Santa
Monica’s Homeless Population
Drops, County Census Finds |
By Jorge Casuso
October 12 -- The number
of homeless living on Santa Monica's
streets dropped by nearly a third
over the past two years, thanks to
better counting methods and the City's
push to house the chronic homeless,
City officials said Thursday.
The results of the 2007 Greater Los Angeles Homeless
Count found that there were 1,506 homeless individuals
in Santa Monica, down from 1,991 in 2005, or a
25 percent drop, according to the Los Angeles
Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).
Of those, the numbers living on the streets,
as opposed to shelters and other temporary housing,
was 661, down from 949 two years ago, or a 30
percent drop.
Santa Monica’s count reflected a countywide
decrease in the nation’s largest homeless
population – from 88,345 in 2005 to 73,000
homeless this year, a 17 percent decline.
Almost half were chronic homeless, meaning they
suffer from at least one disability and have lived
in the streets for an extended period.
“We feel confident that this is a more
accurate count,” said Julie Rusk, who is
in charge of homeless services for the City of
Santa Monica. “We have a lot more digging
in to do with the data. We’re really going
to look at the census.”
While the countywide count tabulated the number
of homeless in 41 percent of the county’s
census tracts, 64 percent of Santa Monica’s
tracts were included in the census, resulting
in a more accurate count that relied less on extrapolations,
City officials said.
“The methodology was the same (as two years
ago), but it was refined and improved,”
Rusk said. “They were more strategic about
defining hot spots. More of these were counted
and there were fewer extrapolations.”
City officials also credited the drop to a shift
in focus from providing temporary services to
finding housing for the “chronic homeless,”
those who have lived
on the streets the longest.
“We have continued to expand and refine
the focus on the chronic street population,”
Rusk said. “I think some of the improvements
we’ve made hopefully have decreased that
number.”
The federally required biannual study found that
on a given night in the Los Angeles Continuum
of Care service area a total of 68,608 people
are homeless.
Of those, 57,166 people (83 percent) live on
the street and 11,442 people (17 percent) live
in either emergency shelters or transitional housing
facilities, according to county officials.
The homeless population living within the City
of Los Angeles is estimated at 40,144.
The Los Angeles Continuum of Care boundaries
do not include the cities of Glendale, Long Beach
and Pasadena, which reported a total homeless
population of 5,094, boosting the countywide figure
to 73,702.
In addition, the study estimates that over the
course of a year, an estimated 152,261 people
are homeless in the county.
“While the numbers are lower, Los Angeles
remains the ‘homeless capital’ of
the nation,” said Rebecca Isaacs, LAHSA’s
executive director. “The situation is still
extremely serious.
“Clearly, a great deal of work remains
to be done to reduce and end homelessness in our
County,” Isaacs said.
The study was conducted over a period of three
evenings, from January 23 to 25, 2007 when more
than 1,100 volunteers and trained homeless guides
canvassed a sample of 505 out of 1,886 census
tracts in the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, LAHSA
officials said.
An independent research group, Applied Survey
Research (ASR), in conjunction with a team of
statisticians from UCLA, used advanced sampling
calculations to estimate the Continuum-wide homeless
populations.
Nearly 600 shelters and institutions participated
in the shelter count, and more than 3,200 face-to-face
surveys with homeless individuals were conducted
on the street and in shelters.
The only increases in the homeless population
were found in the Metro Los Angeles and San Gabriel
Valley Service Planning Areas (SPAs), and they
were “slight,” according to county
officials.
Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles saw the number
of homeless people jump from 3,668 in 2005 to
5,131 in 2007.
“The results of the study indicate that
Skid Row remains a unique concentration of homeless
people representing one of the most densely populated
areas in the United States,” county officials
wrote in a statement released Thursday.
Some 49 percent of those participating in the
Homeless Survey met the HUD definition for chronically
homeless, meaning they have at least one disabling
condition and have been homeless for one or more
years, or have been homeless at least four times
in the past three years.
A housing shortage in the county contributed
to the 83 percent of the homeless living on the
street, county officials said.
“There has been little growth in the number
of shelters and housing for homeless and low-income
housing in the last 2 years and many homeless
people are discouraged or turned away,”
county officials wrote.
Within the 30 days prior to taking the survey,
35 percent of respondents reported that they had
tried to access a Los Angeles County shelter or
transitional housing program or both, and 45 percent
stated they had been turned away.
The most common cause of homelessness among those
surveyed was the loss of a job, followed by eviction,
conflict with a family member or friend and problems
with alcohol or drugs.
“The high number of people who are still
homeless demonstrates to all of us in Los Angeles
why this needs to be an ongoing high priority,”
said Larry Adamson, LAHSA commission chair.
“We must continue to work towards a comprehensive
and cooperative plan to ensure that no one is
left on the streets,” Adamson said.
For the complete 2007 Greater Los
Angeles Homeless Count report, please
visit the Los Angeles Homeless Services
Authority website at www.lahsa.org.
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