INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority conducted its annual count of the homeless last week and staff from the Los Angeles Times tagged along with the city of Inglewood’s homeless coordinator who gave them some rather odd instructions.
Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. has repeatedly insisted that we don’t have a homeless problem like either the City or County of Los Angeles, however, the homeless count numbers reveal there were over 750 at any given time on Inglewood’s streets in 2022. The numbers increased by 43% from 2020.
EVERY city has an issue with homelessness including @CityofInglewood pic.twitter.com/bL2WrJEBuG
— 2UrbanGirls (@2UrbanGirls) January 16, 2023
The unhoused are routinely being ran off of the property adjacent to the 105 freeway at Imperial Hwy and Prairie Ave. in sweeps conducted by Caltrans and California Highway Patrol while a family lives across the street on an Inglewood sidewalk.
Update: NO offer of housing. They moved across the street! @ChrysalisSoCal is on scene to CLEAN the site, not house anyone. https://t.co/CEYe3yqteN pic.twitter.com/41CeGu2qXZ
— 2UrbanGirls (@2UrbanGirls) January 10, 2023
They just cleared this area (5) days ago and they’re back. https://t.co/CEYe3yqteN pic.twitter.com/m0H9XVKI8A
— 2UrbanGirls (@2UrbanGirls) January 16, 2023
They return as quickly as they are shooed away. A consistent problem in Inglewood, that impedes getting the unhoused into affordable housing, are the delays in it being built.
Related: Affordable housing projects in Inglewood have stalled for years
The City has entered into multiple affordable housing agreements that have never come to fruition dating back to 2009. With the approval of the SoFi Stadium, the city is moving towards market-rate housing which is unattainable to the average resident, especially those on fixed incomes.
Back to the homeless count.
Related: LA Council members seek third-party homeless count, audit of previous counts
Last year elected officials in Los Angeles questioned the numbers noting that certain areas were identified as having no homeless despite residents seeing otherwise. The ride-along between the Times and Inglewood provides a glimpse as to how that could be.
As they drove around looking to count the homeless, writer Carla Hall wrote about the odd instructions they were given.
“Maybe we could ask him if he’s homeless,” I say, only half-joking as we drive past the bus shelter bench a second time. No one in the car thinks that’s a good idea. As volunteers left the deployment center Wednesday evening, the coordinator, Cinder Eller-Kimbell, had instructed us not to shine our flashlights in the eyes of homeless people or talk to them. I had heard the same the previous six times I embarked on this count. And what would he have said anyway? “Why, yes, I am homeless.”
Why is Kimbell preventing volunteers from speaking with and verifying someone’s housing status for the homeless count?
The state is mandating City’s adopt plans to address affordable housing.
“The housing crisis we are experiencing in California was decades in the making, but we are taking aggressive steps with an all-of-the-above approach, which includes unprecedented actions to bring about accountability at the local level,” said Governor Newsom last November after creating the Housing Accountability Unit. “Understanding that we have no time to waste, in just one year, the Housing Accountability Unit has moved with a fierce intensity to break the status quo and remove bureaucratic roadblocks.”
Asm. Tina McKinnor, who represents Inglewood, made her first act in office to pass legislation related to affordable housing.
Assembly Bill 1743 was part of a 38-bill housing package signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom designed to increase housing production, expand housing financing and help millions of Californians access safe, affordable housing.
The bill asks local governments a very simple, but important question – after all the work of this legislature, the governor and our local governments over the past several years to address the housing crisis, how much housing was actually produced?
Our guess is Inglewood won’t have to be held accountable if the numbers don’t indicate there’s a problem to address.
