Encampment sweeps, bridge housing and mounting frustration — what happens next?
{First of Two Parts}
By Joe Piasecki
Mike Bonin holds firm that permanent supportive housing is the proven solution for chronic homelessness
Photo by Maria Martin
Impeachment is big world news, but in West Los Angeles the story that really gets people going is the local homelessness crisis and the city’s response to it — or, as critics argue, the city’s complete and utter failure to mount an effective response to a growing problem.
Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin, elected to a second term in 2017 with a resounding 71% of the vote, has since become the No. 1 target of public frustrations about homelessness in his council district west of the 405 Freeway. In public dialogue and on social media in particular, critics rip into Bonin on the regular with both political and increasingly personal attacks. Some have started referring to the proliferation of homeless encampments as “Boninville,” and (on what can be considered the lighter side of the issue these days) there’s now even a parody @Boninville Instagram account superimposing photos of Bonin onto local encampments with gleeful zingers like “if you lived here, you’d be home by now” and “it’s not bike theft, it’s bike-sharing.”
In an effort to better understand his personal beliefs, policy prescriptions and public actions on the homelessness crisis, The Argonaut sat with Bonin for an extensive conversation about commonly voiced concerns and complaints. The first half of that conversation, lightly edited for space and clarity, appears below. We’ll publish the second half in next week’s issue.
The Argonaut: You’ve become a frequent target of not just political but very personal attacks, usually regarding homelessness or the reconfiguration of Venice Boulevard, even when you’re talking about other issues. What happened?
Mike Bonin: Well, I’ll admit it’s really unpleasant to get death threats, to be the subject of homophobic slurs, to have people say racially derogatory things about my kid, to have graffiti put up outside of his preschool. And people make comments on all sorts of [social media] posts, including a recent one that was a tribute to 9/11 firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center. Part of it is just the nature of public life these days. And part of it is that I have deliberately chosen to take on tough, complex, longstanding, controversial issues — particularly homelessness and transit and climate change. And we’ve done a lot on them while at the same time delivering some big stuff for the district, including huge boosts in public safety resources.
I made a very conscious decision to take on these tough problems. When I first ran I made a promise to voters that I would not be a seat warmer or an empty suit — that I would actually tackle the real chronic problems in Los Angeles, and delve into them even if they were going to be tough ones that people generally shy away from because they’re difficult. And the other reason I do it is because I have a young kid. I have a 5½-year-old, and I feel like I have a time in office and my obligation is to make the world better for him and for his generation, as well as for the people who voted for me. I have a sense of urgency about it. And I decided that when it comes to really horrific problems — homelessness being one of them, the climate crisis being another — that inaction is worse than controversy. So I’ve thrown myself into it for good or bad, come hell or high water.
The lack of civility is really troubling for all elected officials, but it’s more than just for elected officials. There has been bullying of community leaders and of neighborhood council members who wound up resigning because of some of the bullying they’d gotten, the nasty stuff. And these are volunteers, just giving their time for the neighborhoods. There’ve been posts I’ve seen on social media, particularly Nextdoor, that have talked about throwing bleach at homeless people or spraying them with hoses. There’s an ugliness out there, and it’s not particularly local. It’s nationwide. It’s part of the discourse. And it’s tough sometimes, but I’m certainly not giving in because of it.
Do you think anger about the spread of homelessness and related quality of life or public health impacts is justified?
Anger over the homelessness crisis is absolutely justified. I’m angry about it. I mean, I’m angry when I drive home at night and I see a new encampment. I’m angry when I walk my kid to dinner and we walk by an encampment. I’m angry when I read that someone died living on the street. And I think everybody should be angry at that. But what we need to be angry at is inaction. What we need to be angry at is generations of elected officials who decided to skirt the issue or take the easy path or provide false solutions. A decade and a half ago, elected officials in Los Angeles said we will give people a right to the sidewalk instead of a right to shelter. And so now we’re in this crisis.
We should also be mad at the people who are constantly suing to slow down or stop any project that addresses homelessness. And we have a lot of that in this [council] district and elsewhere around the city. We should be mad at the federal government, which has been cutting housing vouchers. Less than 20% of the people in Los Angeles who qualify for a federal housing voucher get one. It’s like a lottery. The federal government is even failing to provide for vets at the VA, and the city of L.A. is stepping in. There are lots of reasons to be angry, but anger does not lead to good policy and frustration does not lead to effective solutions.
