Los Angeles: "Tiny...Tenement-Style Apartments" For Homeless? Eekers! Better That They Live Under The Overpass!
There's an LA Times editorial about building housing for the homeless -- and a proposed streamlined appeal process. Within the piece, there's this:
Perhaps the most significant feature of the ordinance would free developers from maximum density requirements for their site. Developers would still be restricted by height limitations, setbacks and rules on total buildable space. But most permanent supportive housing developments feature smaller units and more common space -- where residents may gather for meetings, workshops or events -- so building more densely makes sense. This would not lead to tiny, unlivable tenement-style apartments, city officials say, because there are other rules that would protect against it.
Note that they call the "tiny ... tenement-style apartments" unlivable.
But they aren't.
I've lived in one.
When I first moved to Manhattan, I had a 10 x 12-foot room in the George Washington "Hotel," a converted SRO. It had no kitchen, a bathroom so small you couldn't sit on the toilet and close the door, and it was fucking fabulous.
Yes, it was tiny. But it allowed me to live alone in New York City, right off the proverbial turnip truck, and be in a great neighborhood -- at 23rd and Lex, just blocks from gorgeous Gramercy Park.
A thought: Maybe the people who decide whether itsy-bitsy apartments are livable should be the people who live in them?
And really, for a homeless person, to have a roof over one's head and a room with a bed -- that seems pretty great. Is it really terrible that it's a 10 x 12 room? It wasn't terrible for me.
Think of how much more housing cities could provide if they allowed people to live as I did back when I first got to New York.
Meanwhile, here in Venice, our sellout of a City Councilperson, Mike Bonin, wants to build housing for the homeless two blocks from the beach. Yes, that's right -- beach-adjacent housing for the homeless...near no grocery stores or other stores or services...though there's a liquor store kitty-corner and a number of chichi restaurants right down the block.
Hey, Mike -- maybe just give every homeless person their own Bel-Air mansion. (Psst, don't forget the tennis courts and the helipad!)
The majority of the homeless are homeless because of mental illness.
I guarantee you the second one of 'those people' urinate on the local school fence or bite your average neurotypical on the street the city is gonna get sued
lujlp at September 1, 2017 7:30 AM
One of the problems with building high density occupancy buildings in neighborhoods not designed for them is that the utility infrastructure (city and building) was not built to support that. With 800+ sf apartments, the roads, parking, sewage, water, and electricity lines were all built to support the occupancy level of the building. If you cut those into 400sf apartments, you double the load on the infrastructure. If you cut them down to dorm room size (≈200sf), you quadruple the load.
Amy, you've complained that the parking situation in your neighborhood is terrible because of all the businesses. Imagine if the city doubled or quadrupled the number of people living in the neighborhood.
As luj points out, a great many of the homeless suffer from mental illness. The law says we cannot simply lock people up in an asylum by saying they're mentally ill, probably a good law, but with some unintended consequences for those who really are mentally ill.
During the sixties and seventies, the new psychotropic drugs were going to take care of all the mental illness and let the mentally ill lead fulfilling lives outside of the asylum.
Roslyn Carter, the First Lady of Georgia and, later, the US, was a big advocate of drugging the mentally ill over locking them up. Movies like One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest supported that position by portraying mental hospitals as readjustment camps, the patients as overmedicated nonconformists, and the attendants as sadists.
Pat Brown, then-governor of California and father of the current governor, signed a law that reduced funding for mental hospitals and released the mentally ill, to be cared for by case workers and pharmaceuticals. It didn't work out as planned.
The out-sized belief in the power of psychotropic drugs to contain mental illness continued into the Reagan gubernatorial and presidential administrations where funding was again cut for mental health facilities, preferring the cost savings of using case 9-5 workers and drugs versus 24/7 staffed hospitals.
Critics said Reagan didn't understand mental illness. Possibly not, but methinks the people advocating for the mentally ill don't understand it either.
Putting the mentally-ill homeless into micro apartments may seem like a caring thing to do, but these are people who, by and large, have shown almost no ability to care for themselves up to this point. Will giving them a micro apartment with little-to-no supervision really help them?
The fantasy about mental illness continues. How many movies and TV shows do you see that portray a mentally-ill person "off his meds" having the time of his life and being truly free for the first time in his life?
We've already seen dozens of public shootings perpetrated by a mentally-ill person "off his meds." So, if the mental hospital is not the solution and a barely-supervised medication protocol is not the solution, what is? And what price are we as a society willing to pay?
Conan the Grammarian at September 1, 2017 8:13 AM
In the early 1900s, a flood of immigrants to NYC were staying with friends and relatives to the tune of 10 people per room. As soon as they got on their feet of course they moved to better apartments. Zoning laws to prevent "squalid" conditions act exactly like a high minimum wage, preventing the poorest from affording housing. It is characteristic of blue cities like San Fran and NYC that they restrict the supply of housing, always for "good reasons" so that prices skyrocket. Then they try to force developers to build low income housing as part of any development, which acts as a tax on development, further raising prices. Then they institute rent control, which is a disincentive to build any more housing. But they never learn and blame it on...bad luck.
cc at September 1, 2017 10:51 AM
But they never learn and blame it on...bad luck.
That's not completely true. They also blame it on republicans.
dee nile at September 1, 2017 12:45 PM
I've been close to homeless. That would be horrifying and dangerous. Luckily men would always let me crash with them. I guess that wasn't the safest strategy either but you do what you've got to do.
I see having a room where I can store necessities and lock as life-saving. From there I could work and climb my way out. I could find a job and keep one.
If I made it into a shelter or out on the streets, I can't see any hope. I guess it would be easier in the age of the internet. I wouldn't need a home phone or a physical address. I think 90% or more of my energy would go to survival though, leaving little energy to get back on track. Hygiene and staying alive through the heat and cold would be like accomplishing a daily marathon. I wouldn't be able to sleep because I would be protecting my precious Smartphone, my only tether to society.
Jen at September 1, 2017 4:39 PM
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