Los Angeles fires expose flawed housing policies

Tens of thousands of people in Los Angeles lost their homes to the devastating fires that raged in early January. The Eaton and Palisades fires reveal how vulnerable and interdependent we all are. The people of Los Angeles have risen to support their newly displaced neighbors, while state and local elected officials took immediate steps and promised funding and resources to help rebuild devastated communities and attend to immediate needs. This high-speed, dramatic destruction of homes is worsening a housing shortage that has been building in the region for years. Before the fires, Los Angeles already had a documented shortfall of 500,000 affordable housing units. About 75,000 people in Los Angeles County officially count as unhoused, while hundreds of thousands more live in overcrowded apartments, pay more than they can afford in rent or bounce between temporary situations in hotels or on friends’ couches.

Houselessness and housing insecurity are heavily concentrated among Black and brown residents, whose rate of home ownership is substantially less than that of white residents. The fires worsened these existing problems. They destroyed an estimated 12,500 housing units. Many people displaced by the fires will become unhoused. Those with more resources will rebuild or find new homes. Many will relocate to less expensive areas, but by doing so may drive up housing prices and displace others.

Many people who worked in fire damaged areas have lost income and the ability to pay rent. Yet the Los Angeles city council has resisted an effort to protect tenants from evictions due to the extended impacts of the fires. Los Angeles County is closer to passing an eviction protection bill. The trauma of this event will continue to unfold for years, and those experiencing it deserve our full support and compassion. But so do all people living on the streets, as each has their own traumatic story of loss. A recent Human Rights Watch report on the criminalisation of unhoused people documented many of those stories. One woman lost her home when her husband’s business failed and then he died. Another left her home to escape an abusive partner. Another woman, whose physical disabilities prevented her from working, was evicted for allowing her unhoused niece to move in with her.

There have been efforts to help unhoused people and to build or preserve more housing, but never meeting the need or the scope of this long-running disaster. Instead of treating unhoused people with grace and dignity, the most prominent policy in Los Angeles, in California and across the country has been criminalisation. Criminalisation of the unhoused means ticketing and arresting people for crimes related to their unhoused status, as well as Sanitation Department sweeps that systematically destroy property belonging to unhoused people.

In June, the US Supreme Court approved the unrestrained criminalization of unhoused people. In the case, City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the high court overturned a Ninth Circuit ruling that forbade local governments from enforcing laws against unhoused people existing in public, unless there was sufficient shelter, housing or some other place for them to go within the jurisdiction. The new rule allows enforcement whether or not the unhoused person has any other option. Since this ruling, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has vigorously encouraged state and local officials to enforce laws to clear encampments and drive unhoused people from sight. Within months of the ruling, dozens of California cities either passed new laws criminalising unhoused people or renewed enforcement of existing laws. States including Georgia, Texas and Florida are enacting far-reaching bans on sleeping or staying in public. Despite Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass saying she opposes criminalisation, city officials continue to ticket unhoused people and destroy encampments.

Victims of the recent fires, both those unhoused as an immediate result and those who become unhoused as the impacts unfold, will be subject to these cruel policies that do nothing to solve the crisis of homelessness. We should redouble our efforts to help those impacted by the fires, including assistance in rehousing, eviction controls and protections against predatory behaviour. We should also extend the same grace, compassion and resources to help those among us who lost their homes to other types of fires.