuss ways to address the study’s findings. “Creating such a report should be in the hands of the L.A. County Department of Public Health,” he said. The hope is that the county will take responsibility for releasing annual reports in order to promote a better situation for the homeless in L.A.
Some of the most surprising statistics in the study are those that compare Los Angeles with other major cities across the country. Compared to LA’s 16.7 percent, Philadelphia shelters 97.4 percent of its homeless population, and Denver shelters 93.3 percent.
“Los Angeles has the disgrace of being the homeless capital of the United States, with over 73,000 homeless people in the County of Los Angeles on any given night and over 140,000 experiencing homelessness at some point during the year,” the report reads.
In New York City, there is a daily census of the number of homeless living in the city, an annual analysis of those figures proposing new strategies and partnerships and a quarterly report and analysis of homeless deaths. San Francisco has released a report of homeless deaths every year since 1987, and L.A. experiences three times the number of homeless deaths as San Francisco. Seattle has been releasing reports on homeless deaths since 2005, and Boston released a study of homeless deaths in 1997.
“Dying Without Dignity” is the first and only report of its kind in Los Angeles. “It is definitely gratifying to see the media attention,” Davis said. “Hopefully, some of the statistics it reports will become part of the current discussion around homelessness.”
Although the majority of the deaths were in the city of Los Angeles, other communities with high death rates include Long Beach (154), Santa Monica (111), Pasadena (55) and Hollywood (48). “Virtually every single neighborhood has at least a few homeless deaths on its record,” the report reads, “which clearly shows that this is not just a phenomena of ‘Skid Row,’ but extends throughout the county.”
The leading underlying causes of death include Cardiovascular Disease (686), Unknown (660), Acute Intoxication (619), Trauma Related (493), Pneumonia (110), as well as Homicide, Cirrhosis, Infection Secondary to Alcohol or IV Drug Use, Cancer, Hypothermia and Tuberculosis. The statistics are based on information provided by the LA County Coroner’s office.
Reports like “Dying Without Dignity” can point towards improvements that the county can implement to reduce the number of homeless deaths. The study reveals that 22 percent of the deaths were related to substance abuse, so Erlenbusch has pushed county officials to work towards increasing the number of shelters with overdose prevention programs. The report also recommends that the county make it a priority to end and prevent homelessness by creating permanent housing and increasing economic stability through employment and income supports.
Erlenbusch is impressed by the response from the media, which has continued since the report’s release. “We’ve gotten a lot of press off the report,” he said. On Feb. 22, The Tidings, a Southern California Catholic weekly, released a full page article on “Dying Without Dignity.” On the same day, Erlenbusch received a call from the Pasadena Weekly, which wanted to create a mini-report following the 55 Pasadena deaths mentioned in the study. The report has also been the subject of stories in the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and other newspapers around the country.
“I didn’t know it was going to be such a big thing when I started,” Hawke said. She believes the real effect of the report in changing the homelessness situation in LA “depends on where the mayor and city want to take it,” although little has been done to address the issue since its publication. In an AP article, senior adviser to Mayor Villaraigosa, Torie Osborn, addressed the study and its findings. “The human cost of the tragedy of homelessness in the richest country in the history of the planet is illustrated by these statistics,” he said. “And it’s heartbreaking. I think it just shows we have a long way to go to step up and take care of our most vulnerable citizens. I mean, to die alone and on the streets-what could be a sadder Christmas?”
The city of L.A. may be responding with kind words to demand for better homeless housing and care, but real action on the part of the city has yet to be seen. Hawke said Villaraigosa “has a pretty shitty homeless policy.” In The Tidings article, Erlenbusch expressed his frustrations with the way L.A. County policy makers have dealt with homelessness.
“If they really took it seriously like New York, they’ve got to put up about $2 billion a year for the next 10 years to do what it takes to get people off the street and dying,” he said. “And there’s just no politician who will do that. There’s certainly no pressure. Where’s the pressure going to come from?” It might be that the pressure needed to get the county politicians to begin making changes has come from the hard work of two U.E.P. students at Occidental College. “Even with good data and information about effective solutions, public policies often diverge,” Davis said. “A report can be useful, but it has to be combined with some kind of pressure.”
“It is a disgrace that such a small percentage of the homeless population in LA is sheltered,” the report concludes. “With no resources and forced to live outside, in their cars and in abandoned buildings, it’s no wonder that hundreds of homeless people die without dignity in our community every year.”
The report’s release date, Dec. 21, has been commemorated as National Homeless Person’s Memorial Day by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, a day when “local advocates and service providers celebrate the lives of thousands of homeless people in hundreds of cities arou
nd the nation with candlelight vigils, a reading of names and other acts to remember the lives of those lost while living on the streets of our nation.”
At the end of the report is a list of those who died without a home in Los Angeles County, 2000-2007. It is 13 pages long.
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