FIGHTING HOMELESSNESS REQUIRES COOPERATION.

Byline: Bob Erlenbusch Local View

TYPICALLY, most people living in Los Angeles only encounter Skid Row if they take a wrong turn off the freeway. Confronted with cardboard lean-tos, sidewalks blackened with human waste and garbage, and mental illness and addiction, Angelenos roll their windows up and speed from the despair and destitution.

But now Skid Row is in the headlines. And Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has promised to address ``The Row.''

Skid Row is a tragic symbol of our city's policy of abandonment, as well as surrounding communities' policies of abdication. By putting few, if any, resources of their own into homeless services and affordable housing, police squad cars became the social-service program of many small cities - transporting their homeless downtown, dropping them off in hopes of finding services, and more often leaving them to drown in desperation.

In fact, the small area of Skid Row represents only 15 percent of the homeless population of Los Angeles County. The remaining 85 percent are far more invisible: standing aimlessly on corners, hiding under freeways, sleeping in cars in every corner of the county. We have the disgraceful distinction as the homeless capital of the United States, with 90,000 people homeless on any given night.

The recently completed homeless census by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority estimates that 35 percent have struggled on the streets for more than a year, suffering mental-health crises and addictions. Another 25 percent are estimated to be veterans, and the number of homeless families with children is growing at an alarming pace. Between the Los Angeles city and county school districts, there are more than 25,000 homeless students from kindergarten to the 12th grade.

Half of the entire homeless population in Los Angeles is African-American. Nearly 60 percent of homeless people say they arrived on the streets from three overloaded and broken institutions: jails, foster care and hospitals. People are discharged to the streets in a fragile state of mental, physical and emotional health, with no money and, because of decades of systemic failures, nowhere to call home.

We are at a public-policy crossroads. We can either continue to house homeless people in jail, psychiatric units and hospitals at a cost of $40,000 a year to taxpayers, or take that same amount and invest in affordable housing, including permanent housing with services on-site. The city, county and surrounding communities can persist with policies that shuffle the homeless from one community to another, or we can move together in a regional and comprehensive approach to end homelessness for all.

It is this simple: The cities have the housing and the county has the services. Yet they must be fully coordinated and integrated, generously funded, and regional in approach with all communities doing their fair share to end homelessness.

Villaraigosa's proposal is part of the equation. But it's not nearly enough to address our regional crisis. The other 87 cities in L.A. County must also step up. A few - Santa Monica, Long Beach, Pasadena - have already done so, but this long-overdue effort to end homelessness will require appropriate action from each and every city in the county.

Bringing all of Los Angeles home will require an array of housing options, with a focus on permanent housing and support services. Our health and welfare systems will need to be integrated and accessible to homeless people, and we will have to make sure that no one - not a single mentally ill veteran, battered wife or foster child - is ever discharged to the streets.

Yes, all of this costs money, so regionally we will need to do a much better job at advocating in unison for our fair share of resources from state and federal governments. With those systems in place, homelessness can once again be a thing of the past.