When it comes to a big crisis like homelessness, you have to use evidence-based solutions. And we know what works for homelessness. You can’t emote your way out of it. You can’t legislate your way out of it. You have to house your way out of it, and you have to serve your way out of it. And what we know in Los Angeles is that we need to move from the angry conversation about homelessness to the on-point conversations about how we house people faster and less expensively, and how we prevent homelessness in the first place — because we’re going to keep digging a hole unless we can prevent people from falling into homelessness.
With 36,000 homeless in the city and construction costs for permanent supportive housing exceeding $500,000 per unit, $1.2 billion in Proposition HHH funds won’t get the job done. Why is the city so deeply fixated on the slow and costly process of building traditional supportive housing?
I have been a consistent advocate for faster and less expensive solutions. I’ve been an advocate for having multiple solutions and multiple strategies, because that’s what you need for homelessness. It’s why I have so aggressively been promoting shared housing and the idea of master-leasing units so people with vouchers can find housing; why I’ve been interested in modular units and family reunification. I believe we have to do everything possible.
Permanent supportive housing is not the city’s only strategy. It’s the one that gets all the attention because it’s expensive. But what we know about permanent supportive housing is that it works for one segment of the homeless population. Permanent supportive housing is the solution for chronic homelessness. That’s people who’ve been homeless for a long time or have some sort of disability, and that’s about 25% of the homeless population. It is expensive but it is 90% successful, one of the best models in the country. Everybody agrees that it’s an evidence-based solution that in the long-term saves money. It’s a lot cheaper to take somebody off the street and put them into housing than it is to leave them on the street.
So I’ve been a big proponent of building as much permanent supportive housing as possible, and we’re doing a lot in my district. But we also need to be focusing on strategies for the rest of the homeless population — the majority of the homeless population that is not chronically homeless — because they’re easier and less expensive to help, and if you get them off the street quickly the homeless population reduces instead of grows. So the role I’ve tried to take on at City Hall and in among elected officials is to try to shift the conversation to multiple strategies and faster and quicker ones.
Is City Hall being receptive?
We are finally starting to make progress on this. I think my colleagues have grown as impatient as I have been for a number of years, and every time I discuss shared housing there’s another member of the council who gets up and endorses the idea. I’m hoping that with the next chunk of state money that we get we will spend a significant share of it on shared housing. Not everybody needs their own [housing] unit, and not everybody needs wraparound services. And shared housing has been an effective solution in my district. I’ve demonstrated it with a pilot project, and I think if we invest in it significantly we will be able to get 10,000 people off the street pretty quickly.
Why has permanent supportive housing been so expensive to build?
Building anything in Los Angeles takes a long time. We actually had an ordinance that would have expedited it, but someone sued and now it’s in court. Someone who did not want a project built in their neighborhood slowed things down for the entire city. The state recently passed a bill that would expedite [projects] and it’s sitting on the governor’s desk. I’m a vigorous proponent and have called on the governor to sign it.
But we have now earmarked the money that voters have set aside, and it will get us over 8,600 units of Prop HHH-funded housing. About 500 of them will be in my district, and we’ll have more permanent supportive housing to come after that. As this starts getting built over the next couple of years, we need to be shifting to other [funding] sources — the county has sources of money, the state has sources of money — and we also need to be shifting to prevention strategies. And that means stopping evictions. That means preserving and creating more affordable housing in the Coastal Zone. We have learned that there are multiple pipelines into homelessness, and it can happen really fast. And there are very few pipelines out, and they’re slow and sclerotic. And the thing I’m trying to do is focus on creating more pipelines out and closing some of the pipelines in.
Could all that money be utilized more effectively?
The HHH money approved by the voters is limited to brick-and-mortar — to permanent supportive housing and to affordable housing, because that’s what the city’s taxing authority was. Now, the average city investment in each of these projects — the city is not spending $500,000 per unit; the city is spending about $120,000 per unit, which is not bad. Everybody asks, ‘Why don’t you just rehab buildings instead?’ Well, we actually have. We’re rehabbing three buildings at the West Los Angeles V.A. campus because the federal government won’t do it … and it turns out rehabbing these buildings was more expensive than units that we’ve done from scratch.
Why are you against the proposal to ban encampments within 500 feet of parks or schools and within 10 feet of a building entrance, and are there limitations you’d support?
I oppose the proposal because it’s BS, and I don’t take kindly to people BS-ing the people I represent. Homelessness is an enormous crisis and it demands honesty from elected officials, not false promises. And this proposal is a series of false promises. It promises people who want encampments to disappear that it will make them disappear, but it won’t. One, it won’t be legally enforceable. And we don’t have enough cops to make every encampment in Los Angeles disappear. It makes a false promise to people who are homeless by saying we will define where you can sleep and where you can’t sleep, when the cumulative effect is essentially making it that you can’t sleep almost anywhere. It’s sort of a wink-wink, nudge-nudge saying it’s complying with the court decision [allowing encampments] when it is directly flying in the face of it.
