When will we finally know how many homeless people there are?
LAHSA’s 14th point-in-time (PIT) count will take place at the end of the month, but last year’s statewide total wasn’t much higher than it was at the height of the Great Depression.
Homelessness has existed in Los Angeles for as long as Los Angeles has been called “Los Angeles”.
Attempts to measure the scale of human displacement have existed for nearly as long.
L.A.’s modern homeless count started 20 years ago…
…in 2005, with “HC05” (or Greater Los Angeles Count/GLAC #1).
“HC24” or GLAC #14 will be underway this month. LAHSA, USC and service providers are currently recruiting thousands of volunteers.
But “HC05” was hardly the first attempt at enumerating unhoused people.
Archived State documents recorded a “one-day census” of “transients” and relief-seekers that took place on September 1st, 1933.
How did it compare to the modern U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD)-mandated “point-in-time” (PIT) homeless counts (HCs) that have occurred annually since 2015?
How will 2028 Los Angeles compare to 1932 Los Angeles?
How much more counting must we do in order to quantify homelessness in L.A.?
You’d think homeless counting or house building would have been made into an official Olympic sport by now!
Los Angeles County Health Department and its Housing Division each published reports in 1932 that give us a better understanding of how and where “transient” residents and actual transients were living/staying at the time.
Sept. 1, 1933
“HC33”
On September 1st, 1933, the State of California’s Emergency Relief Administration (SERA) completed a “one-day census” of people accessing poverty assistance programs combined with manual enumerations of people living in makeshift settlements.
The State’s attempt at quantifying people lacking housing is an early attempt at pulling off a point-in-time (PIT) homeless count (HC), much like the one that will be done by LAHSA (LA Homeless Services Authority) and USC (University of South California) later this month (“HC24”).
In what I am referring to as “HC33” (1933’s Homeless Count), 48 of the State’s largest counties counted relief-seekers by “contacting public and private relief agencies and counting individual people residing in transient ‘jungles’ and shantytowns”.
UCLA Luskin reviewed SERA’s successor, the State Relief Administration (SRA)’s Sacramento archives on the subject of Transients in California. Included were the final results of that one-day census.
101,174 people lacking housing were counted statewide.
HC33 = 101,174 “transients”
To put that into perspective, we can compare HUD’s 2023 Continuum of Care (CoC) Homeless Assistance Programs (HAP): Homeless Populations and Subpopulations report for California, which counts 123,243 unsheltered people and 181,399 total people experiencing homelessness (including those staying in shelters) “on any given night”.
HC23 = 123,243 unsheltered
Note: The HC23 PIT figure contains ten counties that were excluded from the 1933 one-day census, but they are the smallest counties in the State, and the sum of their 2022 CoC PIT counts is <2,000 people. That means the scale of homelessness has increased by 20k people in around 90 years, or 80k maximum, if you include sheltered people.
State growth
The state has experienced massive intentional growth over the past century that far outpaces increases in homelessness.
In 1930, there were 5.7M people living in California, but the population has increased +700%, to almost 40M in less than 100 years:
If the State’s homeless population had increased at the same rate as the general population, we would expect to see around three-quarters of a million “transients” living in California “on any given night” in 2023. Instead, we can see that homeless has increased, but not doubled, over a period of almost 100 years.
Considering the incredible amount of boosterism that went into drawing people to live, work, and visit Los Angeles at the beginning of the 20th century, one would think the state would have invested in more robust social services, but it invested in its own image, instead.
In 1932, the Los Angeles County Health Department called makeshift dwellings “unemployed habitations” (although they were often occupied by underpaid laborers, as noted in its own reports, by its own inspectors). Some people still call improvised shelters (like the one I live in) “transient encampments” (despite them serving as the permanent, primary residences of the people residing in them).
Setting aside the still ever-evolving language used to describe “places not meant for human habitation” (those are the words used in HUD’s definition of “homeless”), unsheltered homelessness among L.A. residents has remained pretty much the same in scale and location throughout modern history.
If we would take a break from counting, we could actually probably do something about homelessness.
Makeshift dwellings have stood in the same areas generation after generation. Streets and river beds where ramshackle cardboard and scrap metal shacks once leaned on dusty, unpaved ground are now concrete sidewalks occupied by colorful dome-tents and asphalt parking spaces for immobilized motorhomes.
But the general locations and conditions experienced by those living “on the streets” of Los Angeles are still basically the same as they were nearly 100 years ago. There’s still no access to running water, electricity, or voluntary, predictable sanitation service, and the problem of unwanted contact with unsympathetic, sometimes cruel City and County officials seems to have persisted through the ages.
Expanding and contracting
Every few decades, Los Angeles has seemingly expanded to accommodate thousands of truly transient international travelers as a repeat host to the Summer Olympics in 1932, 1984 and 2028.
And it has always contracted again, somehow finding even less space and fewer resources than it had before to spare to still-needy unsheltered L.A. residents…(and repeat).
Despite these magical qualities, quantification of homelessness in Los Angeles and California continue to deliver predictable results. Government-mandated counting has become somewhat of a ritual: increasing in frequency from a one-off, one-day census to biennial to annual homeless counts.
Why can’t we harness our competitive abilities in order to absorb our own displaced residents?
