A couple of years ago, a photographer friend of mine asked me to write something for an issue of a photography magazine that he publishes. I asked him what he wanted the piece to be about, how long it should be, what format, etc., etc., and his reply was: “Whatever you want it to be about, as long as you want it to be, and whatever format you want.” Yeah, I know, a writer’s carte blanche! I wrote the following two related pieces in 2023, but did not want to post them here until the magazine was published, which took a bit longer than expected (July of this year). It’s two years later but things have not changed, at least certainly not for the better. The city is trying to clean up the encampments that pop up all over the city, but it has become a game of “encampment-relocation-roulette.” Yesterday, on my morning walk through an urban park, the powers that be were forcing all those camped out on the fringes of the park to pack up there stuff and leave, which they did. This morning, on that same walk, there were already several more tents in the exact some place as yesterday’s eviction!
The first piece is a free-form poem, which I am attaching as a pdf because of the unique formatting. To read it, just click on the title (“A Long Way From Home”) and the pdf will magically appear. The related essay follows the poem, and yes, the order is important!
“A Change Is Gonna Come…Maybe!
There is ample proof out there in the world that “change” takes time, and that “social change” often takes much more than merely time. This may come as a bit of a shock to many who have embraced the old proverb “good things come to those who wait.” There is ample evidence that waiting patiently often devolves into impatiently waiting, and we all know what usually follows that. My title comes from a 60s anthem for social change, Sam Cooke’s 1963 hit song with the same title, minus the “maybe.” It begins: “I was born by the river / in a little tent / Oh, and just like the river, / I’ve been running ever since.” The “river” is now the “street,” but the “tent” . . .well, that has not changed. And the people? They are simply running in place. Twenty-seven years later (1990), The Scorpions released “Wind of Change,” and while there are no “tents,” the sentiment is eerily similar. The last verse perhaps promising hope for the future: “Take me (take me) to the magic of the moment / On a glory night (a glory night) / Where the children of tomorrow dream away (dream away) / In the wind of change (the wind of change).” Finally, sixteen years later (2006, and 43 years after Cooke), John Mayer released “Waiting on the World to Change,” and while the song is not specifically about homelessness, it certainly could be. The opening chorus’s rallying cry: “So we keep waiting (waiting) / Waiting on the world to change / We keep on waiting (waiting) / Waiting on the world to change / It’s hard to beat the system / When we’re standing at a distance / So we keep waiting on (waiting) / Waiting on the world to change.”
The musical analogies serve two purposes here. Firstly, they illustrate that the need for “change” has always been at the forefront of evolving societies. Secondly, the homeless situation in Los Angeles (and no doubt in many other cities across the country) can, in many ways, be compared to a piece of music with its highs and lows, crescendos, and oft repeated chorus lines. The only thing that is missing from the “song” of homelessness is the coda, as there has never been a “satisfactory close.” It is 2023, another seventeen years later, and the “people” are no longer running in place, instead they are stuck in place waiting, waiting…waiting for change. One cannot help but feel like they are “waiting for Godot!” The release date of Mayer’s song is interestingly coincidental as it is same year the city of Los Angeles, after federal courts upheld civil rights challenges to the city’s cracking down on homeless people without providing shelter, “settled litigation by signing the Jones agreement, which allowed homeless people to sleep overnight on sidewalks.” And here we are. But first, how we, as a society, look at change, more importantly social change.
Emmaline Soken-Huberty defines social change as a “transformation of cultures, institutions, and functions.” As can be expected, these types of fundamental changes are often very slow as there are a variety of moving parts and forces at work, “many of which resist disruptions of the status quo.” All societies go through these kinds of changes, and one only needs to look back over time to understand that the so-called “modern” society we now live in is vastly different from what it looked like a hundred years ago. Look back even further and it would most likely be unrecognizable in comparison. Soken-Huberty posits that there are three main theories of social change: “evolutionary, functionalist, and conflict.” These theoretical categories are useful as a template of sorts, in that they provide a “macro” look at social change. As the name would suggest, the “evolutionary” theory gained prominence in the 19th century as Darwin’s theory of evolution came into fashion as a way of looking at how societies advance (using a biological model) from “simple to more complex.” The downside of this theory is that it led many to conclude (and I would argue that many still believe this), that Western societies must be “superior” because of their “advanced” state.