So I think it’s a bad and irresponsible proposal, and I think it’s actually a counterproductive discussion. The city council has repeatedly spent its time and its energy and its resources talking
about ways to legislate its way out of homelessness instead of having a conversation about how you make housing happen faster and quicker. Instead of focusing on how to get people out of encampments, we keep focusing on how to get them out of sight and out of mind. And it doesn’t work. When I first came into office, I was much more accepting of this approach, and it didn’t work. So I’ve moved on to trying to find evidence-based real solutions.
I think that there are reasonable restrictions the city could legally get away with to prevent encampments near schools and near some of the new shelters and housing that we’re trying to build, in order to get additional public support for them. The way to deal with it is not by legislating where people can be … but legislating where you can have an encampment. Make it about the materials. … The encampments to home program on Skid Row has been an effective strategy, and that’s where we should be focusing our energy — getting people out of encampments and into housing, instead of pretending that we’re going to legislate them away.
What’s going on with the bridge housing planned for Main Street?
The bridge housing is likely to open before the end of the year, hopefully between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think the tents and the trailers will be arriving in the next couple of weeks. This is a program which is designed to be a win-win. It is designed to be an alternative for people who are living on the street to get them a better, surer pathway from the sidewalk into housing. And it’s designed to reduce sidewalk encampments and provide relief for neighborhoods that don’t want sidewalk encampments.
Ours [in Venice] is going to be something special. It’s going to be 154 beds. It will be run by two different providers who have lots of successful experience on the Westside: PATH [People Assisting the Homeless] and SPY [Safe Place for Youth]. One hundred beds for adults and 54 beds for youth — the only youth-specific beds in the bridge housing program, which is appropriate because we have a more youthful population here in this part of town.
And my goal is to have it not in Venice but of Venice. So we’re working on creating partnerships with different organizations and entities in Venice to be a part of it — to help provide services or programming so it can be better integrated, and so that people are actually rooting for it to succeed because they have a stake in it.
Another thing that I think is important to note about the bridge housing program is it came about largely as a result of me and a few others saying that we can’t wait for permanent supportive housing to get people off the street. It was part of my attempt to shift the conversation to more immediate solutions. In doing so, what we did was we listened very carefully to people who were homeless about what was wrong with the current shelter system. And so we’ve designed something which experience has taught us is a lot more effective than what we were doing before.
What was ineffective before?
The old shelter system was only open part of the day. You could not go with your spouse or your family. You couldn’t bring your pet if you had one, and you couldn’t bring more than a backpack of belongings. What effectively the old shelter system said is leave your tribe — leave your belongings and your family and your animals — to be among strangers for 12 hours, and then we’re going to throw your butt out at 5 a.m. … It was a 12-hour warehouse, and it didn’t solve any problems.
You were once homeless. How does that experience inform your perspective?
From being on the edge of homelessness and sleeping in my car, I developed a really deep appreciation for how fragile and broken we all are, and how easy it is to fall down. … [Read more of this response next week.]
Not all homeless are drug abusers, but some are. Not all are mentally ill, but some are. Not all are responsive to help. Where do services end and enforcement begin?
Part of the problem we now face in Los Angeles is a public perception that almost everybody who is homeless is a drug-addicted or mentally ill, service-resistant, criminally inclined person. And that isn’t the reality out there. Only 30%, by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s count, suffer from some form of mental illness or some form of addiction. And the vast majority of people are homeless because of economic insecurity, rising housing prices. We know that domestic violence is a huge contributor to homelessness. That 50% of the women who are homeless are victims of domestic violence. That if you age out of the foster care system, there’s a 40% to 50% chance of becoming homeless. Seniors are an increasingly large population of homelessness in Los Angeles. What we need to be doing is focusing on each individual segment and subpopulation with a different strategy.
If you’re riding the Expo Line, for instance, and you see someone who is visibly mentally ill or on drugs, you identify that person as being homeless and that’s your image of homelessness. What you don’t see at the same time is other people on the train who are homeless and are not exhibiting those behaviors.
And we also need to remember that drugs and mental health is a bit of a chicken or an egg situation. There are people who become homeless because they’re addicted to drugs or because they’re suffering from mental illness, and there are people who become addicted to drugs or fall into mental illness because they’re homeless. And what we know is that the common denominator for helping people who are economically homeless or people who are homeless because of mental or physical illness or because of an addiction is housing. The nationally proven model is housing first.
