Los Angeles Mayor could hold secret to solving Seattle homeless crisis

KIRO Radio’s Jason Rantz met up with Eric Garcetti, his former college professor and current mayor of Los Angeles, at the Democratic National Convention. The pair spoke about some Seattle problems that LA is dealing with and Garcetti offered advice on homelessness and minimum wage.

Rantz: Seattle and LA are similar because they are experiencing a homelessness problem. What is LA doing to get it under control?

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Garcetti: We pulled together a West Coast summit of mayors – Mayor Ed Murray was there, along with myself and the mayor’s of Portland, Eugene, and San Francisco. We found that the same things are happening: There are cheap drugs on the street, people are getting out of the criminal justice system, addicts are camped out and there’s a housing crisis. Our economic success is the good news, the bad news is rents are sky high. In LA, we started with homeless vets – about 20 percent of our population. I’m a Navy veteran and accepted that challenge. We have housed more than 6,000 homeless vets over the last two years, the most in the country. I’ll tell you what works: It’s not housing by itself, giving services on the street, making their tents better, or feeding them. It’s combining housing with services. Because almost every homeless person has a story. They either have a mental health challenge, they need job training, they need childcare, they have a substance abuse issue, they are a veteran with PTSD. If you think there’s a one-size-fits-all thing of building a bunch of housing – that will fail. They will be back on the street in months. Or if you only give them services, that never solves the problem. We’re finally seeing that move forward, but like Seattle, the explosion is not in the overall population, it’s the homeless on the street. And we’re calling for federal help.

Rantz: Where does that money come from?

Garcetti: At the federal level, they have shown that they can do it. Cash vouchers, which is what are provided to homeless veterans, were the difference-makers in LA. We put local money to match that for services for mental health, job training, and childcare, but it was really because the federal vouchers were there. And they made them work for a city like LA, and probably would for Seattle, by upping the limit. Because if you have a voucher for $1,000, find me an apartment for that price in Seattle. So they increased the amounts to cover that. The federal government has those types of discretionary dollars. Second, the money could come out of what they put into health care. The federal government pays so much for Medicaid. In LA, we are taking medical dollars that used to go to the emergency room and are putting it into housing. Because, as a doctor told me, “What’s the best thing for a homeless person who has diabetes, on our streets and addicted to some sort of drugs and has mental health problems? It’s getting him or her in housing first. I can treat medical problems if they’re in housing. But if they’re on the streets, they hear more voices, do more drugs.’

Rantz: It’s the root cause argument. It’s not that once somebody has a house they’re not homeless. It’s about why are you homeless to begin with?

Garcetti: It’s about investing more upfront. We’re going to our voters this fall to ask them to approve a $1 billion bond to build that sort of support of public housing. It’ll cost about $24 a month. Or, to put in Seattle terms, a few trips to Starbucks. And we think this will pass even though you need a two-thirds vote in California.

Rantz: Los Angeles, like Seattle, is on a pathway to $15 minimum wage. Any concerns about unintended consequences? I think a lot of people screamed that the end is near too early, but you can’t claim in Seattle that there’s been no downside.

Garcetti: Of course there is disruption. But we know there is a net gain, net winners. In LA, we’re returning it to a level that it used to be in the 60s. So if people were able to eat out at restaurants, afford the prices there, give people a decent wage, I think this economy can sustain it. And we looked at a place in poor and rich cities in California who had done this and they hadn’t experienced job loss compared to places next door. They actually had more money because it’s being spent on main street and recycled.

Taken from Monday’s edition of the Jason Rantz Show on KIRO Radio. Edited for clarity.

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