Currently in Los Angeles, California the ruling class is expanding the use of police to enforce Los Angeles municipal code 41.18. This code mandates no “sitting, lying, or sleeping or storing, using, maintaining or placing personal property in the public right of way”. The end of the moratorium against eviction and rent increases, initiated because of the COVID epidemic, will end on January 31st.
Prior to the moratorium there were about 40,000 to 50,000 evictions per year but at the height of the pandemic evictions dropped to 13,000 annually. More than 30,000 could face eviction by the January 31st deadline. Evictions are associated with severe health and psychological consequences for families and children. Since landlords often turn away applicants with recent evictions on their records, families will experience increased periods of homelessness and restricted residential mobility.
In the mid-term election for mayor of Los Angeles, Rick Caruso, billionaire mall developer, spent 100 million dollars of his own money campaigning on a platform of “fighting crime” by expanding the police department and “fighting homelessness”.
Abolition of Criminalization
Throughout the city, both activists and residents are demanding the abolition of criminalizing homelessness. Organizations throughout Los Angeles such as LA Community Action Network (LACAN) promote and engage in monitoring and documenting Los Angeles city’s actions that criminalize residents who have to sleep on the streets because housing is too expensive. These organization have created community watch teams, integrating the affected person on the ground into the fight through Know Your Rights training while politicizing encampments with signs and demands. Efforts include organizing unhoused residents to go to city council meetings to speak out, and introducing lawyers on the ground to people who are being affected by the polices of criminalization such as LAMC 41.18.
To understand this fight, one must look at the history of Los Angeles. When homeless workers first came to this city with the completion of the Santa Fe Railroad rail line from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1885) they arrived at the train station and were immediately put to work. If they didn’t like the working conditions, they were thrown in the LA County jail which was just across the street from the train station. Without work and shelter the city’s first chain gang was created out of the homeless people.
The Battle for Housing
Blacks comprise 60% of the city’s unhoused residents but are just 8% of the population. A recently released recording caught members of the City Council conspiring to disenfranchise Black city council members and their constituents. This involved Council President Nury Martrinez (who resigned afterward), Kevin Delon (who refused to resign), and Gil Cedillo (who had already been defeated for re-election). Such backroom dealings were loudly challenged by the resounding victory of Karen Bass, the city’s first Black woman mayor, but an ugly scar of racism remains on the city.
Business Improvement Districts (BIDS) are being presented as providing economic development and opportunity, though they barge into a community, take it over, and gain revenue from gentrifying the property. BIDS hire their own poorly trained police to harass and intimidate poor residents in areas on the verge of gentrification. Until organizations like Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) protested, these poorly trained police were armed.
These ideas of complete control of public space were first generated by Chief of Police Bratton and his theory of “broken windows” policing in 1990. In the name of the “safer cities initiative” the city brought in 110 additional police making Skid Row the 2nd most heavily policed area in the world after Baghdad, Iraq. These deadly ruling class policies resulted in Los Angeles being declared the “meanest city in the US” (National Coalition for the Homeless, Sept. 8, 2022).
Currently, in Los Angeles there are 5 homeless people dying every day and that’s a very conservative estimate. The 2028 Olympic games will take place in the city, leading to ever more deadly consequences, just as the building of a corporate-owned arena for basketball games has significantly changed the downtown area from an area with reasonable (for LA) rents to an unaffordable entertainment locale. This kind of development is happening all over the globe.
A Better World
However, this city is hopeful. A very significant number of Latino voters helped elect Karen Bass, a congresswoman who is Black and whose opponent, Rick Caruso claimed that Italians are “Latinos” and spent millions of his own money trying to get elected. Karen Bass was elected with the highest vote count ever in an LA City election.
As Martha Escudero, a Reclaimer occupying a vacant house in El Sereno, states “we’re also utilizing electoral politics in this, and I feel we should use every tool possible in conjunction with direct action so they hear us.” Martha explains that “we are developing a people’s assembly where from the ground up we hold our politicians in some way to demand the elected officials represent more of the people in our community”. She adds, “We are part of nature, that we must abide by nature, that’s the law we abide by, we don’t abide by other laws. We deserve housing, we deserve safety, we deserve beauty. So, we need to create a system that is sustainable for living beings.”
Homelessness is caused by poverty, driven by lack of jobs, high rents, gentrification, and lack of access to mental and physical health care. The city of Los Angeles must be held accountable to act to bring rents down to 30% of income As General Dogon, a resident of Skid Row and Fight Back organizer from LA CAN states…”it’s all about revolution now, taking it to the next step, organizing the people and creating a serious fight back on the streets. It all starts where it is profit over the people.”