There are some people who say we shouldn’t give a person a place to live until they get sober or until they’ve got their mental health issues under control. What housing first recognizes is that it is a lot easier to get sober when there’s a roof over your head than when you’re living on the street. It’s a lot easier to get mentally healthy if you have access to medication on a regular basis and you have counselors present. And it’s also more cost-effective overall to get people off the street and start getting them into services. So there still is a common denominator of needing to provide housing, even for people who look and act disruptive when they’re on the street.
The anonymous Instagram parody account @Boninville is part of a broader effort criticizing the city in general — and Mike Bonin in particular — for the proliferation of homeless encampments in Westside neighborhoods
When Bonin was asked a couple years back why he opposed this kind of housing near his own home, he said he had a two year old son and it wasn’t safe for his son. This was reported in the Triangle. It’s OK for the rest of us to deal with it but not him personally.
Hurrah for Mike Bonin! I’m a HUGE supporter and know his heart is in the right place. You can’t change in a few years what has taken decades to create. People who aren’t doing anything personally to make life better for anyone else or engage in a positive way don’t deserve a seat at the table. Instead of trolling those are ARE trying to make a difference on social media, they should get off their asses and be part of the solution.
Bonin’s actually been working in Venice in city government for almost 20 years.
What solution? Homelessness is on the rise. More people are on the streets then ever before! There are more encampments then ever before. The beach has become more dangerous then ever before. Tell me the specific policy changes that Bonin has proposed that are working? Why is it when one points out the proliferation of Bonin’s rank failures it is our fault as residents he can’t accomplish anything? He has been part of the problem for over two decades, six as a council member and another eight as chief of staff to his predecessor. His heart is in the right place? Why does that matter if it doesn’t translate to results? He believes keeping the homeless in Venice is his priority versus building and finding permanent housing in far cheaper locales. The homeless don’t populate Central Park in Manhattan, why is it acceptable to maintain the un-housed at Venice Beach, a tourist destination that draws 16 million? Do people want to see this scourge and epidemic? Why not build permanent housing elsewhere faster, better and cheaper? If someone is homeless they want a place to live, they are not entitled to a beachfront condo. This ridiculous kind of thought pattern borders on insanity. You have not for profits obsessed with building ghettos in Venice versus actually helping these people get off the streets because getting them off the street is not the objective and never was. Bonin is an embarrassing example of incompetence in action and this article is nothing more than designed to rehabilitate his unpopularity here in Venice that will follow him to the next position he decides to run for when he is finally term-limited, but the damage is already done. Bonin hates Venice and the residents who own or rent, raise a family or have a business here. He wants people on the street and he is succeeding.
When I was growing up Venice was always known as where the slums met the sea. It used to be affordable decades ago and always populated with the Homeless and odd people. It’s only been the last 20 years or so that property skyrocketed changing the Neighborhood. It’s Venice, and if anyone chose to buy there you had to know what the neighborhood has historically been. I would never expect much change there, except that finally there is some work going on to get some of the people off the street. It only took 50 or so years. It’s about time and Thanks Mike!
A lot of heart, not a lot of smart. This is a national issue being played out in our neighborhoods. The state’s that Greyhound their “homeless” here should be bearing the costs and the inconveniences. Having lost bikes and patience… Bonin and Garcetti are aiming for prominence at our expense
He won’t take any responsibility and chooses to blame previous administrations for this crisis. He refuses to enforce any existing laws regarding daytime sleeping/blocking of sidewalks. He clearly has a vendetta against Venice specifically because he blames the area for his previous addiction issues. I have been told my more than 1 police officer that they want to enforce the daytime camping laws but have been specifically told by Bonins office not to.
Young kids are laying in our doorways in the middle of the day exhausted and drugged out! Look at this picture that was taken near your 3rd Ave Encampment in Venice and tell us again why you have not failed us!! https://imgur.com/a/JICJFi0
“Where do services end and enforcement begin?” This was such an important question that I feel Bonin basically dodged. I live right next to one of the biggest encampments in Mar Vista, and it is incredibly unsafe for both the people living in the encampment and the surrounding residents. The amount of drug use and drug dealing that goes on is beyond the pale, and people have psychotic episodes in our alley on a regular basis. I have been chased to my car and sexually harrassed, and I have had to call 911 while I watched someone high on drugs threaten my husband’s life in our alley. Even worse, there are drug dealers and gangs fighting over the encampment, which has brought tagging and multiple shootings. I am worried someone in the encampment or a surrounding resident will be hurt or worse. I’m also concerned about the urination and feces all over our alley and neighborhood. It’s one of the unsafest situations I’ve ever witnessed, and I just cannot fathom how it is allowed.
