The Bigger Picture


By Peggy Lee Kennedy

Housing and Development are major topics in Venice, but there is a bigger picture not being talked about enough in our little not-so-sleepy town.

There are Venice folk living without sufficient nutrition, without shelter, and without adequate medical care. Food, shelter, and medical care are basic human rights. Why do so many people go along with prevailing attitudes that people somehow deserve to be without these basic rights? And then others think, “What can I do about it anyway?” Well, there is plenty that can be done. We can organize together on a platform based in human rights, public education, and positive solutions.

Lack of affordable housing and extreme poverty are the chief causes of homelessness. It sounds simple, but as rental costs climb in Venice and economic conditions worsen, the results can be homelessness.
Unfortunately, there are negative public stereotypes of our extremely poor and homeless population.
Homeless folk, in general, are people that cannot generate enough income to pay rent and eat. They are disabled people, veterans, people with chronic health conditions, people cut from the welfare rolls due to welfare reform, people that suffer from drug or alcohol addiction, people living on fixed incomes, elderly people, and people that have been abused. “Those people” deserve humanitarian kinds of community outreach.

In June, I attended a Venice C-PAB (Community Police Advisory Board) “Homeless Outreach”
Subcommittee meeting and I truly learned that more caring people need to be participating in homeless outreach activities. In fact, I think compassionate Venice people should be leading these types of meetings and not the City Attorney’s Office. This meeting seemed more like it was meant to appease the concerns of property owners’ rather than being a Venice “Homeless Outreach” meeting.

People who own property in Venice should not have favor (with the police or otherwise) over others in the community: homeless folk or renters. According to the 2000 census, there are far more Venice renters than Venice property owners. Venice is more than 70 percent renters. Lets keep that in mind when we hear a point made on the basis of how something will affect property value. Should property owners or people with development interests be the decision makers for the entire community?

Instead of having Venice property owner police advisory meetings focused on “Abating” the homeless in Venice (through police enforcement!), why not have some positive solution based meetings? Really, how is spending our tax money ticketing, harassing, making up homeless “hit lists,” and targeting extremely poor and homeless Venice people any kind of real solution? Plus this whole business of Venice property owners lobbying the City to get “No Overnight” parking signs put up everywhere in Venice is really a way of using parking laws as a tool to target a group of people based on economic status! Not to mention that the streets do not belong to a few Venice property owners. The streets belong the public – and public is inclusive of homeless public. I suppose if a person has a driveway or a garage for their vehicle, they do not need street parking. And isn’t there a shortage of parking in Venice?

Real solutions to homelessness are housing and medical care, but in the mean time how about a little down-home Venice community compassion! Many homeless people are disabled, they are worn out by inadequate services, and they are being stressed out by law enforcement. I heard in that June C-PAB meeting that these homeless people are “Service Resistant” and that there are services for them – they just refuse them. So I hate my HMO, does that make me “Service Resistant?” NO, the HMO just sucks.

The bottom line is that there is a problem getting low-income housing and assisted housing for the disabled! How can any honest social service place someone when there is no good place? One of the volunteers with our meal program waited months to get a bed at the Santa Monica shelter. It is a lot of work being homeless. There is never enough sleep, you always have to find the next meal and a shower or clean clothes, you are carrying everything you own, and law enforcement is constantly picking you on. Then there are the eventual medical problems relating to exposure and bad nutrition in addition to an already bad situation.

Homeless folk are human beings and we should not think in terms of “Abatement.” We need to reason beyond developers and property owners that say that the best we can get is only a small percentage of low or moderate-income rentals from any development in Venice! The truth is that affordable housing has been overtly removed from Venice and only a small percentage will come into our town based on these standards. This is more than a housing crisis; it is a campaign being waged against low-income Venice renters - not just against the homeless. In order to spend no more than 30 percent of your income on a monthly rent amount of $1300.00, you need to make at least $25.00 per hour, or $52,000.00 per year!

We need to think of practical solutions without worrying about the problems of the more privileged among us, like how they won’t be getting a quick profit from building higher income housing developments. Besides working toward getting more low-income housing, Venice homeless folk could directly benefit from storage lockers and public toilet facilities. We are already spending tax money on law enforcement (right now) relating to those going without these things. Going to the bathroom after dark is not exactly a frivolous privilege.

There are probably more than 400 homeless Venice residents right now and many more Venice renters on the verge of becoming homeless or displaced. Our public officials should be lobbying for all of us, not simply compensating a token few and calling the rest “Service Resistant.” Developing community sponsored low-income housing is a good idea. (That’s what the Los Angeles City and Federal Housing Authority funds were created for.) We could even make sure to employ local people at the same time. I envision Venice people struggling together, “neighbor-to-neighbor,” for positive and progressive community solutions. Lets defend Venice!

Homeless Statistics and Reference Material:

+ National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) Out of Reach www.nlihc.org/oor2002/index.htm

+ L.A. Coalition to End hunger and Homelessness
Homelessness, Hunger, Poverty, and Housing in Los Angeles Fact Sheet
www.lacehh.org/factsheet2003A.htm

+ Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty at the Weingart Center
Just the Facts: Poverty in LA, Who is Homeless in LA, Housing & Poverty in LA www.weingart.org/institute

+ The Constitution of the United States of America
Amendments IV, V, VIII, IX, XIV
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html

+ United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25 http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

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Posted: Fri - August 1, 2003 at 08:15 PM          

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