In Pursuit of Regional Responsibility

It's dishearting to see that many of the solutions for skid row revolve around a law enforcement perspective.

It's a no-brainer that we can't arrest are way out of this situation. So instead of focusing on mental health treatment or affordable housing for the homeless, we let the LAPD recommend video surveillance cameras on skid-row streets. Brilliant!

On top of that, LAPD is giving kids tickets to keep them off the streets to keep them "safe." Yet, when they finally leave skid row, they have a warrant on their record, which prevents them from getting a job. We have to stop criminalizng poverty and the use of these idotic practices.

the cheap rent is probably referring to single-room occupancy housing, residential hotels, and other such situations.

What I find heartening about this effort is that it is seeks to try something new. For a generation, the response to the problems in skid row have been to spend more money on services while isolating the problem to the area. The point seemed to be to show how much you care, not whether the existing strategy is working. This inability to admit the policies of the past generation have been an abject failure is puzzling. It seems perfectly obvious the existing situation is a human disaster. Thus, when I hear calls for increased spending on services in skid row, excuse me, but I'm highly skeptical this will improve the situation. Actually, I'm quite suspicious it will cause the situation to get even worse.

Also, I think a lot of credit is to be given to Cedillo for this new policy effort. Clearly, as someone who worked for the ACLU previously, he didn't come to this easily. He's not adhering to ideology, particularly when the facts on the ground are so appalling. In the light of ongoing failure, he's experimenting.

Clearly, the situation in skid row can't be resolved through law enforcement. However, I think it is only reasonable and moral to expect the same level of law enforcement to prevail equally through the city. For too long the city has tacitly employed a perverse type of social apartheid. For reasons of ideology, the presumption has been if you live in the skid row district, the law will be applied differently, consequences be damned. That this morally bankrupt and throughly ineffective strategy is being reconsidered, I can only say, it is about time. I can only encourage our community leaders to continue this kind of new thinking.

The idea that throwing lots of money at the problem of homelessness will help solve things had been tried over the past several years by the city of San Francisco. I believe much of their experience was that dishing out gobs of money was, well, not much more than good exercise---in relieving a guilty conscience or to feel warmer about oneself---and that's about it.