Functionalist theory, as its name suggests, likens society to the human body, in that each part is like an organ. This way of looking at change, quite simply, is saying that “individual parts (organs) can’t survive on their own.” In other words, all parts of a society must be harmonious in order for it to function, always trying to work its way towards stabilization. “If, and when, problems occur, they are most likely temporary, but they do need attention from the other parts.” Critics of this theory contend that it tends to ignore that a society’s elite often creates “a mirage of harmony and stability, while also failing to factor in race, class, and gender.” One need only look at what is going on in the world today to understand the criticism.
And finally, conflict theory. This theory “states that society is by nature unequal and competitive.” While this way of looking at change does adhere somewhat to evolutionary theory, it has been pointed out, most notably by Karl Marx, that each new phase of “evolution” did not necessarily result in “something better than before.” In this model, and in a somewhat similar vein to functionalist theory, “the rich and powerful control the rest of society by exploiting vulnerable groups. This sows conflict, provoking people to action, and as a result, social change occurs. Some examples of monumental social change over time include, but definitely not limited to: The Reformation, the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, the Civil Rights Movement, the feminist movement, the LGBTQ+ rights movement, and the green movement. As is often the case with large scale change, many of these are ongoing and/or still evolving.
Given the above examples of change, it should not be surprising that the less fortunate in any given society are the ones that will have to wait the longest for any kind of changes to occur, if in fact they every do. Unfortunately, those that find themselves living on city streets are even more vulnerable than the “less fortunate,” as they are not even on the bottom rung of the ladder to the top, and their voices are the least audible of all. In November of 1977, a year before his death, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey spoke about the treatment of the weakest members of a society as a reflection of its government: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
If the history of homelessness in Los Angeles tells us anything, it is that governments, at both the state and local levels, have failed Humphrey’s “moral” test miserably and repeatedly. Looking back at Los Angeles Times articles written about homelessness and related issues over the past fifty years (1973-2023), presents the reader with an unfolding story of promises, plans, waste, misunderstanding, frustration, and no solution; then as new government(s) are ushered into to power, and the story picks up where it left off, more promises, more plans, more waste, more misunderstanding, more frustration, and still no solution. The 1973 start date for my research may seem arbitrary, but it is around this date that I began to read more and more articles about homelessness in Los Angeles, although they really begin to ramp upwards around 1985. In reality, the problem goes back much further than this date, but it was apparently not as newsworthy as it began to be in 1973 and, if we fast-forward to today, news about homelessness and what is being done, or not done is almost a daily occurrence. Even if you only read the headlines/titles for these news stories, you will begin to see emerging patterns that ebb and flow over the course of a mayor’s term in office: A flurry of activity centered around all the grandiose promises made to get elected, slowly tapering off to a trickle by the end of the term.
During the fifty year span I looked at, there have been five past mayors and Karen Bass the current mayor, who took office at the end of 2022. Although the term length for mayor is four years with a maximum of two consecutive terms, these restrictions were only enacted in 2002, which explains why Thomas Bradley (the first on the list for this inquiry) was mayor from 1973-1993, which amounts to five consecutive terms. Next up was Richard J. Riordan (1993-2001); James K. Hahn (2001-2005); Antonio Villaraigosa (2005-2013); and Eric Garcetti (2013-2022). All of these mayors dealt with the problem of homelessness in their own ways and were, as is always the case with any kind of social change, hampered or bolstered buy the “social” climate of the times. Being the mayor of a large US city in the 70s or 80s, for example, was in many ways light-years away from being mayor in 2023. While the myriad of reasons and root causes for homelessness have remained fairly consistent over the years, the world around these people has changed dramatically.
