To the editor: Each the town and county of Los Angeles are contemplating breaking up the L.A. Homeless Services Authority. Quite a few reviews criticize LAHSA for funding discrepancies and poor accountability. These are essential critiques that warrant instant intervention.
However a very powerful subject is homelessness prevention, which isn’t being addressed adequately. LAHSA can’t probably scale back the variety of homeless folks on the streets, in automobiles and in RVs if the quantity retains going up.
Based on LAHSA, the variety of folks experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County declined by 0.27% in 2024 in comparison with 2023. That slight lower measured by a three-day snapshot in time is negligible contemplating that extra persons are changing into homeless than are being housed. Nationally, for each 100 individuals who exited homelessness in 2024, another 118 entered into homelessness, based on the federal authorities.
So the town and county must look extra carefully on the causes homelessness is just not being prevented: the staggeringly excessive value of rental housing, the shortage of extraordinarily low-income housing, the elimination of rent-controlled models and the dearth of assets to help those that are susceptible to falling into homelessness due to eviction.
Jane Demian, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Studying your editorial on New 12 months’s Day about LAHSA and all its assets received me serious about an aged girl I’ve seen camped out for the previous couple of years on a bus bench along with her belongings scattered round her on Santa Monica Boulevard in Century Metropolis, throughout from gleaming skyscraper buildings.
That this girl has not been sheltered is each a tragedy and a scandal for this metropolis.
Doug Weiskopf, Burbank
