L.A.'S HOMELESS STRATEGY CALLED INADEQUATE.Byline: TROY ANDERSON Staff Writer More than 50 university and college professors have signed a petition condemning Los Angeles city and county strategies to combat homelessness, and will release their own plan today. In their plan, homeless advocates and USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. and UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX professors and scholars demand that city and county officials do more to solve the homeless problem than arrest indigents and provide emergency beds. Daniel Flaming, executive director of the Economic Roundtable, said finding jobs for the homeless is the biggest key. ``We need to address homelessness in the communities where it occurs,'' he said. ``Many of L.A.'s wealthiest communities are making no effort to address the problem of homelessness even though this problem exists in their community.'' The petition by the Inter-University Consortium Against Homelessness also calls for smaller cities in the region to take responsibility for their homeless and stop dumping them on downtown's Skid Row. L.A. has the largest homeless population of any U.S. city but spends proportionally less on the problem than New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , Boston, Chicago and Seattle, said Michael Dear, one of the consortium's founders and a University of Southern California The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission geography professor. In 2005, L.A. spent less than $1 per capita [Latin, By the heads or polls.] A term used in the Descent and Distribution of the estate of one who dies without a will. It means to share and share alike according to the number of individuals. to address homelessness -- compared with $3 in Chicago, $8 in Boston and $13 in Seattle. In the county overall, local jurisdictions using local, state and federal funds Federal Funds Funds deposited to regional Federal Reserve Banks by commercial banks, including funds in excess of reserve requirements. Notes: These non-interest bearing deposits are lent out at the Fed funds rate to other banks unable to meet overnight reserve as well as private sources spend about $600 million annually. The annual cost of sheltering and sustaining every homeless person An individual who lacks housing, including one whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private facility that provides temporary living accommodations; an individual who is a resident in transitional housing; or an individual who has as a primary residence a in the county is about $1.5 billion. In contrast, New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. spends $1.7 billion each year on services and housing for its much smaller homeless population. About 90,000 people are homeless on any given night in L.A. County, 40 percent of them women and children. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said it's frustrating that more hasn't been done to help the homeless since the city and county recently set aside another $329 million to address the problem. troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com (213) 974-8985 HELP FOR THE HOMELESS A petition signed by 50 professors lists steps to solve the homeless problem, including: Ensuring public assistance is enough to pay for lodging. Saving county money by having agencies help the homeless obtain federal Social Security benefits and veterans' disability payments. Providing affordable housing and services for the homeless, not just emergency shelters. In L.A., a night in supportive housing costs about $30, compared with $37 in a shelter, $64 in jail, $85 in prison, $607 in a mental hospital and $1,474 in a general hospital. Stopping the flow of homeless people into Skid Row. CAPTION(S): box Box: HELP FOR THE HOMELESS (see text) |
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