The Homeless and the Poor

A report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development about the reduction of the number of homeless people nationwide speaks well of this administration’s efforts. As HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan noted, the agency is well on its course to meet its goal of ending homelessness by 2020.

But the national trend is not duplicated in Los Angeles County. While the national rate of decline was 6%, the county’s homeless population actually grew 15% between 2011 and 2013.

The homeless population count of 57,737 in Los Angeles is lower only than New York’s.

Sadly, local homelessness statistics are in accordance with numbers released this month by another federal agency: the U.S. Census.

An alternative method of measuring poverty shows that California has the highest rate of impoverished people in the country. The alternate calculation increases the poverty percentage from 16.5% to 23.8%.

But there’s another impressive number that we’d like to highlight: the Legislative Analyst’s Office said this week that California will likely end this fiscal year with a budget surplus of $2.4 billion.

If the state stays on its current fiscal course, it will have a budget surplus of more than $27 billion by 2020.

We are not about to suggest that Sacramento should change the responsible way it is now handling finances, but this may be the right time for the state to begin to reconsider the drastic cuts to social services we’ve seen in the last years.

We are in agreement with Secretary Donovan’s words, warning Congress not to cut those federal programs that are helping to reduce homelessness. “We simply can’t balance our budget on the backs of those living in the margins”.