Mike is clearly out over his ski’s and has resulted to re-directing the blame… He’s been in office for 2 terms and the quality of life in and around Venice has only gotten worse. Crime is up, Vagrancy is up! Blight is Up! He talks about inaction but he’s the one in office! Clearly whatever he’s been proposing, whatever he’s been doing, is NOT working. And he fails to recognize that bad policy has only been an invitation for lazy, criminal vagrants to populate the streets.
Get rid of the RV’s, Get rid of the criminal vagrants taking advantage of poor policy and your homeless issue gets demonstrably easier to work on. Criminal Vagrants and lazy RV bums are exacerbating the true issue of homelessness. And if you can’t afford to live here, MOVE!
And one of the biggest problems of his politics is right here in this statement… “as well as for the people who voted for me” -> He thinks he is responsible only to the people that voted for him. His ego thinks he won “by a landslide”. But when less than 10% of the voting population turned out at the polls and he only got half of those votes, it’s not an equitable representation of the community. Mike, you need to realize that you are responsible for representing even the people that oppose and challenge you. Because I guarantee that come next election (that you rigged to give yourself an extra two years in office) you will be VOTED OUT!
You have
Well, there are some inaccuracies in this article. For starters, the LA Times conducted their own analysis and found that the public’s perception that most of the homeless are either mentally ill or suffering from poor physical health or severe substance abuse– is true.
When they examined the results from the results from the last count they found that in reality, 67% were suffering from mental disorders or substance abuse.
Mike says only 30% are but the Times found that the criteria being used by the government doesn’t tell the whole story and leads to a very different interpretation of the statistics.
Here’s an excerpt from the LA Times:
“The Times examined more than 4,000 questionnaires taken as part of this year’s point-in-time count and found that about 76% of individuals living outside on the streets reported being, or were observed to be, affected by mental illness, substance abuse, poor health or a physical disability.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which conducts the annual count, narrowly interpreted the data to produce much lower numbers. In its presentation of the results to elected officials earlier this year, the agency said only 29% of the homeless population had either a mental illness or substance abuse disorder and, therefore, 71% “did not have a serious mental illness and/or report substance use disorder.”
The Times, however, found that about 67% had either a mental illness or a substance abuse disorder. Individually, substance abuse affects 46% of those living on the streets — more than three times the rate previously reported — and mental illness, including post-traumatic stress disorder, affects 51% of those living on the streets, according to the analysis. ” LA TIMES 10/7/2019
I think this is important because it’s what the general public is experiencing, I agree that there may be large numbers of people who are homeless who have just aged out of foster care or temporarily lost their housing but it definitely feels like the percentage of homeless suffering with severe mental illness and drug abuse is much higher than what Mike is quoting. And, I believe this really matters because if you are going to try to solve the problem, you need to know what the needs of these people are in order to make sure that you can get them into permanent housing. You can’t just start opening up subsidized apartments in multi-use buildings to large numbers of mentally ill people. Those people need mental health services- not just a roof over their heads.
The one issue that I personally find very frustrating is the filth. I don’t understand how anyone- politician or policy maker can not acknowledge
the need for temporary services to at the very least keep these encampments cleaner? Where are the mobile shower units? Where are the porta-pottys? Where are the trash cans for gosh sakes? We have allocated millions of dollars to try to house people but what about allocating a very small sum of money towards providing these encampments with the ability to maintain some sort of human dignity and personal hygiene? I drive by these encampments every day and not one has a trash can. Not one. Instead, the streets and sidewalks and wetlands are riddled with trash, human feces, stolen bikes and grocery carts packed sky high with refuse. If LA is truly committed to helping people they should at the very least be able to provide these basic services.
I have heard the argument that if they do- then people will feel that they are in fact legalizing or accepting these encampments as permanent housing options but I feel that’s really not a good enough argument. Cleaning up these encampments would do a lot to appease neighboring homeowners while more permanent solutions are worked out. These encampments are becoming more than just an unsightly nuisance, they are becoming a public safety and public health issue.
I agree with Mike that our old system of shelters was not only outdated but not designed to handle the types of homelessness we are currently dealing with. Many shelters didn’t even accept women let alone pets or multiple family members. But, instead of just trying to fast track new projects, we do need to invest in the master leasing program that Mike spoke of and we do need to provide emergency services to these encampments to protect the public health of those living inside the encampments as well as the general public.
@boninville is genius. Keep ’em coming