What has also changed over the years, are the “labels” we have attached to those who, for a variety of disparate reasons, find themselves on the outside of what the status quo would deem “normal.” When the word “homelessness” was first used sometime in the late 1800s, it was meant to describe itinerant “tramps,” who at that time in history were traveling the country in search of work. At that time however, the emphasis was not about whether or not one had a “home” per se, it was about the loss of “character” attached to a perceived emerging “moral” crisis, which threatened long-held ideas of home life, rather than the lack of a permanent home. The label tramp eventually evolved to “hobo,” first appearing around the 1880s, especially in western America, which softened the public’s perceptions of tramps. Accompanying the change in verbiage, was the often romanticized depiction of migrant laborers in American literature – Walt Whitman, Bret Harte, Sinclair Lewis – and later in movies, like Wild Boys of the Road, a 1933 pre-Code Depression-era American film directed by William Wellman, telling the story of several teens forced to become hobos. Or go back a little earlier and you have Chaplin’s The Tramp, (1915), and The Gold Rush (1925).
By the end of World War II, the United States ushered in an emerging economic engine that put the nation back to work. Over the next three decades, according to the National Institutes of Health, the typical individual experiencing homelessness continued to be disproportionately white and male but became increasingly older (usually over 50), disabled, dependent on welfare or social security, and tended to reside in cheap hotels, flophouses (in itself a very telling nomenclature), and in single room occupancy hotels (SROs) located in the poorest neighborhoods and Skid Row areas of urban America. This term, Skid Row, is derived from the term “skid road,” which describes a forest track over which logs were dragged to get to either water for transport or the mill. If you allow that image to percolate for a moment, it is fairly easy to see the evolution to Skid Row. In an unfortunate example of irony, the people living in SROs and rooming houses during this period would be considered “housed” under The Department of Housing and Development’s (HUD) current definition of homelessness. This fact alone underscores the difficulty in defining and studying homelessness throughout the U.S.
For me, the key word here is “housed.” In fact, the term homelessness itself has gone out of favor, having been replaced by the term “unhoused.” One of the major themes that I was able to take away from all the newspaper clippings I looked at over the years, is that the money being spent, the policies being bandied about, the “housing” projects and initiatives brought forward, have always been first and foremost about getting people off the streets. While this is certainly an important part of the “problem,” it does not address the many root causes such as mental health, drug addiction, chronic unemployment, under employment, and the lack of services in general, but especially for this country’s veterans. It is not a coincidence that the prosperity of that 30 year period mentioned above, coincides with returning military at the end of the Vietnam War. I apologize in advance if this seems a bit callous, but the efforts to get people off the streets smacks of the old proverb: “Out of sight, out of mind.”
One need only look at some recent stories/features about the “housing” being provided for Los Angeles’s homeless population to understand why putting people in “rooms” is not working. An August 27th article (2023) in the Business section of Los Angeles Times, “At Cecil Hotel, gaping needs,” by Jaimie Ding, brings to light the severe problems and squalid living conditions these people are living in: roaches, faulty plumbing and heating, mold, and overall filthy living conditions. On top of all that, are the lack of any kind of services. As Dora Gallo (from A Community of Friends, a nonprofit housing operator) stated in the article: “You can’t put people in apartments that have not really lived in an apartment setting for a while without providing the services.” Yet another feature story from November of this year, “Inside the world’s largest AIDS charity’s troubled move into homeless housing,” paints a more depressing picture than the one above, as if that is even possible. The subtitle for this exposé by three Times journalists says it all: “A Times investigation has found that many of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s more that 1,300 residents live in squalid conditions, with dozens under the threat of eviction.” The threat of eviction is directly related to many of the residents refusing to pay rent until conditions improve, but instead of doing that the foundation is suing the tenants for back rent and then threatening to throw them out if they do not pay. Consider just one of the stories coming out of this investigation. John Carter, 72, lives on the sixth floor of the Baltimore. He suffers from memory loss, dementia, depression, bipolar disorder, and mania. He is addicted to crack cocaine, incontinent and blind in one eye, and also suffers from arthritis in his knees and ankles, making getting around difficult. He has complained that the conditions in the facility are deplorable, describing that even when the hot water is working, which it often isn’t, it leaves a milky residue, and he has to struggle up six flights of stairs when the elevator is not working, another common occurrence. He does not feel he should have to pay rent, but told the foundation that if he must, they should take it out of his Social Security check. They did not do this, instead serving him with a small claims lawsuit.