1932 Los Angeles County Health Department and Housing Division reports
“The Habitations of Unemployed” and “X Olympiad 1932 Olympic Village” unintentionally created stunning juxtapositions of a “point-in-time” much like today, in which two Los Angeleses exist simultaneously, for two different people.
One is an internationally traveling competitive athlete with his eyes on the gold. He will have accommodations hand-built in excited anticipation of his arrival with his every comfort taken into consideration: from his discounted travel arranged by the International Olympic Organizing Committee (IOC) to the village of 500-600 cottages, bathhouses, state-of-the-art kitchens, dining rooms, a hospital, fire station, post office and several theaters—all temporarily erected with the utmost thought and care, for his maximum enjoyment during the X Olympiad, to be demolished on August 14th, when he departs.
And another Los Angeles where a single, elderly laborer grinds his days away at a dump site, even though he hardly gets paid enough to be considered “employed”, because the selection of materials to which he gets access allow him to rebuild a modest shelter for himself whenever his settlement inevitably gets raided by authorities. But at least he already did his time working at the “rock pile” for no pay. It was that, jail, or deportation to Oklahoma, where he had nothing but dust to return to.
“Habitations of Unemployed of Los Angeles County”
Thirty-seven 90-year-old sepia-toned photographs with captions typed on a manual typewriter document health code violations among communities of makeshift dwellings in L.A. neighborhoods like Vernon, Florence-Graham, Santa Monica, West Whittier, Duarte, Saugus, Pico, Glendale and Pasadena — many of the same areas we still see tents and motorhomes today.
February—March, 1932
Despite regular removals by L.A. City Sanitation’s CARE/CARE+ teams and Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Works, these same settlements have persisted for generations, showing that the ongoing lack of commitment to permanently improving the housing conditions for the poorest residents of our City, County, State and Country has resulted in generations of displaced people living outside in cleverly-repurposed assemblages of garbage.
Hoover Town
One of the largest settlements in the 1932 Healh Department report called itself Hoover Town after then-President Herbert C. Hoover. His name became synonymous with slum housing conditions, despite their continued existence throughout American history. The popular choice to call Depression-era settlements of makeshift dwellings “Hoovervilles” was an attempt to summon federal assistance and trigger a change in executive leadership. It eventually worked, but in 1932, it had yet to be seen if he would be re-elected.
Employed inhabitants of “unemployed habitations”
Despite the title of the Health Department’s report, several of the residents of the photographed dwellings in the report actually had jobs. For example, an inspector notes that the men who built a 3-sided dwelling photographed on 3/9/32 all worked at a nearby dump. They were essentially sanitation workers themselves. This might have struck a cord with the health inspectors who were tasked with enforcing standards of living that were impossible for these destitute men and families to meet.
Public privies provided on principle
L.A.’s Hoover Town housed dozens of families on. five acres of vacant land owned by a church in Florence-Graham. Captions on the Health Department’s photographs noted that Hoover Town was rapidly expanding, with more families arriving every few weeks. The Health Department installed several latrines to accommodate them, even though they were not located on public land.
Inspector-advocate
Another photograph dated 3/9/32 shows fly-proof privies that were provided by a Sanitation Inspector at a smaller settlement of single men in West Whittier. The inspector specifically points out how the ditch lined by their shed-like shelters is kept immaculately clean.
March 18th, 1932
In another photograph of Hoover Town dated 3/18/32, an Inspector notes on a photograph:
“The Children’s Hour”
“This group of children was listening to a story told by one of the older girls for their entertainment.
Here are a dozen good reasons why better housing conditions should be provided for these people.”
Despite being in an enforcement role, the County Inspector takes on the role of an advocate by using captions on the photographs of his report to plead for “better housing conditions” from the County that employs him, on behalf of the unsheltered families he observes for his job.
He has directly improved their condition by supervising the installation of shared toilets, but he knows it’s not enough. He still wants the County to do better for them. And he makes it known - in writing - in an official report.
The inspector uses his report to challenge preconceived notions about “unemployed” people and families living in squalor. He focuses on their resilience, tidiness, and ingenuity, and uplifts wholesome moments that contrast their depressing, hopeless settings. Unlike Sanitation reports seen today, many of the captioned photos capture empathy and optimism for the subjects, and frustration is directed upwards.
But a different 1932 report from the Housing Division of L.A. County’s Health Department illuminates glaring contradictions in “the Los Angeles way of doing things”: particularly, how it allows corruption to systematically deprive people like the ones pictured above of their right to live in a proper, sanitary, sustainable home…while ensuring that right to transient athlete tourists and real estate speculators.
(We’ll go to Sacramento to demand “Groceries, not games” from the Governor in the next installment about how “Olympics are outrageous”!)
Reports:
HC23 • 1/23/23 • U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) Continuum of Care (CoC) Homeless Assistance Programs (HAP): Homeless Populations and Subpopulations (CA)
HC33 • 9/1/33 • State Relief Administration (SRA) Transients in California
3/9-18/32 • Los Angeles County Health Department The Habitations of the Unemployed in Los Angeles County
Papers:
UCLA Luskin The Making of a Crisis: A History of Homelessness in Los Angeles
Thanks for this important information. I hope the situation improves for the homeless in LA and everywhere else.