Homelessness is an unfortunately evergreen topic in LA politics.
According to a 2024 Stanford study, “L.A. County accounts for about 10 percent of the nation’s total homelessness and 19 percent of unsheltered homelessness . . . The number of unsheltered homeless per capita is more than six times greater in Los Angeles than it is nationally.” Given this harsh reality, it’s critical that LA employs only the best policies to maximize our return on dollars spent.
So Traci Park, who brands herself a “get it done” Democrat, surely supports the best, proven-to-work policies, right?
When we look at countries and cities around the world that have effectively solved homelessness, and even studies done right here in Los Angeles, the solutions fall into two areas of work: getting people housed and keeping people housed.
Getting people housed in the modern sense typically means a “Housing First” program model. As defined by Greater Change: “The Housing First model is a means to give a person experiencing homelessness a home, a rental, or a flat with a contract without any conditions. These people are not required to get a job first, get sober, or make any lifestyle changes – housing is provided first.”
Housing First is the model pioneered by Finland, and it is considered the Gold Standard of programs that help people who are homeless get into housing and remain off the streets.
In March of this year, Traci stated that we need to “revamp” our homelessness programs “by shifting our focus onto sobriety and recovery-based housing solutions.” Sobriety and recovery-based solutions? That’s not what the science supports. Sobriety-based programs are proven to push people back onto the streets, harming the effectiveness of programs designed to address homelessness. Let’s put it simply: “research has largely documented harmful consequences of requiring treatment as a prerequisite for housing.” Could there be clearer refutation of Traci’s horrible sobriety-first position? As activists like to say: “you cannot teach someone to swim while they are drowning.”
So, the science is clear on how to get people housed, but what about keeping people housed?
Keeping people housed is simple: make buildings affordable in neighborhoods where people want to live, and offer support in moments of crisis.
In nations like Finland and Singapore, strong public housing subsidies ensure that huge amounts of affordable housing are available to residents. In Helsinki, they try to supply about 25% of housing as subsidized and affordable, while in Singapore the target is 80%! At €15/m2, a publicly subsidized 650 square foot apartment in Helsinki would rent for about $1050. Smaller spaces and less desirable cities can bring that cost down even more. In America, the waitlist for subsidized affordable housing can be years long, with many lists kept closed due to overwhelming demand, making it unavailable to millions who need it urgently. Right now, less than 3% of renters in LA County live in subsidized affordable housing.
Subsidies can also go to people experiencing urgent needs who are not in a designated “affordable” building or unit. Daniel Soucy, a researcher with Johns Hopkins and the National Alliance to End Homelessness, stated “Intervening before somebody experiences homelessness by paying for their rent or covering whatever cost they need to stay housed … is cheaper than [addressing] homelessness once it occurs.”
Los Angeles has a program to subsidize homelessness prevention, create public housing, and build permanent supportive housing, and it’s funded by Measure ULA. Traci and her donors have made every effort to villainize Measure ULA, and they are constantly trying to overturn it or create new exemptions to the tax. Make no mistake, these are exactly the kinds of programs we need, and we should be fighting to find more funding, not less!
Speaking of funds for permanent supportive housing, Measure HHH, which passed in 2016 was designed to help with exactly that. In 2023, when LA City Council voted to approve funds from HHH to support an affordable housing project near Skid Row, Traci Park submitted a cowardly “absent” instead of joining the 12 councilmembers who voted to approve funding the project.
And we all want to keep people housed. But Traci voted against AB 246, legislation intended to prevent rent gouging and stabilize housing in the wake of the 2025 fires. Traci also opposed strengthening rent stabilization on our limited supply of RSO buildings twice, preferring to give her landlord buddies the maximum possible increase!
Finally, even if voters don’t care about creating permanent supportive housing, they still want to reduce crime and the impacts of homelessness in their neighborhoods. A Stanford study on temporary shelter showed “on average, when one SPA opens 100 additional shelter beds, the number of people who are unsheltered falls by 90 and daily crime incidents fall by one. For every additional 400 shelter beds, we observe one less daily emergency room visit for psychiatric conditions.” The paper also stated “we find that the crime reduction is concentrated in the zip codes that are closest to the shelters. This is especially striking since communities often oppose having a homeless shelter open or expand given concerns about public safety.” Traci has not supported funding for new shelters in CD11, only more funding for sweeps and criminalization.
So let’s review. To get people off the street permanently, the best option is a Housing First program with no sobriety requirement. Does Traci Park support this? NO! To prevent people from falling into homelessness, we need to provide immediate subsidies to people in need and create a large supply of subsidized affordable housing. Does Traci Park support this? NO! And to prevent crime and other street-level impacts of homelessness, we need to open shelters in the communities that are affected. Does Traci Park support this? Again, NO!
It’s no surprise that Traci holds these positions when her donor list includes some of the largest landlords and landlord lobbying groups around. They don’t want affordable housing or publicly owned housing because your rent payment is their income!
So my conclusion for voters is simple: if you care about addressing homelessness and affordability in LA, Traci Park has to be the worst option on the ballot.