The last article from the Times that I looked at from 2023 had the following headline: “LA homeless tally gets worse; the latest numbers are a grim reminder that we have to keep building more affordable (emphasis added) housing.” Firstly, and why I emphasized the word “affordable,” is because it is a relative term. And, as has been documented above, just because a roof over one’s head may be within one’s financial means, it does not address the myriad of associated problems that come with that affordability. Secondly, giving someone in need of a “home” does not address the root causes of the larger problem. When I plugged into my computer the words “home” and “house” looking for definitions, the accompanying photos for both entries showed structures that in the Los Angeles market would start at two million dollars and go up from there. Housing, in one sense refers to “shelter,” while the “true” meaning of home is a “safe haven and a comfort zone. A place to live with our families and pets and enjoy with friends. A place to build memories as a way to build wealth. A place where we can just truly be ourselves.” This is not the definition of an SRO.
The photo at the top of this essay is a sculpture by Lisa Mann, a Pasadena artist, titled: “George Wilson: Home (more-or-less).” It was created in 2003 and updated in 2005 and 2023 and is currently located on S. Lake Ave. as part of the Pasadena Rotating Public Art Program Phase IV. The location is one I frequent often. Mann’s use of shopping carts, is a nod to the fact that they have long been associated with homelessness and living on the streets. The labels that are placed around the carts are markers for where homeless people have to go to find specific services for their needs. The writing on the bars of the carts represent a typical day of travel for George Wilson, a homeless person in Pasadena that Mann interviewed for her project. There are several short clips of those conversations that can be found at: https://www.lisa-mann.com/george-wilson-home-more-or-less.html It is only one story out of thousands, but it offers a glimpse into the daily routine of Mr. Wilson’s and some of the reasons behind his unfortunate predicament. It should also be noted that homelessness varies a great deal depending upon where you find yourself in the greater Los Angeles area.
The question that remains to be answered is: What kind of “change” is needed to address the issue (s) surrounding homelessness? Peter Senge, an American systems scientist, and author had this to say about change: “People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.” What resonates for me here is that this is true for both sides of the homelessness equation; those that are in desperate need of change but resist those efforts because of a lack of trust in the “system,” and those that are in a position implement change but fumble around as governments and agencies squabble over how best to implement the changes needed. The only way this will ever change is when there is enough of a heightened sense of urgency. What does that look like you may ask? Well, when a recent fire closed down a section of the 10 freeway running through downtown Los Angeles causing a traffic nightmare for commuters, and we were told that it might be weeks even months before repairs could be completed, this certainly created that sense of urgency. But unlike the urgency of the homelessness crisis, which involves people not concrete, local, and state governments threw all kinds of money and effort into the problem and the freeway was back in operation within a week. Shortly after it reopened, I received an email from the city informing me that any businesses impacted by the fire and road closure could submit forms to demonstrate economic hardship in order to be eligible for some kind of financial relief. Need I say more?
I started with music so it is only fitting that I end that way, and I might as well get on the Taylor Swift bandwagon as everyone else appears to be doing these days and leave you with some lines from her 2008 song “Change” which, in many ways, echo Mayer’s “Waiting for the World to Change:” “So we’ve been outnumbered / Raided and now cornered / It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair / We’re getting stronger now / Find things they never found.”
Los Angeles 2023
Your years of being an educator are strongly evident in your eloquent and thoughtful piece, North. Like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, homelessness is a complex, multi-faceted and incredibly fraught issue that’s plagued numerous political administrations, with no quick or easy solutions.
Thank you for those kind words. It certainly is all that you say, and I feel that like many of society’s complex issues like the Middle East, the “solution,” if there can ever be one has to come from inside, not outside. Third and fourth parties trying to broker “peace” has always failed, or at best, been temporary. Thanks for reading!
Glad you reposted this North. A topic on my mind more and more lately. It has reached crisis level in my opinion in many major cites around the world (with the rare exceptions) so it seems your words went unheeded. More the pity. The pdf poem was well done and the dichotomy not lost on the reader. A word that stood out from the right hand column was Aversion. There’s a lot to that word in this situation. Also you point out some of the key issues like affordability and the hypocrisy of the Freeway example – it gets to the hard facts of the problem/solution.
Thanks Randy. Yeah, it’s on a lot of people’s minds for sure. Yes, there is plenty of “aversion” going on with this and many other issues these days. Again, thanks for reading.